The Right to Feel
This is what happens when you’re almost 20 and you still live with your parents: you have every capacity to form your own thoughts, values and opinions but your ability to act upon them is limited. Highly limited. Especially if you have a mother like mine who charges a high ransom for nine months in the womb.
So The Big Issue with Mother for today is that the mother has sent JD the Cat away despite protests from all sides (well, just one side – me, oh, and the maid) and despite the fact that she has apparently grown very fond of it. She tells me, get this, this is probably the real big issue at hand, that I have no right to feel angry which I find utterly ….. I can’t find the word for it but an accurate action would be to repeatedly hit your head against the wall, strangle yourself to the point of near death and just when you’re able to breathe again, you take a gun and you shoot yourself in the ear. The right to feel is possibly the most basic and sacred of all human rights, and quite possibly the hardest to manipulate, violate, control or regulate. Any figure of authority can take away your right to speak, your right to act based on your feelings but no one, not even the most tyrannical of tyrants or dictatorial of dictators, no matter what they say or do, can in actuality, regulate or control the way you feel. Your feelings are sacred to you, you and you alone. Your feelings make you your own being, you, the human being.
It breaks my heart to not have JD the Cat nipping at my feet, curling up under my armpits when I sleep any longer (perhaps, and I’m being serious here, that having JD the Human, as in JD Fortune to do the same might be the only thing that can make me feel better). It breaks my heart to think how unsettling all this moving around must be for JD the Cat.
I will not cry. I will not cry. God, I will not cry.
But it was never my cat in the first place. It was the mother’s. And it’s her house. It just so happened that while living in her house, I developed a close bond with the stupid little creature (the cat, not my mother).
Don’t ask me why the mother decided to give the cat that she herself claims to be “the sweetest cat in the world” away. She did once say though that she feels like I love the cat more than I love her. She feels what she feels. It’s her right to. And because it’s her house and her cat, it’s her bloody right to act upon what she feels.
And it’s my right to feel glad that I’m moving out of the house and leaving the country in February next year.
Ah, to speak of the three eternal battles in life: the battle between good and evil, the battle between flesh and spirit and the battle between mother and daughter. Perhaps the latter is the hardest of all to be won.
There comes a time when “patching things up” means making a bigger hole.
JD the Cat is with Alia now and I trust she’ll take really good care of it. I think I found it one of the best homes a cat can have (but I can’t be sure, I’m not a cat). I only hope that her other cat, Calhoun doesn’t end up eating JD for breakfast or I might have possibly found Calhoun the best meal a cat can have.
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“ Tu entre todos los seres tienes derecho a verme débil ”
(You among all beings have the right to see me weak).
- El Dano (The Hurt); Pablo Neruda
At least I think that’s what it means.
So The Big Issue with Mother for today is that the mother has sent JD the Cat away despite protests from all sides (well, just one side – me, oh, and the maid) and despite the fact that she has apparently grown very fond of it. She tells me, get this, this is probably the real big issue at hand, that I have no right to feel angry which I find utterly ….. I can’t find the word for it but an accurate action would be to repeatedly hit your head against the wall, strangle yourself to the point of near death and just when you’re able to breathe again, you take a gun and you shoot yourself in the ear. The right to feel is possibly the most basic and sacred of all human rights, and quite possibly the hardest to manipulate, violate, control or regulate. Any figure of authority can take away your right to speak, your right to act based on your feelings but no one, not even the most tyrannical of tyrants or dictatorial of dictators, no matter what they say or do, can in actuality, regulate or control the way you feel. Your feelings are sacred to you, you and you alone. Your feelings make you your own being, you, the human being.
It breaks my heart to not have JD the Cat nipping at my feet, curling up under my armpits when I sleep any longer (perhaps, and I’m being serious here, that having JD the Human, as in JD Fortune to do the same might be the only thing that can make me feel better). It breaks my heart to think how unsettling all this moving around must be for JD the Cat.
I will not cry. I will not cry. God, I will not cry.
But it was never my cat in the first place. It was the mother’s. And it’s her house. It just so happened that while living in her house, I developed a close bond with the stupid little creature (the cat, not my mother).
Don’t ask me why the mother decided to give the cat that she herself claims to be “the sweetest cat in the world” away. She did once say though that she feels like I love the cat more than I love her. She feels what she feels. It’s her right to. And because it’s her house and her cat, it’s her bloody right to act upon what she feels.
And it’s my right to feel glad that I’m moving out of the house and leaving the country in February next year.
Ah, to speak of the three eternal battles in life: the battle between good and evil, the battle between flesh and spirit and the battle between mother and daughter. Perhaps the latter is the hardest of all to be won.
There comes a time when “patching things up” means making a bigger hole.
JD the Cat is with Alia now and I trust she’ll take really good care of it. I think I found it one of the best homes a cat can have (but I can’t be sure, I’m not a cat). I only hope that her other cat, Calhoun doesn’t end up eating JD for breakfast or I might have possibly found Calhoun the best meal a cat can have.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“ Tu entre todos los seres tienes derecho a verme débil ”
(You among all beings have the right to see me weak).
- El Dano (The Hurt); Pablo Neruda
At least I think that’s what it means.
