The Cat is Here

Ginger tabby curled up on a rock outside, sleeping.
Photo by lisaleo

Content note: this piece contains mentions of death, social and environmental crises, and apocalypse.

The cat is here.

The cat next door came for a visit and is over here now. The cat without the hat. I’m always nervous that the cat will fall when she comes over. Now she is looking down at the world through the balcony’s bars to the left of me. Now she is sticking her head between the bars. Now she is walking to the other side of the balcony. Now she is looking through the screen door into my apartment. Now she is sniffing stuff. Now she is looking at where she came from like she plans to go back. Now she goes back. She sits back, looks up, pounces, and lands perfectly on the eight-inch platform, and then her body disappears behind the barrier.

You can have all the worries in the world and then there’s just a cat that will come over and investigate your space. Everything can be so chaotic. Everything can feel so broken. Your adrenal system can be completely shot and your mind can be a dark cloud of fear. And then it can get quiet again, even though the problems and chaos are still all around you. It can get quiet for a few minutes, quiet enough for a cat to slip over and curiously sniff around.

Every single moment has the potential to be quiet enough for a cat.

In every moment, you can focus on the chaotic swirl in your head or the cat curiously sniffing around, pausing to take in all the details of the balcony you’ve never given much thought to. The cat is unaware, it would seem, of the housing crisis, the opioid crisis, the government crisis, the climate crisis… She is just here to check things out, get the lay of the land, and then leap back over to her own balcony⁠—seemingly unafraid of whether she will make the landing on an eight-inch platform nine stories in the air.

Perhaps this is why we love cats so much⁠: they’re nothing like us.

They show us what we aspire to be with our writing, our mindfulness practice, or our meditation workshops. They do it effortlessly. They are simultaneously detached from and deeply involved with the world. Form is emptiness and emptiness is form. Cats are enlightened but they don’t really give a fuck.

The cat left fifteen minutes ago and here I am, still writing about her. She isn’t writing or thinking about me. She isn’t here, she’s over there, in a new moment, exploring different surroundings. She came, caught my attention, and then left me to dwell on her without looking back⁠—a little Buddha, a god, a teacher. They’re all around us in every moment, these Buddhas, these gods, these teachers. Whether or not we tune into them is up to us. I could have ignored the cat and kept on writing like she wasn’t here. I could also choose to ignore the sounds of cars driving by, the playfulness of the rain-filled air, the clink of dishes being moved around in my neighbour’s apartment, the light on the leaves of the trees, the white hairs on my knee, the damp plant smell, the machine-beast noise of a transport truck revving up the street, the itch on my neck, the quiet birdsong underneath everything, the beeping of a vehicle backing up, the dishes again, the quiet shuffle of leaves on a not-so-windy day, the utterly shocking silence of hundreds of humans piled on top of each other at this intersection of space, the sound of my neighbours opening their screen door, someone on the sidewalk saying good morning, or the squeaky wheels of a car that hits a bump and slams. I could choose to ignore all of this or I could choose to engage with it.

“Peaceful, isn’t it?” I heard my neighbour say to his wife when I first came out onto the balcony to write. Isn’t it? This is peace. All of this noise and bustling and activity.

Yes, this is peace, peace in the heart of a city.

An airplane flies overhead and a bird does too. The plane goes straight while the bird flies in circles. Have the birds ever laughed at how we copied them? Have the birds ever laughed?

A motorcycle chugs by and is gone. Most of these sounds last for just a few seconds. Can you feel it? No one is yelling at anyone, that I can hear, and some people may still be sleeping. There is so much going on and there are so many of us and no one is fighting right now. This is peace.

We’re nearing the apocalypse and the cats couldn’t care less.

Why should they? What can they do? Sniff around, hunt for mice, or perhaps jump nine stories in the air. What else?

