Donations
This is a spot for anyone that wants to donate towards keeping the blog going, or help for better equipment for the blog to go. Do not feel obligated to donate unless you want to.
$1.00
Domain change
Hello everyone!
Just to give you all an update, my site is now hosted as ShadeStory.com as the primary domain. This is to make the site easier to remember for all of you as well as better representative of the blog as a whole.
Thanks for understanding through all of the changes!
Tribute: Euro
Backstory
When I was 11 years old, my mother was dating someone she had been with for years who also was our landlord and had allowed us to have a pet for the first time already in our few years old cat Patches.
One night, her boyfriend shows up at the house with a small kitten he had found by a railroad track and asked for advice on what he should do as his family didn’t want the cat. At that moment, this little flea-ridden cat had bolted into my room to hide and his fate was sealed and he would be my cat for the rest of his life.
This four-month old kitten was taken to a vet and given everything possible to do well in our home with our other cat. My grandfather assisted in naming him Euro from a comic that he had sent us a year before about our next cat.
For the next 11 years, Euro would be the most unique and strange cat we ever have, or will, have again. He would announce himself when he entered a room and never liked new people, especially men. He was terrified of the outside he had been found in and never left the house.
The Hard Part
A few days ago, Euro began showing signs that something was very wrong, but we had no idea how wrong. He had thrown up and was struggling to move around. We thought he had the flu or something simple..we were very wrong.
2 days later, my mother had a vet appointment set up, but we didn’t want to wait any longer and went to a vet hospital. The news was heartbreaking. He had a urinary blockage that had spread toxins throughout his body and he was in unbearable pain and couldn’t continue going on the way he was.
Our options were either to treat him, with a very low chance of any quality of life or humanely put him to sleep. Doing anything other than one of those options would have been putting him through more misery. We decided that putting him through anything more with no good outcome would be worse and decided to let him go and get rid of his pain.
We, meaning me, my mother, and my sister, each held him before my mom returned him to me. The vet sedated him and then finally put him at peace with me holding him in my arms for the last time.
When he was at peace, the vet put him in a bag that could be buried and gave us individual prints of his paw prints to keep forever.
Closing
He was the most unique cat I’ve ever had and wouldn’t have traded any of it for the world even knowing how it had to unfortunately end. I will never forget all of his quirks that made him special to all of us or the annoying things he always did.
I’m forever grateful that I got to be there at the end and be the one to hold him one last time.
Tribute: Marc
More than 21 years ago, my mother adopted a little kitten (6 weeks old) named Franc. My dad, although not pleased, was willing to accept a new cat. Little did he know, the next day my mom went back and brought home his littermate Marc.
Marc was a black kitten who just wanted to be pet and fed. He was always mellow and sweet, even if he wasn’t the most playful. The main memories my mother remembers dearly are when she was pregnant with me and he would lay on her and purr. He was looking forward to a family member coming home. He stayed with me forever. When my dad adopted him, after the divorce, he always knew who I was.
The main memories my mother remembers dearly are when she was pregnant with me and he would lay on her and purr. He was looking forward to a family member coming home. He stayed with me forever. When my dad adopted him, after the divorce, he always knew who I was.
When my dad adopted him, after the divorce, he always knew who I was. Not many years after, Marc’s brother Franc died when he suddenly stopped eating and we couldn’t figure out why. Marc was never quite the same cat, but he grew attached to the other cat (my dad adopted 3/5 of the cats after the divorce). Little did we know, Marc would live 14 more years after his brother’s death and for that, I am forever grateful.
Marc eventually would move back in with my mom due to my dad’s inability to move him at such an old age by plane. He lived a great 3 years after my dad moved after losing his job.
In his last week, he developed an enlarged stomach all of a sudden that we couldn’t find an answer for and scheduled a vet appointment. We had no idea at the time, but he would never make it to that appointment.
Marc passed away March 10th a little before 7 am after having what we think was a stroke. My mom was there with him while he had a seizure as she knew this was the end and didn’t have enough time to get him to a vet. My mother called me immediately after so that I could say goodbye in my own way before he was buried. Due to circumstances, I was able to hold him the entire way to where we buried him and cried with my mother.
I have never felt this empty losing an animal before as he was family. All my pets are, but there’s something special about losing the animal that’s been there since before you even were a thought.
RIP Marc. You lived a long and great 21 years and you will be missed. I have no idea if a heaven exists, but if one does, I hope you’re enjoying your time with your brother that you didn’t have for so long. I hope to see you again one day.
One of My Lowest Moments
Before I start..
I’m now in a healthy and happy relationship of a year with a new person and have moved on entirely from what happened here.
This is mainly a reflection of where I don’t want to be at again due to another person’s misunderstanding caused by my own insecurities. If you deal with, at any point, what is talked about in this, get help.
The story
I had been in a relationship for 2.5 years with somebody who I thought was going to last forever. We had, very briefly, joked about the idea of getting engaged to each other in the last 6 months of the relationship. We believed it was going to last, but we changed.
