Today was heavy.
We had to put down my mom’s cat, Herbie, yesterday. He had too many health problems stacked against him: kidney issues, diabetes, the whole unkind medical parade. He’d been with my mother since my father passed in 2010, a quiet, furry constant through grief, routine, and time. That kind of companionship doesn’t announce itself loudly, but when it’s gone, the room notices. He will be remembered. He will be missed. 🐾
Court, thankfully, went OK. Not great, not terrible. Just OK. In the world of court, OK is a small mercy. The reality, though, is that I have to move. I can’t be in violation of a restraining order while another violation is floating around the courtroom like an unswatted fly. So now there’s a new chapter opening, whether I like it or not. A social worker will be contacting me, which means plans, paperwork, and that familiar feeling of your life being temporarily managed by clipboards.
What I do know is what I don’t want.
I don’t want to go back to one of those houses where everyone is smoking and doing drugs. Those places are marketed as “supportive,” but temptation lives on the couch, in the backyard, and right outside the front door. For someone trying not to smoke, that’s like asking a tightrope walker to practice during an earthquake. I’ve worked too hard to hand my progress over to peer pressure and secondhand smoke.
So now I have to find a place to live. Ideally nonsmoking and sober. Ironically, many places labeled “sober living” are neither. The word sober gets used the way organic does on cereal boxes: aspirational, not guaranteed.
Today I’m calling a pastor friend of mine, Pastor Donald. I’m hoping he can help me find Christian housing. Not because Christians are perfect, but because statistically they’re less likely to be lighting up or passing things around in the kitchen. Faith-based authority figures tend to come in two flavors anyway: the young, kind Sunday school teacher who genuinely cares about everyone, or the mean old nun archetype who smacks your knuckles with a ruler for breathing wrong. Good cop, bad cop, halo edition. Either way, structure beats chaos.
It’s been a day of endings and adjustments. A cat’s final goodbye. A court appearance survived. A living situation dissolved before it even fully reformed. Through it all, the cravings didn’t get to make the decisions. Grief knocked. Stress rattled the windows. But I didn’t answer the door with a cigarette.
Either way, I got this.
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