You have to live in this world. You can try your best to fix it, to do something to make a difference, but the hardest thing about life is just finding a way to live it, to be with the chaos and the peace and the systems and their inevitable collapse and the change and the fear and the pain and the trauma. The hardest thing is to figure out how to live in a world that is constantly ending. You can’t ever get comfortable with that, only curious. You may or may not ever make a substantial difference. Regardless, the world you were born into will not be the one you die in.

The cat isn’t here anymore. I am. That will change. In fact, it already has, as I sit here editing this piece several days later in an entirely new moment.

Non-Monogamy, Jealousy, and Security

Content note: this pieces contains abstract references to trauma.

Last night I dreamt that my partner slept with two other people but had my blessing to do so. Last night I dreamt that someone else tried to sleep with me and I said, “Wait, hold on, I need to check with my partner first”.

They responded with, “Your partner is so controlling”.

Last night I dreamt that other polyamorous people told me I’m not doing it right, that “real poly” means just sleeping with whoever whenever and not having to tell your partner anything. I know some people do it this way. I also know this isn’t the only way to do it, but clearly, my subconscious is struggling with the idea that I’m somehow “doing it wrong”. I’ve been grappling with non-monogamy for awhile. I’m not totally sure how to go about it, what parameters to set, and how to put it into action. On the one hand, I like having the option to engage in romantic and/or sexual relationships with other people. On the other, I’m not sure if I have the time/energy/emotional capacity for a whole other relationship. Do I want multiple relationships or one primary one with more “casual” encounters outside of that? Do I want to explore non-monogamy, an open relationship, or polyamory? And what exactly do all of these mean?

Non-monogamy is stressful. Monogamy is also stressful.

Monogamy stresses me out because it doesn’t feel quite right to me, doesn’t fit quite naturally. It feels like a lot of pressure, like this person is now the only person and that’s it and you will never get to explore anyone else. Non-monogamy gives me the space to breathe. I don’t have to feel guilty about liking other people. It takes the pressure off of a single relationship and allows me to feel more at ease, more myself, but it also has its stressors: fear, jealousy, complication, worry, what if my partner leaves me? I mean, that could happen in a monogamous relationship as well, but the fear with non-monogamy is more like, “What if my partner finds someone better and leave me?”

A friend of mine said recently,

“If anything, non-monogamy makes it less likely that your partner will leave because their interest in another doesn’t have to lead to the end of your relationship”.

There’s some truth to that.

I also struggle with jealousy and that makes me feel gross. I’ve been working on it, though. I’ve been reading, writing, and watching videos. I found this one couple on YouTube who discuss how they both used to be jealous people and what they did to work through that. It’s been helpful. It’s good to know that there’s nothing wrong with feeling this way, it’s all about what you do with the feelings and how you process them. For me, jealousy is usually an “animal brain” response to a perceived threat, i.e. my partner is going to abandon me, I’m not good enough, I’ll never compare to so-and-so, and on. The couple I found talk about jealousy as a perceived “lack,” like the jealous person is feeling a lack in themselves somewhere, like they are not good enough, not enough for their partner, do not have as much love as their partner, etcetera. I believe I’ve struggled with these lackluster lack feelings as well.

I’m scared I’m not enough in a hundred different ways and that it’s just a matter of time before my partner sees that too.

It’s strange because, on my end, I can clearly see how my interest in someone else has nothing to do with my partner or our relationship. It does not threaten it at all. It is not a comment on a lack in what we have. It is completely separate. Love and desire are not limited resources, and my interest in someone else does not diminish or devalue the love and desire I have for my partner. The logical brain gets that, even the heart brain does. It’s the animal brain that struggles, the fear-based response, the child self, the traumatized self (for they are all wrapped up together). That’s what I have to watch out for.

