I'm usually not the type to relate personal info here, or hell, even write journals much as the 6 month gap between posts might attest to. But I'm drunk as fuck and felt the need to vent a bit, and maybe pick some brains about how to deal with what feels like one long run-up kick in the balls after another that so far shows no signs of slowing down.

Last week the cat that I had raised almost from birth needed to be put down. She'd been ill for a while, but the event itself was sudden- an extremely bad puking spree that caused some form of severe spinal damage and paralyzed her from the shoulders down. She needed to be PTS immediately, which was pretty awful- having to hold something that you cherish so much when she was in fear and pain and trying to drag herself away in blind panic, whilst someone else kills it. Of all the cats I've had to deal with over the years with one circumstance and another, she was the only one I really wanted, and was very attached to. Cheeky little shit. I loved her to bits, and still can't get over that she is gone. The other cat that was mine had died at the start of the year, and with his presence gone she had been far more demanding and affectionate of late. A cruel twist of fate that she should go so soon after coming out of her shell.

And then as if that wasn't bad enough, not long after the message came through that my grandma had a severe stroke and isn't expected to recover.

I haven't seen her for a couple of years. My fault, mostly. I could have, but procrastinated, and then the whole covid shitstorm erupted and it was no longer an option. She had suffered from alzheimers, and I was heavily involved in her care for the five years prior to her needing to be sequestered into a professional home. Growing up she was one of only two people I really had in my life, which made watching her decline and being so intimately involved with it intensely stressful. We did what we could for her, made her comfortable, went around to her house as often as four times a day to do obs and take care of chores she progressively couldn't manage anymore, but it took its toll mentally. I was a wreck inside. When she no longer knew where she was and became a hazard to herself, it was time to pull the trigger. Something she didn't want. Who would? To be sent off to a home packed in there like sardines all just waiting to die. Even the nicest one we could find for her looked like a fucking zoo. She'd implied more than once that we should arrange for certain medications to fall into her possession that she might solve the issue herself, but that would mean legal trouble. So she want, and she cried, and with no other family in the picture we were left alone to empty her flat with nothing but two weeks and a sack barrow, and clear away a lifetime as if she'd never been there.

After she was in full-time care, she declined rapidly. This is common for Alzheimers patients. When removed from familiar environments the loss of normalcy severs what hold they still have on reality. After I learned that, it felt like I'd had no small hand in walking her to the execution block, and the guilt of it eats at my mind. After six months she had no idea who me or my mom were anymore, and in some ways its almost a mercy that she no longer knows how bad her condition is.

Of course, the rest of the family are back on the scene now. AFTER all the hard decisions were made and the dirty, soul destroying work was done. And now that all they have to do now is stick their faces around the door once a month and keep up the appearances, they're concerned and prattling and hovering like flies around shit. And they judge and deride and blame us, the ones who were there when it fucking mattered, for not being more involved now that she's a babbling vegetable.

I could have called at least even, but what can you say to someone that far gone? "Err.. how is the weather over there?" ignoring that I only live a few miles away. "Peaches and... walking down Earlsdon street with the sausages" or some similar that would have only opened old wounds. I don't even know that visiting would help either of us, and still feel guilty about not doing it.

And that was just the weekend.

After spending a few days allowing myself to pathetically seek solace from misery at the bottom of a bottle, it was time to be an adult again and pull myself together. Not happy, not ready to, but life doesn't wait for you to pull your big boy pants back on. And I was managing it too, until it was my mom's cat's turn to become the source of drama by falling out of a carelessly left-open window, and broke his fucking leg. And because he is an old inbred-to-hell narcoleptic that can't be sedated, that's another PTS recommendation.

And then today, some fucker scanned out my debit card details and is apparently trying to make purchases with it. That I can't prevent. Because the two-factor security my bank uses to access accounts requires a physical terminal that picked this exact moment to crap out.

So that means calls to the bank, calls to the vets, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pounds on fees and a whole boatload of stress and anxiety tipping up at the worst possible time. My phone repeatedly capping out on credit whilst held in waiting queues because pay-as-you-go is a fucking scam and I don't use it enough to warrant a contract, to get through to some guy called 'John' with an indian accent so thick you have to ask him to speak in phonetics when what you really want to do is punch something...

TGIF? I need a fucking drink... Booze should not be a crutch, but right now I don't want to be fucking sober. Can I get off Mr Bones' wild ride for a day or two. Maybe?