we're coming up on the one year anniversary of my entire life falling apart, including being laid off from my job, my cat dying, and several other things all occurring within the span of about 2 weeks and my mental health has been sinking rapidly for the last couple of months as we get closer and closer to the anniversary and nothing gets better/everything mostly just continues to get worse. but today i had to go to the pharmacy (my shoulder is in excruciating pain and it seems like something is genuinely wrong, moreso than just having Body Is Constantly In Pain Disorder) and this also finally meant being able to ask after the film i dropped off months ago that no one ever called me to tell me if it was ever developed and which i never had the spoons to follow up on until i had to go to the pharmacy for medical reasons today.



which meant getting the rolls of film from right before catleen died, as well as the trip to minneapolis to meet some dear internet friends last fall. there were apparently only 8 shots on the roll of the cats and almost every single one of them came out completely illegible thanks to terrible lighting and me not having used a film camera in probably almost two decades. but the one photo that did come out was this one of ms. bean. and she's so beautiful. 

i couldn't bring myself to wait until i got home to see if any of the photos of her came out and so i opened the envelope while waiting for my meds and god i just wept in the middle of the pharmacy. i miss her so much. everything happened so suddenly and all at once last summer and my entire life collapsed around me and the most devastating part of it all was losing her SO suddenly when we had just been told by the veterinary cardiology specialist that she had at least another year. she was chronically ill too, we both had multiple conditions but she had been having such a strong upswing for a few months and then all of a sudden her health just fully crashed and burned right after i lost my job and there was nothing i could do.

we (and by 'we' i mean my partner and our friend bc i am too physically disabled to have been able to do the manual labor) buried her under the fig tree at our new house and it was such a nightmare. the earth was so dry and full of rocks and so hard, it was an awful time of year for it, and it took two nights just to get the minimum 3 feet down and in the midst of it, we had an asbestos scare when we found what looked like construction waste buried in the ground from the 70s when the house was built (a common practice back then). it ended up not being asbestos thank god, but it was such an awful several days at the start of an awful month leading into an awful year.

my birthday is in 11 days and the anniversary of things falling apart is two days after that. idk if i'll ever be able to celebrate my birthday without thinking about that awful time in my life. i genuinely am surprised i'm still here, to be honest, this past year has been so bad. i'm not looking forward to the next year, things have not been looking up and i can't imagine them getting better, really. i don't even want to do anything for my birthday at this point but i feel like doing nothing would be even more depressing. idk. i don't have the energy to plan anything though and i don't really expect anyone else to either, we're all having such an awful time over here, tbh. so we'll see. i'll probably just do some doordash driving just to get out of the house and maybe make enough money to get myself a treat and then curl up in bed and do nothing.

but the first figs of the season are starting to ripen so maybe i'll eat one tonight.