It’s very early in the morning, and I feel the electricity under my skin, it just keeps buzzing throughout my bones. I won’t sleep again today.
I feel a slight pressure against my body: it’s something small, warm and velutinous. I turn to my right and I look at the cat. How can you be so fucking peaceful? It’s like the Earth isn’t spinning, and the Sun is not exploding endlessly into the void of the Space. You just lay here, your guard down, stomach rising and falling softly. Conor doesn’t give a fuck either, sleeping like there is no tomorrow at all, and I feel left behind in a future with no Conor and no cat, and yet, here they are, just not quite alive as I am.
I caress the cat and with its eyes still closed it sort of reacts to my touch and stretches slightly, puts its paw on my arm to reassure I am not completely alone and carries on sleeping. I am astonished by this creature doing its own thing, mastering its awareness with grace and arrogance. I feel uncomfortable because my heart fills up with blood and it’s almost like it’s bubbling its way up to my throat which becomes so tight not even a needle will get through. I know what this suffocating velvet-like feeling is: love. This is not ok.
I always wonder why with love comes this visceral shady fear. What is it? What is it really?
It’s the fear of Death.
Love is ephemeral and comes unexpectedly. Death? You know it’s coming. You know it for the entire duration of your life. Just know that every time you go to sleep, you might not wake up, and you have to be alright with it. I kind of am at peace with the fact that I will die, and lately I’ve been making sure that my day is not garbage I will regret living and leaving behind me. If I died now, I would regret nothing. And yet, I am not so ok with the idea of other people dying. People I love dying? Not ok. Animals dying? Not ok at all because I love all animals unconditionally.
I shift a little lower to be at the cat’s face level. Now I can hear its breath and feel the fur against my nose. This is so not ok because I know it’s aware of my love now. It knows and it’s almost as if it’s smiling at me. Death smiling at me.
Back in 1998 circa, I am on my way to my best friend’s apartment. She lives on the ninth floor of one of those ugly soviet buildings. We spend a lot of time at hers because my dad is at work and I always make sure I have a peak from the balcony because the view is mesmerising, the whole city opening to me, all the possibilities, an escape from a life I don’t want.
So on this day everything is the same but the air is still, I can feel the stiffness as I am walking up the staircase; I never take the elevator because Death stares at me and giggles in the flickering lights of a poorly maintained system; I once got stuck and I felt its fingers caressing my shoulders. I reach the last floor and She is standing there in front of her door.
My friend is very worried and I think I’ve never seen her little sister without a smile on her face before. Everything feels wrong. We get in the flat and they say they can’t find the cat and they have a suspicion it might have fallen from the balcony. We get out and look down, windows vertiginously carrying our sight all the way to the little roof above the main entrance. Impossible to see what’s on it, we have to go downstairs.
Once we are on the ground floor, I climb up the pipe and get on the roof above the main door. It’s full of trash and all sorts of unanimated objects but somewhere in between all the shit, there is a tiny black shadow, it’s not moving but it’s definitely breathing. I take the cat in my arms and it’s so light I can’t believe it’s the same animal I spent hours of my life with. I pass the cat to my friend and then make my way down as well.
They are shocked and something cracks inside of me. I love this animal to pieces and I know it’s dying and I have to be strong because no one else will and the cat needs me. I take it into my arms and I realise its spine is broken, that’s when it hits me hard. There is blood coming out of its mouth and it tries to meow, it can’t raise its head but I know it’s telling me something I will never understand but my heart knows. I am sobbing now that I am writing about it but in the moment I just accept it, I feel the cat dying and I just hope it goes quickly now because I can’t see this shit unfolding like this anymore. This is not ok.
I don’t cry, I am just glad the cat is not suffering anymore. I swallow the trauma and pile the experience in the back of my mind until something triggers me twenty two years later and here I am writing about it.
Conor is awake now, he looks at the cat with that same Love I am afraid of and the cat moves and stretches and does its cat things. They are both back, they are alive and I just want to fuck because that’s how I fight my fear of Death, and generally when the cat stares at us fucking I am kind of ok with that because if it’s there watching, it’s not somewhere else dying.
I can quite relate to Joe in Nymphomaniac, when she lubricates as the awareness of her father’s death sinks down, lower, lower, lower... Off she goes to fuck. So I sort of fuck my way through life, and the more I fuck the more I realise that Love and Death are the same entity. You are never fucking just someone’s body, you are embracing the fact that we are all going to die, and that’s ok.
in photos Conor J