Only 9 Lives and a Stray Spark

I grew up deathly allergic to cats. I was hospitalized in my late teens because my respiratory system wouldn't respond to conventional asthma treatments after some inadvertent exposure to cat funk. (It's the DANDER and the cat SALIVA that triggers allergic reactions, not the cats themselves or the hair.)

As an adult I surprisingly acclimated and was finally able physically to be around them, but by then I found them foreign. I'd grown up with dogs. Cats were antagonistic animals: their spit could be lethal, they would not come when you called them, they went where they wanted, leaving their paw prints and germs in a wake on counters and table tops. They were independent and wanted loving on their own timetables, not anyone else's.

In hindsight, I see too many commonalities in myself and cats. So of course I did not like them. I'm still not a fan.

Another unusual adolescent travail was hypoglycemia. This fun blood sugar syndrome caused a grand mal seizure when I was 19, and had I not been married at the time, I would not be writing this today. When my then-husband woke up and rolled me over, I was choking and clawing at my own neck. Thus, I have long equated "had I been alone" with "may have died."

And I think I still have that conviction, that I still equate "alone" with "may die."

When I was 18, the car I was riding in crashed into a stone house. My right temple took out the rearview mirror and shattered the windshield because I wasn't wearing a seat belt (Young N' Stupid). Many years later, I had different kinds of seizures called "partial complex" seizures, which feel like de ja vu on steroids and pack a wallop of nausea and mental fogginess after a dizziness so profound that everything appears to melt and lay over on its side. On at least one occasion I was driving my car when one hit. 

Doctors tied this seizure activity to that 1983 head injury where Head Tried to Meet House.

Given my disagreeable commonality/identification with cats, I figure I just might have the proverbial nine lives that cats supposedly have, and at the rate I'm going, I've directly used up at least three of them. If you factor in near misses from three tornadoes, the head-on collision on our country road that killed everyone involved and that my family missed by mere seconds, the plane crash I missed because I didn't make my intermediate connection (they gave my seat to another girl that burned to death), and the time when I had active plans to do myself in until antidepressants intervened, then I've used up all nine of those lives at this juncture.

Guilt v. regret -- this was the conversation topic the other day with one of my friend-girls. (A girlfriend is someone I date; a friend-girl is someone I merely wish to hang out with.) I feel strongly that regret is far more toxic than guilt, because guilt can be assuaged, but regret cannot be rectified. Regret is more "there's no going back." Guilt, on the other hand, is "Oh, I wish I hadn't done that." It signifies something ventured; whether gained or lost is ad hoc. It means there was action, movement, a choice and an outcome, maybe good, maybe bad. Regret to me suggests inaction, lost opportunities, fractured dreams.

I tell myself that I live my life so that I minimize regrets. Certainly my past suggests that I am fearless in taking stupid risks and pretty focused on doing things my own way, even if it means reinventing my own wheel. Because I want to arrive at Death with fewer regrets than guilt, even if it means breaking some dishes and ruffling feathers. I just don't want to have the darkness come for me while knowing viscerally what I would do if only I had the chance again.

Lately, though, I have focused on staying safe. I'm not thinking about my death bed; I'm making life choices now out of fear, out of uncertainty, not out of Regret Avoidance. I'm not sure if this is because I'm older and more cautious now, or if it's because I do a better job of considering others before I leap, or if it's because I'm just getting lazy and settled.

It's like my depth perception is off, so that I cannot gauge how deep things are. I perceive everything and everyone as "too deep," and thus I never wade/jump/plunge in. (Since when did I care about appraising depth anyway?)

I just chew on my lip, and pick at my thumb, and worry wonder worry fret. (And so the seeds of regret are sown ...)

A better illustrative element than deep water would be fire. I'm all too aware now of what can go up in flames instantly, and apparently I'm very attached to things that are flammable. And unfortunately I'm also a bit of a fire bug, which fits right in with my Change Agent schtick. Part of my purpose is to expose and in some sense destroy, to make room for new growth.

Except lately? My touchy-feely self is only touching what I know I can't burn. I'm a match that knows exactly what and whom the tinder is, and I stand as far far far away as possible from it so that even an errant spark could not cause a conflagration.

(And so the regret begins to grow ...)

~~~~~

I close with Rilke, one of my favourite poets, a man so gifted with prose that he tears my heart out with his images and his grace on the page. He knew a little something about Death (and loaded images of death) and regret.

Oh, and about burning.