"Not a Bad Man"

Like many married people, I have had issues with my in-laws. Part of the problem is family culture and part of the problem is that my father-in-law is a self-centered, selfish, narcissistic jerk. No, really... he is.

When he was in his late 20's or early 30's, this is a man came home from work and literally kicked and hit his dogs. He used to raise dachshunds for show in order to scrape off a little reflected glory from these pets he clearly didn't care that much about or for since he abused them.

He also raised rabbits for eating. I'm not squeamish necessarily about the facts of people eating meat and am very familiar with the necessity in many cases. My family raised a cow for slaughter so I know what it is to raise an animal which will later be eaten. Though when she was killed, I gave up beef forever. We also had chickens and raised a few pigs which went on the chop. However, my father couldn't face killing them. They were sent off to someone who could deal with the reality more than we could. It is hypocrisy to eat meat, but be too squeamish to kill. Not wanting to kill something even though you know you need or want to eat it is an indication that causing the death of an animal doesn't sit well with you.

My father-in-law routinely broke the necks of his bunnies, skinned them, and delivered the carcasses to his wife with still-beating hearts. This didn't bother him. Eventually, it bothered his wife enough to ask him to stop. My family raised animals to eat because we were poor and this was much cheaper. My father-in-law raised rabbits to eat because he liked the taste, not because he was too poor to afford what was in the shops.

When his daughter was 11 or 12 years old and had entered that annoying and argumentative stage, my father-in-law used to slap and smack her body in frustration during the arguments they had. This wasn't discipline. It was anger and an inability to control himself such that he lashed out and hit her. He didn't punch her in the face. He didn't beat her, but he did slap her around because he couldn't contain his emotions.

My father-in-law has humiliated me with callous comments on multiple occasions. The comments were about my body or my poverty. I'm sure he didn't even know that he was acting cruelly because he has no awareness of the feelings of others in the moment. When he's made aware of them after the fact (not by me, but by his family on occasion), he invalidates the feelings of those he's harmed or dismisses them as "misunderstandings."

My mother-in-law wanted a special celebration for her wedding anniversary on many occasions. She wasn't a woman of frivolous desires. She had almost no jewelry, wore simple clothes, and rarely went out or traveled. She spent her days fetching her husband's drinks to quench his thirst, making meals that he didn't compliment, and meeting his needs for physical affection. After years of having her wishes to have a special experience dismissed, she eventually broke one of the glasses used to toast their marriage at their wedding. His response was to hide the other glass so she couldn't break that one, too, and to continue taking her for granted and ignoring her needs.

My in-laws had no pictures of their three children in their home. In fact, they exiled their children to the other half of a duplex when they were ages nine to twelve so they could huddle alone in their home and focus on the person who really needed to be cared for - my father-in-law. There was one picture in their half of the duplex. It was a picture of my father-in-law smiling at his wife as she stood in the kitchen washing dishes - forever the favorite child as the lesser ones were shuffled off to the side.

My mother-in-law used to be artistically inclined. She did paintings that hung around their half of the  duplex for some time. One day though, she decided that she was going to travel to their vacation home alone and paint and paint and paint. When she was done, she destroyed everything she'd done without allowing anyone to look upon her work. This part of her was of no use to my father-in-law as it didn't feed him, put him in clean clothes, or fulfill his physical needs. Eventually, all of the parts of her that were no use were gone, and there was nothing left. She developed dementia and disappeared entirely piece by piece until she passed away. When she was deteriorating, my father-in-law searched desperately for anything to engage her to keep her mentally alive, but nothing was left of her personality by that time to use as a deeper well to draw from in which to nourish her continued existence.

When he was 76, my father-in-law got a dog. He knows he is unlikely to live longer than the dog, but he bought a pedigreed puppy anyway. Even though no one in his family can take the dog when he dies, he doesn't care. He also slapped the dog on the nose multiple times when she frustrated him and yelled at her repeatedly because these actions gratified his emotional  needs in the moment. He refuses to properly train the dog because it's too much effort, though he does walk her a lot so he can get attention from other people through her.

There is a story that I was told about my father-in-law by my sister-in-law which does a good job of summing up his approach to life and to others. He has three children, two sons and a daughter, and when they were growing up his wife would buy Pepperidge Farms frozen turnovers because he liked them. The turnovers came with four in each box, but he wanted to have two each time. So, each time his wife made the turnovers, he would eat two for himself and the children wouldn't be given any. He wouldn't buy two boxes, nor would he eat just one so his kids could share. He just took what he wanted and everyone else had to do without.

But, my sister-in-law has repeatedly told me when I've been the target of my father-in-law's bad behavior that, "He's not a bad man." No, he didn't kill people or steal their money or beat his kids and wife. He has been, however, so perniciously selfish and self-involved that his wife slowly disappeared and had no personality or will of her own. He is so narcissistic that he thinks other people exist mainly to serve his needs and, when they don't, he has no use for them. He can come across as having charm, and can spend time with people by having small talk with them, so it is only those who are in the immediate orbit around this person who believes he is the sun that know the truth.