In the last few months, I had become insecure due to moving to college with said partner. We didn’t live together, but spent a majority of our time with each other and it began to cause problems I hadn’t seen. I wasn’t good at taking criticism of the problems on my end and my partner wasn’t good at expressing those needs to me in a way that I could fix.
Near the end, it got to a breaking point where I asked if they wanted to end the relationship. It sounded like they wanted a break and that’s what I thought of it as. It was more than that, but I didn’t want to accept it.
(Trigger Warning)
After this relationship ended, I bothered my ex-partner with texts and a note at one point. I’m not proud of those moments and wish them the best at this point. I will never make that mistake with another person to get that low.
While in counseling, I began hurting myself again for the first time in a very long time. I was hurting myself with sharp keys I had because it was all that was available to me. I told my ex-partner and all they had to say was about the fact that if I went too deep near a certain area that it could kill me. They didn’t care that it was eating me apart and threatened to tell my family about the situation if I didn’t stop.
For me, this was a turning point, I brought myself together due to the fear of losing that secret to people I didn’t want hearing it. Counseling, along with the help of a friend who is now my partner, brought me closer to myself again.
Although I’m in a better place now, I do feel like that was one of my lowest points. It basically showed me that the person who I believed would take care of everything for me can’t and that I have to take care of myself. I made sure to be more careful when I wound up with someone again not too long after.
Questions
- Has anybody else ever been in a situation that changed their entire view of another person that they loved?
- Has anybody else found counseling one of the things that helped them in a stressful time?
Tribute: Penny
RIP Penny: October 28th, 2009 – September 27th, 2016
A few years ago, in 2012, my family lost our first dog Shadow after a horrible liver failure situation. We had only had him for 3 years and he was 9 years old when he died. It broke all of our hearts to lose him, especially my mother.
Shortly after this, me and my mother went to the local animal shelter to start looking around because of how lonely the house felt without a dog. We were there for 3 hours and I kept looking at this one dog that wasn’t barking and was just wagging her tail. She had a lump on her back, an issue with her eyes, and these sad eyes, but she was beautiful to us. My mom tried to deter me as she wanted a smaller dog, but at the end she knew.
We brought this husky mix to the room to get to know her. We had met with many other dogs there, but they all focused on another animal they could see or just laid down. This one put her face next to mine and just started licking. It was over. My mom called my step-father to come meet her before the adoption.
When we went to adopt her, my grandmother had to help because we only had the money with us to adopt a dog that was already fixed and didn’t want to anyone else to get to her before we could.
She guessed the name we would give her before we did. I will never understand how.
……
For the first while when we had her, she had to undergo surgery. This was to get her fixed, fix an issue with her eyes, remove a benign tumor, and remove a rotten tooth. It was quite a bit of money, but worth every bit of it.
She had some problems with walking on a leash, but she got better. Also, at first, she would carry her food everywhere with her because she was afraid someone would take it. She never has eaten out of the bowl and always knocked it over to eat it. This was worth it, because of the affection and relaxed attitude she always had.
3, almost 4, years later she started having trouble walking and was unable to get outside to go to the bathroom by herself anymore. One morning, I got a call really early asking if I could help wiht money for her to see a vet (they had just moved) and I agreed. Little did I know, she never made it there, she died before they could get to her. I wound up paying for her to be cremated.
…..
I apologize for the lack of proper writing, but I’m pretty emotional at this point. She just passed away on Tuesday. I haven’t been to the house since then, and I wish I was there when she died at home.
Rest easy my sweet puppy, I’m happy you died at home in peace.
Separation Anxiety
This isn’t something I’m necessarily proud of, and those who have read my posts, especially my poetry and rants from about a year ago now, know that I have a terrible problem that occurs in my relationships recently. It drives me crazy and I have no idea how to properly deal with it.
This isn’t exactly a cry for help, but more a way for me to cope and sometimes this is the only way I know how when my in-person words continue to fail me. Maybe the person I want to read this I will let someday, but that all depends on where things go.
Thank all of you for the support this far everyone. I mean that more than I can explain even though there aren’t that many that read these regularly.
Some Backstory….
I didn’t have a terrible childhood by any means, but no one is perfect in every sense. In my case, my parents divorced when I was barely 3 years old. I have one memory, and that one isn’t fully there, from when they were together.
I was an independent child in terms of not needing a parent around me all the time and was more than happy to keep myself entertained for a long time. Even so, after the divorce, when I was upset especially, I wanted to see my father more than anything. This was just the relationship we had because he was around more than my mother for the first few years after that, I won’t get into why in this post as it has been mentioned before.
When I got older, my dad moved about 3 hours away. For awhile he was able to see me every weekend and I was doing alright with that even though the change was scary with not seeing him every day or every other day. Well, when I was around 15 that changed. He had some issues with his car and such and couldn’t see me on my 16th birthday. This was when I believe this problem started. I burst into crying in a way that I don’t remember ever having happened before. This caused me to have issues in school from missing class due to anxiety that I didn’t know I had.