In thinking about and processing my jealousy, I have found its roots. It is a secondary emotion, you see, like anger, and so it has hidden roots in other emotions underneath—fear, sadness, anxiety, insecurity, helplessness. In working through my jealousy, I have also begun to feel what might be the beginnings of compersion, the joy one feels in response to another’s happiness. There isn’t just the capacity for jealousy within me but also the capacity for desire and happiness at the thought of my partner being with someone else. These are new and interesting feelings I’d like to explore further.

I believe I have two selves, two attachment styles. One is secure. They are mature. They feel safe, loved, and free. They have the capacity for compersion. The other is anxious-preoccupied. This is the wounded child self, the traumatized self. They are anxious, fearful, and insecure. They are the one that struggles with jealousy and they do so because they are afraid. I can’t erase this side of me, ever, they will exist always. What I can learn to do, however, is take care of them.

I need to train the secure self on how to hold and reassure the anxious self when they feel threatened.

I need to be honest about their existence—I cannot repress or deny or shame them. I need to be honest with myself, my partner, and whoever else I may get involved with about this side of me. I need to take care of them so that they do not reign uncontrolled, wreaking havoc on my relationships.

I’ve gone on a few dates so far. Aside from that, while technically non-monogamous, my partner and I have been functionally monogamous. I want to change that. I want to take the next step. I’m scared. Even doing the work, I’m scared. My animal brain tells me that if one of us sleeps with someone else, that’s it, it’s over, it’ll all blow up. We so often see representation in the media of this being the thing that automatically ends romantic relationships. Logical and heart brain know that this isn’t true, but that doesn’t make the fear go away. I have to be with the fear, ride it out, and see where it takes me. Closer to myself, I hope. Closer to my partner. Closer to compersion. Closer to love.

26 This Spring

Sprouts in a plastic container on a wooden floor. Open makeup pallets behind them with Sage's smiling face reflected in one of the mirrors.

Content note: this piece contains discussion of illness and grief.

I’m waiting for the leaves to come back on the trees.
I’m waiting for the New Year to really begin.
I’m waiting for the spring air to roll over me,
Chilled but full of moisture,
Smelling of plants soon to be.
I’m waiting for the grass on the hill to turn green.

I’m waiting for the opportunity to try again.
My false start has come to an end,
But the world will come back to life
And I will be able to try again.

We’ve survived another winter,
Apart and together.
Now we have the chance
To breathe again,
To live again,
To think again,
To reimagine.

My false start has come to an end
And I am getting ready to try again—
When the leaves, the grass, and the fresh air
Come rolling back in.

I turn twenty-six on Tuesday the twenty-sixth. I feel more like myself than I have for awhile. I am writing more like myself and I am writing more in general. Poetry has come back into my life and is taking up more space than ever before. Prose and ideas for prose are everywhere. I am compiling the past few years of my transition into a zine. It’s all been falling into place since I let go of the need for a refined product, success, or legitimacy and focused my energy on the process instead.

I love the process. That is the essential piece, you know, loving the process. The piece that can so easily go missing. You can become so focused on the end goal, on the need to be and to appear productive, that you lose sight of why you create in the first place. We create because we love and need to create. This doesn’t mean that creating should always be easy or simple or fun. Sometimes, especially when you are deeply invested, it can be incredibly difficult and confusing and frustrating, but if you love it, that drive will help you move through those challenges.

I was sick last night. I lay on the bathroom floor for hours, shaking. Something went wrong in my body and I felt it in every part of me. I could barely keep my eyes open. I was alone. I lay there and cycled through the following thoughts: I wish this wasn’t happening. What’s wrong? When is it going to stop? Why is this happening? I wish this wasn’t happening…

Then another thought came into my mind as if from elsewhere: this is what it means to have a body. This is what it means to be alive. Having a body means that sometimes that body gets sick. I felt lucky for a few moments just to have a body, even if that body was angry with me. Then I fell back into the cycle: I wish this wasn’t happening. When is it going to stop? Why is this happening?

I was cold and couldn’t stop shaking, so I ran a bath. I lay down in the warm water and felt just as unwell, just as alone, but didn’t shake anymore. I lay back and I let go: this is happening. I can’t stop this from happening.

