Question of the day (7th September).

   What’s your biggest high school regret? 

   My answer: 

   That would definitely have to be that I went along with my Mum’s idea that I should pass my finals in a school for the blind. I went to a mainstream high school, so called high school for adults which meant we had classes only some days a week and in the evenings, and it was generally a lot less demanding than a regular high school, you didn’t pick your main subjects or anything like that. I didn’t have to go there and could pick just a regular high school, because I was just nineteen at the time and I was going there straight from secondary/junior high school/whatever other equivalent  you have in your country before high school, and it was very unambitious of me, but I went this route thinking it would be a lot less difficult for me practically and less stressful in general, with all the peopling and other stuff that I didn’t really feel I needed. In the end it went even better because some teachers were so scared of me that they embraced my suggestion that I would just homeschool myself at home and they would send me control assignment topics and exam dates and I would send them control assignments and only come to school for exams every half-term. That worked really well for me also because a lot of what my classmates did was based either on slides or textbooks, and I obviously couldn’t see the former and didn’t have the latter in an accessible format, so it felt like a huge waste of time. This way I was also able to have more hours with my math tutor, who was a special ed teacher for the blind and deaf, since as you all probably know by now I sucked at math and my school teacher had no clue how to teach the subject to a blind student, especially one like me hehe, despite her best intentions. Despite loads of hours of tutoring that I had, lots of homework that I got from my tutor and my desperate and mostly fruitless hours of trying to learn it myself somehow, I was pretty sure that I was going to fail my math finals pretty miserably and my Mum was worried about it too. So she thought that perhaps it would be easier for me if I could do them at a blind school. Not the one that I used to go to, but one a bit closer to us. I knew that when you have to have an official school exam and have some special educational needs, then it has to be adapted for your needs, but we were slightly worried if it’s going to be the case because when at some point the deputy head asked me if I’m going to take the finals and I just casually mentioned that I’ll need to have them adapted, in Braille and all that, she was absolutely flabbergasted. Plus, I thought I’d generally feel safer with the math exam specifically when I had competent people in the committee, even though they obviously wouldn’t be able to help me with the exam itself or anything like that.

   We were even more enthusiastic about it when it turned out that, in that school, unlike my previous blind school, each student writes their exams in a separate room. It can feel awkward, especially if you’re like me and always finish exams super fast, whether you’ve done it really well or really badly, because if I know everything, why would I need to take an eternity writing it, and if I don’t know anything, why would I sit around wasting everyone’s time pretending to do something? It’s even more awkward, because, very unfortunately for me, when you have special educational needs, you have more time for doing the exams. So whenever I had some official exam and said I was finished, everyone was all like: “Already?! Are you sure?” sounding extremely surprised and kind of suspicious. But if I sat with it for longer just to seem like I’m still writing, checking it for the 30th time in a row, the time flows agonisingly slow. Especially if you have a zombie day like I had on the day of my Polish final, or when you get a migraine like I got on my math final. 😀 But, overall, having a room and a committee just for yourself can also feel better than being in a room with loads of other people, especially if everyone writes on a Brailler and these tend to be loud-ish. I just generally had a good feeling about it, or perhaps I decided to trust Mum’s feeling, despite I actually had quite a bad experience with that school from a couple years earlier. Namely, after I left the blind school that I went to for most of my education, there was a few months of limbo that I had and we didn’t really know what to do with my education further except that I wouldn’t go back there. So my Mum got an idea that we would go ask in this blind school closer to us if they’d perhaps be able to help somehow, though we weren’t even sure how, but perhaps a bit naively thought that something along the lines of letting me use their educational resources or sending a teacher at least once in a while to help me with schoolwork. They said that, hm no, this isn’t something we do, and then the situation had a yucky twist because they all suddenly started to persuade me that I should join their boarding school. Well, I certainly didn’t leave one boarding school to replace it with another, that generally has worse reputation among blind people from what I know of, so I was absolutely adamant that I was not going to do this, but they kept trying to convince me and before I knew it there was a whole team of people of all kinds of professions surrounding me and telling me how I need their school but just don’t know it yet, and I was feeling increasingly like I was about to go crazy. It’s a frequent theme in my nightmares, both regular and sleep paralysis ones, that someone tries to convince me to do something or wants to do something to me and I keep telling them that no, for fuck’s sake, I don’t want it, yet they keep shoving it in my face and then end up either doing what they want or forcing me to do something, so it always makes me feel kind of threatened or something when this happens in real life, let alone a situation like that, I seriously thought I was in a dream. 😀 What was worse was that they ended up almost convincing my parents, and I still had a few months until turning eighteen so when we finally left, they were feeling very much that I should go there. Rescue came to me from the most unexpected direction I could imagine, and my grandad also deserves some credit, but that’s a different and unrelated story. 