To outsiders who he doesn't act out on his selfishness with, he seems a perfectly fine person. Everyone he has touched has lost something of themselves as he's demanded they bend to his needs. Those who have not bent themselves, have been placed in exile. I am exiled, and I am grateful, because he is a bad man.

I got a cat

She is... just a cat.

I got a cat. It's not a funny cat, a grumpy cat, a heart-warming disabled cat, or an adorably cute cat. She's just a normal gray tiger domestic short-haired cat. She's eight years old and came from a Humane Society shelter. I found her picture online with a description and then my husband and I drove there to meet her. She was sleeping in a cat bed in a plastic crate in a somewhat large "cattery" with other similarly set up crates, miscellaneous cat trees, and a lot of other cats. She responded well to us when we pet her, but swatted at an errant kitten who came by to get some attention from us, too. Due to her age, she's not incredibly frisky, but she is reasonably affectionate - or at least as much so as cats tend to get.

Before getting this cat, I talked about it on Facebook because it wasn't a simple process for me. We had lived in apartments for the last 30 years and they did not permit pets so there was a sequence of actions we needed to take including getting an addendum to our rent contract and paying an additional deposit. We also had to prepare by buying necessities (food, litter, litter box) before bringing her home. As I talked about these processes with people, I could feel a push from each of them to "join" a society of people whose lives were overly preoccupied with cats and it made me uncomfortable.

Me: "We're getting a cat!"
Them: 'Get two!'
Me: "Our lease only gave us permission for one cat."

Me: "We've got a cat!"
Them: 'I hope she becomes to you what our dog, who is the center of our very existence and we post pictures of everyday, is to us!'

Me: "I'm going to train the cat."
Them: 'Ha, ha, cats will do whatever they want and train you!"

Me: "I've had many cats before never just one so I'm afraid that she'll get lonely or bored, but, the shelter explicitly asked if we had other pets because she doesn't like other cats.."
Them: 'Get another cat like her... one that is like two ships passing in the night, but they don't interact much!"

So, the message repeatedly has been not only that the cat will take over my life, but I will be better off for having her do so and that I should start my full conversion to "cat person."  I am supposed to be joining this society of people whose identity revolves around their pet ownership, but I can't do it. What is more, I don't want to do it, and don't like the pressure people put on me to convert or dive more deeply into cat ownership via getting more cats or presenting her as my master.

I want to remain the person I was pre-cat who is defined by my character and my actions, not my ownership of anything. I don't want to submerge myself into an identity that is attached to a mortal creature or paint myself as being a servant to the will of an animal governed largely by instinct. I co-habitate with her and care for her, because her presence adds a quality to life and my presence adds something to hers - largely, not having to put up with other cats and getting more individual attention.

There was a time when people owned cats because they served a utilitarian purpose. They killed rodents, controlled some insects, and provided companionship when needed with the least amount of oversight. A cat was just a cat, not a totem of identity or a club that you belonged to which said something about you as a person. I think that was a time when people possessed identities which were more related to other people rather than to their own little world that they bought and built around them. The idea that one becomes a "cat person" upon possession of a cat is a sign of our times. These are times when identity is shallow and defined by that which we surround ourselves, not by that which we do with and for others, and which is inside of ourselves.

The Man on the Mountain

A 45-year old man was climbing up a snow-covered mountain. He was suffering from multiple health problems due to age and the hardships of his life. He carried a little medicine with him and had received some homeopathic treatment for his aches and pains. His teeth were bad and he suffered from cavities. His attire was simple, but kept him warm enough. Tattoos covered his body, especially his legs and back.

As this man made his way up a mountain, he was dying. He'd been beaten and shot and he was soon to fall and become a frozen corpse on the mountain. His body would lie there for over 5,000 years and later would be studied meticulously so that the story of his life would be known down to the last meal he ate and the time he ate it. Intense interest in his life and death continues and occasionally new tidbits of information about him make it into major news outlets.

It is a great irony that this one man, who lived a fairly simple life thousands of years ago is of such interest while the rest of us are of so little. It is likely the fact that he was alone, likely murdered, and provided academics with a focus for their attention that creates such scrutiny. The rest of us... well, there are just so many of us now and we all have a story and multiple ways with which to tell it so we are lost in the shuffle. Unless we titillate, mystify, or incite, no one cares about the stories we tell, the ideas we hold, or what we last ate for dinner.

People don't seem to be curious about each other anymore. We all compete with glowing screens, brains conditioned by 140-character line limits, and exaggerated and enhanced content. Photos are made with HDR so colors are brighter and more colorful than reality. The world is one we search while holding a cell phone in hand so we can see imaginary characters superimposed on it. People are often just mirrors into which we can see ourselves reflected. Normal people aren't interesting, unless they do something shocking or something shocking is done to them.

So, nobody cares about my stories or what I have to say. I am not a needle in a haystack, but just another bit of straw in the stack. Of course, so was Otzi. He was likely pretty average until the right people found him and had an interest in his story. I put my words and experiences out there, in case there are any people who find me and are interested in my stories - real ones, not fiction. The worst that can happen is that I stay frozen and hidden on the mountain, never to be found, and my stories never heard.