I started to sing an old song, a song I learned from a community that would stand in two rings and sing two rounds into the night. I sang that old song in an old language and thought about how I didn’t know what the words meant but could feel what the song meant. I sang it to myself, over and over, and I stayed there with my hurting body in that bath and became okay with what was happening.

I was at a New Year’s party a few years ago when something traumatic was triggered and my vision took on a ring of black spots and I felt like I was going to be sick. I lay alone for hours on the cold tiles of a stranger’s bathroom floor, even though I hadn’t had a single drink that night, and rang in the New Year. I had just lived through one of the hardest years of my life and felt the weight of it in my body that final night. I didn’t sing then but I did ease into the pain, mind and body joined together on that cold tile floor. This is what it means to have a body. This is what it means to be alive. Sometimes, you will be sick and you will feel it in your body whether the cause is from your body or your mind. Sometimes, you will be sick, you won’t be able to make it stop, and you will have to get down on the floor with it.

My body is a beautiful alarm system that has always reliably sounded the bells whenever I’ve become too cerebral. Pay attention to me, it says. Take care of me.

That New Year’s Eve, my body took on all of my grief and pain and made me lay on a cold floor all night so I could move into the coming year with a clearer mind. Don’t take this with you, it said. I felt the fog of death, disappointment, betrayal, anger, loneliness, and fear rise like smoke off of my body and leave the room. I came back downstairs at one in the morning and smiled quietly at the party guests who were getting ready to head home. It was a new year and I was new. My family and I drove home in the car. It was dark and they were tired and I was awake and feeling better than I had in a long time.

Yesterday, I lay on another cold tile floor and then in a warm bath. I let all of the awful feelings wash over me. I sang an old song that I did/didn’t understand and thought about renewal and how I was turning twenty-six in three days. Pay attention to me, my body said. Remember to pay attention to me.

I can’t promise to always pay attention, body, but I will try. You will be twenty-six soon, as will I. You have carried me this long and have always been my friend. I will try my best not to let my mind get in the way of your needs again.

Spring is almost here and soon it will be my champagne year. I am leaving something bad behind. I am writing every day. I am searching for community. Just like that NYE all those years ago, something in me died last night and something new came alive in its place. I let toxic smoke rise from my body in that bath and I became new.

I am turning twenty-six in two days and finally, I am ready.

Panic

Close up of turbulent, foamy water crashing towards the camera. Grey, white, and light green tones.
Photo by RaspberryLime.

Content note: this piece contains negative self-talk as well as discussion of panic attacks and mental health issues.

I woke up last night to a full blown panic attack.

I had fallen asleep with some sad feelings. I was in a bit of a funk but didn’t know exactly why. I had some theories. I decided to sleep on it. Sometimes that helps.

The temperature outside dropped very low. The wind roared against my window. Cool air slipped silently into my room.

I woke up shaking uncontrollably but didn’t realize I was cold.

Hundreds of thoughts were racing through my brain, competing for attention. I couldn’t parse them. I couldn’t pull them apart for examination. They were a mess, and they didn’t make any sense, but they all felt real.

Thoughts like:

“He doesn’t care about you”.

“It’s over”.

“You’re a fuck up”.

“You’re useless”.

“You’re selfish”.

“You’re alone. You’ll always be alone”.

“You’re pathetic”.

“No one cares about you”.

I couldn’t keep up with it all, the cyclone in my brain.

Along with these thoughts, I felt a powerful desire to do something destructive: to send a slew of accusatory texts, blow something up, and push someone away to affirm the idea that I will always be alone.

Then I realized I was cold. I was shaking because I was cold, not because I was useless or selfish or pathetic or alone, but because my room had gotten fucking cold. I got out of bed and switched on my space heater, then dove back under the covers and curled into a ball for warmth.

