day76 - two lives

27 Apr, 2025

one for the plug and one for the load

dear luci,

As the title implies (in a very tongue-in-cheek way), I have been drifting between two separate but occasionally overlapping worlds.

In the first, I am a cat-turned-human. I was a kitten once, and occasionally still am (in name, at least), but the moniker has outlasted its utility. It is important that I be a human. Humans can run errands, be independent, do practical things, and balance their lives with a full-time job. They don't need to survive on the love of others. My friends tell me I'm a good person.

In the second, I am a human-turned-cat. I was a person once, and occasionally I still try to be, but I'm not built for that life. I wear a collar now. Just because I think I look pretty in it. It is important that I am a cat. Cats can be fed and brushed and loved, they don't need to balance any kind of lifestyle, to justify the space they occupy in the house. My friends tell me I'm a good kitty.

I do not exist wholly in either world. Instead, I am a half-girl-half-cat: warring contradictions existing in parallel, like two broadcasts on the same frequency. I built this wall from the start, intending to separate these selves for myself? For others? I'm not sure.

It began as a curtain I could draw over my second life. Frankly, I was embarrassed that I had quit being a person full-time. I could anticipate people telling me that my new friends had changed me, that I was a different person now and didn't fit in their lives anymore. I didn't want anybody to decide on my behalf that I had changed.

I drifted apart from the people I love and listened to them tell me they wanted to leave this city and meet new people. I felt the same for many of the first few months of the year until I unexpectedly made some new friends. I felt the faint possibility of contentment in my life. I was afraid that if that possibility crystallised and did so publicly, my old friends would decide we no longer wanted the same thing and they'd say: "She's happy, she has people, I don't need to drag her down anymore.". There was the alternate but adjacent fear that they would be relieved by the fact that I no longer needed to lean on them for support as much.

To distil it as simply as I can, I was terrified of being left behind. Afraid of seeming too busy or too occupied to talk or spend time. So I drew the curtain. What have you been up to today? Oh, not much.

It's not like I was any more authentically "me" in the second world. the thing about a curtain is that no matter what side you're on, you're still not getting a complete view of the room. Time I spend with people is time I spend only halfway present.

I have striped my personality over two disks. RAID 0. Increased performance my ass. No redundancy, no parity, and the drive health is... not so good.¹

As a consequence of this procedure, I, a half-person, feel half-emotions. Everything is undercut with a persistent emptiness. The happiness doesn't enrich my soul like it used to. It is fleeting, living and dying with the moment like a mayfly.

Last night's entry described a symptom, but this is the sickness as far as I can identify it. I'm split because both halves yearn for something the other has in abundance. The cat craves the feeling of competence, of independence. The human is screaming out in silence, wanting to be heard but too scared to say it. She yearns to feel held. To be accepted, understood, to stop living in fear of losing. To believe, rationally and emotionally that someone will want to stay. The cat wants to take care of people like the human does. The human wants to be the cat, sometimes. Desperately hoping her nickname, "kitten", still makes sense in the world she lives in, that it hasn't faded into dust and memory. The cat wants to be the human, sometimes. Hoping against all odds and all evidence that the world isn't geared against her. That her body and mind are not too broken, too strange and incomprehensible to secure her place in society. She wants to go places. Do things. The human does, too. Perhaps one day with some of the people she loves.

I'm not sure how to reintegrate. I just know I can't go on living one half of two lives. It corrodes my soul. It is too painful for me to handle.

sweet dreams, luci <3

p.s. i'm sorry tonight was such a downer. usually i try to contort my writing into some kind of positive or hopeful conclusion, no matter how dark, but this is something more pervasive. i hope you are well tonight, and i(cat and human together) love you dearly.

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