Now…
I had dated someone for 2.5 years that I’ve talked about quite a bit on this blog, but it ended due to my own errors and an incompatibility that I didn’t realize was there. Many of these things, including being better at listening, I work on every day and am constantly making sure to be better at to avoid this happening to my current relationship.
The problem? I don’t know how to work on separation anxiety. I don’t know the best way to deal with this so that we can have our own lives outside of each other so that my partner can get what they need to get done and make their own friends too. I feel terrible, but they make me feel it isn’t going to destroy us. I’m terrified of it tearing us apart.
My question…
My symptoms:
- Can’t sleep anywhere near as well and have to take melatonin or something to work through it now.
- Constantly having the fear that something terrible will happen to them.
- Having nightmares sometimes about things that could possibly happen even if they’re unrealistic
Do any of you have what I can consider severe separation anxiety that occurs after even a day? If you do, how do you deal with it?
Thank you for the ramble and I apologize for the lack of posting.I took summer courses and wasn’t able to post as much as I originally planned.
Freshman Year is over
Well…
Last week was finals week which means that my freshman year of college is over.
This means a lot of things for me:
- I made it farther than anyone else in my family has when it comes to a Bachelor’s Degree in anything.
- I proved to myself that even after a terrible first semester, I can still succeed, improve, and fix the issues that started those immediate problems.
- I can get through anything if I take the time and energy properly needed to overcome emotional trauma.
It wasn’t the easiest start to my college career during the first semester, but the second semester showed me that it doesn’t always stay like that.
I even miss my new friends that have now moved back home or are visiting family in different cities since the university is only 20 minutes from me. I can go back and see other people nearby whenever, but many of them can’t since they live on campus.
What this means….
For me, this gives me more time for the next month. I start classes Sunday, June 12th for the summer semester to make up for my terrible fall semester. It is to fix the major required intro class that I failed with a D in (Principles of Biology I) and take Principles of Biology II in order to be right on track for next year.
For the blog
For the next few months until the fall semester starts, I’m going to work towards posting every Monday again. This will start this coming Monday if all goes well. It’s going to be a long summer and this will help me cope with life again.
Why I haven’t posted
It’s been awhile since I have posted and that was not intended since I was doing so well keeping the posts coming out at least once a week.
For me, since my classes are ending for the semester soon and I’ll have a month off before the summer ones start, expect posts to return to normal at that point.
I apologize for the disappearance and didn’t expect it either.
Happy Blogging everyone and I will return to normal schedule soon.
Re: Daily Page (Part 6)
Prompt – What’s the most important lesson you learned this year?
In my recent post about the new year, I talked about some of the lessons I’ve learned. The ones I listed aren’t anywhere near all of them. There are many more.
The most important lessons are always learned after something difficult occurs that makes you realize what you can take whether you want to or not.
This year, that lesson, is that the unexpected doesn’t always have to be bad. The best things that happen in your life are going to be the very things that scare you.
This is why there’s a magnet in my aunt’s house that says this: “Do one thing every day that scares you.” This can be anything from walking a different way home to asking someone to hang out that terrifies you. Don’t be afraid. You’ll be better for it.
The reason this lesson means more to me lately is with my situation. Earlier in the year, I talked about the person I had been with for about 2.5 years. We started dating in July before my junior year of high school. We broke up at the end of September.
After the breakup, we continued to do something I’m ashamed of, we started having “casual sex” once a week during October. I was lonely and he was the best connection I had, but in my brain I knew it wasn’t going to work. I was simply clinging to what I knew whether it was healthy or not.
When we finally got into a fight after that, I was fuming, we had lost the ability to communicate because I had been stupid and selfish. He felt like he couldn’t tell me anything and had been stringing me along on a thread. That made me shatter into pieces in front of one of our friends and such as soon as I got away from him.
Middle of December came around, and someone was acting strange around me. He had told me we shouldn’t talk anymore, I was confused and felt hurt like I had done something, and I spent the next 24 hours wondering what was going on. If he was hurt; I wasn’t going to do anything to make it worse.
Then he asked to talk to me the next night. He admitted to liking me a lot. After that, we talked through the entire night until he had to leave for class the next morning. We spent the next 2 weeks together before break began and throughout that time I admitted to liking him back.
When you spend that much time getting to know someone in whatever way, you get to know them and if they open up to you, a connection forms. I started falling and that was terrifying.
We have began dating even though I had planned on hiding away for a couple more months, but that’s how things are. Life threw everything at me and expected me to hold on for life. I made it to the end of the year.
Sometimes the unexpected happen and that’s alright. The people you thought would be there forever sometimes aren’t going to keep that promise, but you will find those who will be in time.
That’s the most important thing I learned this year.
Discussion
- What would your answer to this question be? If you have a good one, make a post about it and link me to it.
- Do you agree with what I’ve said here?