   Going back to my finals, in the end, I donn’t think it made a substantial enough difference for me that you could really call it a difference at all that I took the exams in that school. Especially that I ended up failing math anyway. And it was all extremely stressful not only for me but also my parents, who had to drive several times back and forth, as this school is several hours drive away. I guess only Sofi enjoyed it and whenever the topic comes up, she always says how she’d like to go back there again because she has nice associations with that time and enjoyed sleeping in a hotel when we decided to stay in that town one night. Some bits about that experience were kind of triggering for me and in particular dealing with their “amazing” headmistress, I don’t think I’ve ever had to do with an equally or more toxic and just all round unpleasant being in my life, almost like an embodiment of Maggie my inner critic, even their names are etymologically related. Ever since then I always hear Maggie speak in her voice. 😀 If she’s like that with her regular students, I feel extremely sorry for each one of them and wonder how much counselling they’ll need later on in life, they should get compensations or something. 

   How about your high school regrets? 🙂 

Question of the day.

If you died today, what regrets would you have about your life?

My answer:

If I died, I don’t think I’d have any regrets afterwards, because I think our perspective on things must change quite a lot when that happens. As a Christian and Catholic, the only thing I can think of that I could really regret after death would be any sins that I didn’t do anything about in my lifetime, didn’t confess or regret them earlier or expiate for them or didn’t apologise to people who might have been affected or didn’t try to compensate them in any way, maybe even didn’t accept that I was sinning, as well as good things I didn’t do that could have helped my soul grow and be somehow beneficial for others around me. Which would mean I wouldn’t be able to enjoy being in God’s presence until my soul would be cleansed of all that yucky stuff in the purgatory, and purgatory souls do suffer a lot, not because they are somehow tortured in exquisite ways as some people imagine purgatory, but because they are separated from God, and they have a deep longing to be near Him but at the same time don’t want that to happen any sooner than when they are completely pure. Must be a strange state of being to find oneself in, when the whole perspective in which you look at yourself, the world and everything is no longer the same which you had when you were alive, but you see everything the way God does. I find it difficult on a cognitive level and as it seems it’s not just me. Anyway, since I’m still alive, I do try my best to do what I can not to have such regrets afterwards, although of course we are all flawed, make mistakes and all that, so we all will have some regrets of this nature when our time comes, I believe. Helping and devotion to purgatory souls is quite a thing, you could perhaps say a tradition, in my maternal family, as my great grandma had very close contact with and apparitions of them from what we know and she passed her passion for helping them onto her children, and it’s still alive. I have a fair few souls that are dear to me and whom I try to help by praying for them and offering up what I can, so that in case they are in purgatory, they can be released possibly soon, and I trust that when it’ll be my time to die, they will be there to help me too, I already do feel their help in some ways in life.

