Pebbles

Didn't sleep very well last night. Pebbles, the cat, decided she wanted to communicate with me. She does this by jumping on the bed and standing very close to your face while you're sleeping. Then she reaches out with one clawed toe and touches you on the cheek.
You swipe her away in your doze, thinking it's a bug.
Then she does it again, harder.
She keeps patting, gradually increasing the sharpness of the touch until you wake up.
"What the hell is it?"
Then she sits, staring at you with her black eyes."Meow."
"What do you want?"
"Meow."
She wanted under the quilt.
Sometimes she wants to go outside. Sometimes she wants food. Sometimes she just wants me to know she thinks I should be up by now, damn it.
Pebbles is a calico--all calicos are insane. She's very tiny and fat, and her coloring sort of peek-a-boos on her face, leaving it and her paws white. She's roughly the size and shape of a soccer ball. She's almost completely round.
Pebbles has issues. Xavier wasn't very nice to her when she was a kitten: he threw her against the wall a couple of times. To be fair, he was in the throws of his eventual complete break from reality as you and I know it, but try explaining that to a cat. For years she bit us every time we tried to pet her. She formed a relationship with Nick's green grinch slippers and slept inside them. When she got too big for the slippers, she adopted Lilly's stuffed tiger and pretended it was her mother, even sucking the fur into imaginary nipples.
Nick is the one who fixed Pebbles. He worked on her month after month, year after year. He realized, for example, that she would let you pet her if you used the back of your hand, and only very lightly. He fed her turkey baby food. He magically got her to stop pooping and peeing all over the house. Now she is almost a normal cat
Almost.
She still will crouch in the hallway some mornings and for no reason hiss and spit at everyone who goes by. If you ask her what's wrong, she will stare at you malevolently and snarl. When you open the door for her to go out, she will hiss and spit all the way out the door, running down the street as if you were chasing her with a flaming broom.
She also likes to tempt fate. She will lie in the middle of our street on her back with her paws in the air. She will not move, even when a car comes. The car usually has to come to a complete stop and honk. Then, and only then, will she roll over, very slowly, and stalk out of the way. Sometimes she will start to leave the road, then change her mind and walk back the other way. Sometimes she will not bother to get out of the way at all, but will merely roll over, look at the car and hiss at it. Then I usually have to come out of the house, pick her up, apologize to the driver and take her inside
Abuse does terrible things to people, even cat people.
What she is saying is, "I used to be pushed around, but you can't push me around any more! Even you, you big stupid car."
Abuse changes your perspective on everything. It makes you see threats that really aren't there, and it makes you underestimate and defy the threats that really are there. It screws up your gauges. Great way to ruin a personality.
Jay called last night. "Are you okay? Are you feeling better about everything?"
Yes. It helped that my ex fiance from college called. He recently was fired from NASA. He's an astrophysicist. Now he's trying, unsuccessfully, to make a living selling solar panels. It put things in perspective. We never really let go of the people we love. It doesn't mean we can't move on. It's not like he has the picture album out on the table. I went looking for it. I'm like Pebbles, crouching in the hallway, hissing at phantoms. So what if I'm like Hali. (She spells her name a little differently then I do). Jay's not so different from other men I've dated. Roughly the same social class, education, excels at a sport (weirdly, everyone I've ever dated is some sort of a jock, even though I'm a confirmed nerd) Yoga-ing, singing, rock climbing hippie chicks are a dime a dozen. I play the violin, so I do have some actual hard-earned skill--if you're attracted to one girl of summer, you're probably attracted to another. Our families have both been in Crockett County for generations--we probably even share genetic material. We have a mutual friend who told me "she's the earth side of your air coin."
It's hard to trust, you know? You're fresher and sweeter when you're young, you're more open and more vulnerable. I feel like I have so many shells, so many outer layers of protection, I will never be sweet and warm again.
But I am sweet and warm sometimes. Just like Pebbles. It's a gradual thing.
At least I'm not hanging out in the middle of the road.

That's my 1/2 hour. 29 minutes, actually. My kids finally called me. Turds. "I'm sorry," they said, "we just got caught up in stuff."