Slowly, the room and my body began to warm up. My heart rate slowed. My shaking became less violent and then stopped altogether. There only remained a lingering feeling of dread in my stomach.

“I’m alright, I’m alright,” I reassured myself. “I just need to warm up”.

Eventually, I fell back asleep. I woke up several hours later in my normal state and thought, “What the hell was that?”

I’ve been having panic attacks since my early twenties. I was in university when they first hit. Though I’ve lived with an anxiety disorder my entire life, the panic attacks bowled me over when they first showed up. It took me a while to develop coping mechanisms for them. They consisted of surges of intense anxiety and fear like I’d never experienced before, irrational and hopeless thoughts, shortness of breath/feeling an inability to breathe, a tightness in my chest, a racing heartbeat, and generally feeling like I was dying/going to die. They almost always happened at night. I struggled with insomnia in school as well and the panic attacks reacted cyclically with that. I’d often struggle to fall asleep for hours, eventually clock out for twenty minutes or so, and then wake up in a panic and be wide awake for hours afterwards. That or I would have an attack because I couldn’t sleep and the deprivation was interfering with my ability to go to classes, study, write papers, and do exams. I was chronically exhausted, stressed, and anxious. I was living on my own for the first time in the middle of a big city where I knew almost no one. My roommates weren’t exactly the friendliest bunch and my school didn’t have a great track record as a warm, welcoming place. I was putting an immense amount of pressure on myself to perform as well as I had in high school, even though the expectations were much higher. I was struggling financially, living off of OSAP loans and paying too much for rent every month. These circumstances were ripe for my mental health to take a nosedive and the panic attacks subsequently developed.

One of the most important non-academic things I learned during my years in university was how to cope with panic, when the rational portion of your brain shuts down and the fear-based, animal brain takes over. I developed strong abilities to self-soothe, ride out the fear, and practice self-care following an attack.

I’m in a much better place now than I was back then, so last night caught me by surprise. I haven’t had an attack like that for almost a year. I wasn’t prepared for one, and for a little while there, it seemed like all my coping skills had gone out the window. It’s always challenging when the panic sneaks up on me when I’m half-awake because for a while, nothing really makes sense and I can’t take the wheel because I don’t even know where the wheel is.

But I did it. Those skills I developed a few years ago came back. I remembered. I rode it out, self-soothed, and even managed to fall back to sleep. I also didn’t do any of the destructive things my panicked brain was compelling me to do.

So, there’s another bad night under my belt and one more small victory too.

Online Exhibitionism and Over/Sharing

Head-to-shoulders picture of Sage, a non-binary person with short red hair, looking off to the right with a serious expression. Their shoulders are bare and there are birch trees painted on the wall behind them.

I think that a lot of us are exhibitionists when it comes to over/sharing on the Internet.

There’s something thrilling about sharing intimate details about your existence with complete strangers online. I have the option of keeping my personal writing safely tucked away in a journal but like the idea of the world-at-large having access to it. Why is that?

I spill my guts when I write. I would never share half of what I write about with someone I had just met in person, and yet I feel comfortable hitting “publish” and releasing my words for the world to see. I even attach my face and real name, upping the risk of my work coming back to bite me.

I’m a very non-confrontational individual in person. I don’t do well with conflict. It triggers all kinds of stuff and effectively shuts my brain down, so I avoid it whenever possible. In contrast, my writing can be very confrontational. I’m able to be a lot more direct about what I think and feel. I touch on controversial issues sometimes. People don’t always like what I have to say, and I know my art has inspired ire on more than one occasion. Back when I turned scripts into videos on YouTube, I even managed to make a few waves of hatred wash over me. That hasn’t always been easy to deal with, especially when sharing something vulnerable has resulted in dozens upon dozens of strangers viciously attacking my ideas, physical appearance, and worth as a human being.

The Internet is not a safe space. I know this and yet I continue to open up to it anyway.