As for what I’d regret at the time I was dying or knowing that I’m going to die soon… I don’t really know what I would regret. Probably also those thoughts of spiritual nature would pass through my mind so I’d try to prepare my soul for death, but other than that… I’m thinking hard now and I have no idea at this point, so it’s possible that there wouldn’t be anything more. Oh wait, there is one thing! This is a thing that I already regret and have been regretting ever since it happened, and so I may be regretting it forever in this life, because it was really awful. It wasn’t even really my fault or my decision but I was involved in it anyway, I witnessed it and sometimes I wonder if I could stop it in time and it was so sad I haven’t fully gotten over it yet. I regret that it had to happen, the whole thing. I’m talking about Sasha – a Russian blue kitten we bought I guess two years ago, and had to rehome after two months. Some of you who have been around on here then may remember him, there even are some pics/videos of him on this blog I believe.

My Mum – who is famous for impulsive decisions on the spur of a moment – was thinking about getting another Russian blue cat, in addition to Misha whom we already had. We were all thinking that Misha was feeling lonely when we weren’t home, or even when we were. That perhaps he needed a playmate. It really blows my mind how we could be so daft, but now I’ve read lots of things about feline behaviours and brains so it’s easy to say to me that it was daft, but it really was. I liked a comparison I’ve read at one cat behaviourist’s blog – imagine you have a very loving partner, whom you love to, and who really admires you and thinks you’re beautiful. And one day he/she comes home and says: “Oh look, I was thinking you were so beautiful, that I decided to get myself another one, just like you. Now I’ll have two real beauties/handsome guys to sleep with. And you guys will be having real fun times with each other too, won’t you? You won’t mind sharing the same rooms?” 😀 Rude and selfish, right?

The more we all talked about it, the more Mum looked at Russian blues breeders’ websites and pics of Russian blue kittens, the more we felt like having a mini copy of Misha in our house.

And finally Mum learned that the breeder from whom we got Misha is going to have little kittens super soon, in the matter of days, I mean of course his cats were going to have them, not he. So Mum called him right away and he said that one is still free so she can take it when it’s born.

I did think it was really rushed and had mixed feelings, although mostly also for selfish reasons – because I thought Misha will spend more time with this other cat than with me/us and will no longer sleep with me – yet the perspective of having two Mishas was so pleasing that I couldn’t oppose for too long, and Mum’s arguments were very convincing as she was very sure of her decision and thought it an inspiration from God. I wonder what God was thinking of this accusation.

Whenever the topic of Sasha comes up now, I wonder, if I tried more to stop her from doing it so hurriedly, would it make the situation any better? Maybe if I tried, I would manage to change her mind, or at least cool her head off enough that the whole procedure of introducing a new cat would be better planned, not just: “Misha, this is Sasha and he’s going to be your new best friend from now on, deal with it if it doesn’t suit you”. Because when Sasha came it was nothing what it should be like and even the breeder, when he learned about the failure of the experiment, was shocked and kept saying that he did tell us how we should introduce them to each other, that it should be a gradual thing and all that. Maybe then at least they could live together in relative peace.

But it was as it was, and a few days later, Mum and Sofi went to the breeder and took Sasha home, and Sofi almost immediately brought him to Misha. Misha got super mad so that me and Sofi were scared, and Mum even accused him of being mentally ill because he can’t just react in a normal way to any change, even a positive one. 😀 He hid under the sofa and hissed and made such low noises all night. Good thing that at least Sasha had a bit different temperament, or very different in fact.

He was super cuddly, bold, happy-go-lucky and very extroverted. We were laughing with Sofi that just like Misha has his birthday two days before me and we are both incredibly similar to each other, Sasha was born just a few days after Sofi’s birthday and, like her, was a typical Gemini and very much like her. His outgoing personality and cuddliness made him even more likeable.