Someone did something to piss me off recently and I wrote a short poem about it. Mind, this is not a person in my life. This is someone I met at an event, have no relationship with, and likely will not see again. I do feel I owe it to the people in my life to have direct conversations with them, not passive-aggressively publish poems about them on social media. I’m not a monster. Anyway, I had some feelings about a negative interaction with a person I barely know and then wrote and posted a poem online about the experience. This wasn’t a call out. The person was not named or identified. I just needed to express my frustration and this felt like a pretty harmless way to vent, but I was also aware of how aggressive and confrontational the piece I created was. It very much carried a, “Fuck you, fuck you very much” kind of tone.

“I might get some hate for this,” I thought, pausing for a moment, “Well, then, bring it on”. I hit the “post” button.

I didn’t get any hate for that poem. In fact, a few people commented about how they related to my experience. This is the most positive reaction you can hope for after releasing something controversial, and it’s not always the one I’ve received. I was, however, ready for hate, or at the very least, criticism for that piece. I almost welcomed it.

I might not be comfortable with controversy or conflict in my day-to-day life, which I believe has something to do with the trauma I carry, but I welcome it within the realm of my art. Okay, maybe welcome is a strong word, but I don’t shy away from it. My mother has commented before that I have a tendency to create things that provoke strong reactions. I don’t shy away from difficult topics and I let people know exactly what I think. Obviously, I’m imperfect. I get things wrong, and I know that my opinions are just opinions, but I’m not afraid to speak out, question doctrines, and go against the grain in my work. I have subsequently provoked strong reactions from all sides. Some folks don’t appreciate my existence as a vocal queer and trans person, while others aren’t a fan of my questioning dogmatic thinking. It can be easy to feel isolated and alienated when one speaks out in such a way, but what’s interesting is how many folks come out of the woodwork to say, “I feel that way too”.

I’m not afraid to write something that you don’t like.

It’s taken me a while to get here as a creator, but I’m happy that I’m here now because it gives me free rein to make whatever the fuck I want. I don’t need anyone’s approval. I might struggle without it, yes, but I don’t actually need it. It’s still scary to share my writing and deal with criticism and hate online, but the risks are worth it, and I get better at dealing with them the more that I do.

I believe that one of the most effective forms of activism I can practice is to unapologetically write about my own experiences. This should not be where my activism begins and ends. This also may not be right for everyone, but it is right for me. It is where I am the most effective. And in order to be effective, I can’t live in fear about how other people will react. I can’t mould my experiences and expression so that they are comfortable and uncontroversial to all who encounter them.

Face-to-face, particularly if you don’t know me very well, I come off as passive, shy, and timid. At my core, however, I am not any of these things. If you take the time to get to know me or read my writing, you learn that. Contrary to what some may believe, I’m actually pretty brave and I don’t take shit. My writing is one of the avenues where I can express that.

Maybe this is why I love sharing my work with complete strangers online. In person, I’m slow to warm up. I grapple with social anxiety, stimulus overload, homo/transphobia, and trauma—which all cause me to wrap myself in a protective shell around new people. After people get to know me better and see my real personality, I often hear the comment, “You’ve changed!” No, I haven’t. I was always this way, you’re just now seeing who I really am. It is through my writing that I can show myself right away. I can be honest and open without dealing with everything listed above. I can show myself in a way otherwise reserved for the people I’m close to.

I think there are lots of reasons why we share intimate parts of ourselves online, but this is one of mine: to show the world who I am and not apologize for it.

P.S. Ironically, I felt pretty nervous about publishing this. I almost kept it forever buried in my drafts with the justification that wasn’t very well written and therefore undeserving of publication. Upon further reflection, I realized that goes against what I wrote about and I owe it to myself to practice what I preach. So, here’s the final product: imperfectly edited, somewhat messy, and rather exposing. It is both exciting and daunting to share. Feel free to love, hate, or not give a damn about it. Thank you for reading.