In the coming days, we saw very little of Misha, he was usually either hiding, or chasing and scaring Sasha, letting him know that it’s his – Misha’s – house, and Sasha has nothing to do in here. At some point, from what we’d managed to figure out, he must have scared him in the loo, HIS very private loo, because Sasha had a deep fear of doing his thing in the litterbox, but until we figured out what was the problem with the help of a behaviourist we were thinking he was just doing it on purpose for some reason, because there was no way to persuade him to do it in the right place and we had poo surprises everywhere from bathtub to wardrobes to pillowcases, which didn’t make the atmosphere any better as you can imagine.

Sometimes we stupid humans were treated to a special performance by Misha and Sasha implying that they are very good friends, so that’s what we liked to believe in.

Finally the loo situation was getting really out of control, unhealthy emotions were rising, everyone was stressed out and tired, Mum was near depressed, blaming herself, or being angry at Misha for being “antisocial” or Sasha for pooping, I was blaming Sasha for everything because if not him, Misha wouldn’t be going crazy and the whole situation wouldn’t have taken place, so I wasn’t treating him as nicely as Misha even though he was clinging to me as much as everyone else, and then after five minutes I would be very nice to him because he was so cute, after all, that you couldn’t resist for too long. He must have been super confused I guess. The culmination was that they both got sick. The vet said that there isn’t anything wrong with either of them physically, but they had high fever and other awful symptoms, Misha was throwing up with some gross, foamy stuff, Sasha was barely in touch with the world, so he said it must be stress and, after being told the story with minute details, he said it can’t go on like this and said they could even die if it would be dragging for too long. So we finally saw this too and started doing something about it.

We had to rehome Sasha, which was a great pain for our selfish brains. But at least he had real luck with his new family, or so I like to think. They’re very interesting, artistically inclined people, and months later I learned that Sasha’s new mummy is actually a children’s writer whose books I used to read, what a cool coincidence!

So the situation generally had a happy ending, although I can only hope that Sasha doesn’t have any bad memories or anything like that and that he has a better life now, but still… this situation would be so easy to prevent, or make it take a slightly different route. That’s why I regret it. I regret that Sasha couldn’t have a happy childhood right away, and that it had to be us with whom he had such a difficult start. I regret what we did to Misha, that we betrayed him in a way, as Mum says. Even though Misha seems like the biggest monster in this situation because if not his “antisocial” behaviour, we could have two cats, in fact, after Sasha left, we all only fully realised how virtuous Misha has actually been all that time. He forgave us what we did. He recovered and keeps being the sweet, good-natured Misha for us. Even while Sasha was with us, we did see much less of him but when we saw him, he was never aggressive to us and was very tolerant of all our whims at that time. Mum says he has a very noble spirit, and I think that describes him very well.

Okay, so how about you? 🙂

Question of the day (2ndApril).

What is something you regret doing?

My answer:

Devastating all my earlier diaries. I have an awful habit of deleting/destroying most of what I’ve written before, especially stuff like short stories, like I write them, thinking that they are great, and then either delete them whole straight away or reread after some time and come to the conclusion that it was rubbish and get rid of it then. I do have some of my short stories, and I have my whole book about “Jack Hamilton”, which I hope will be always with me, but the majority is very short lived. It’s annoying but actually so far it hasn’t had much affect on me, just people are very surprised when I tell them that I wrote something and then they sometimes would like to see it and I say that I just deleted it. 😀 With my old diaries though, it’s another thing. I’ve been fairly consistent in writing a diary by which I mean that throughout most of my life I’ve had a diary and written something in it, in very different forms. But it was never the same diary for long. Usually after like a year or a couple of years, I’d start feeling a bit unmotivated for it, then I’d go through my past entries and realise that, meh, it’s shit, and just get rid of it all. Then after some time I’d usually get a new idea for how I could write my diary, and would start to feel the need for having it again, and the cycle starts all over again. 😀 It also didn’t bother me much for a long time, but recently I started to feel a bit regretful. I’d like to have my old diaries with me to be able to refer to them and maybe compare some things, or just simply see what they were like. I think now that it was a great pity that I got rid of all of them, it could be fun to read them again.

How about your regrets? 🙂