My Toothbrush Has Been Violated and Other Musings
It was so simple. It had been staring me in the face for weeks. My toothbrush had hair in it.
It’s not like I had left my toothbrush in an unfortunate spot and someone had brushed their hair and it had fallen in my toothbrush. My toothbrush was up high, face level, on the toothbrush rack. But it had hair in it. The hair in it was grey and short and could not have belonged to any human member of the family.
The next morning I caught him, Jodie’s cat Flick, licking my toothbrush. He wasn’t licking Jodie’s toothbrush or Megean’s or Bridget’s-just mine. First I felt violated. Then I began to think about what it really meant.
Flick and I have had a turbulent relationship. He hated me when he and Jodie moved in a year and a half ago. He’d scratch me whenever he got the chance and he terrorized my cat. My cat turned into a neurotic mess who lives mostly behind the sofa and poops underneath the bathroom sink and only comes out when we lock Flick in the bedroom. I began to hate him as well.
Then one night Flick got underneath the kitchen sink and ate some laundry detergent. To Jodie, Flick was the child that he hadn’t gotten to raise. He was devastated. We took the little bit of money we had and took him to the Vet. We couldn’t afford to run a lot of tests so the Vet gave him antibiotics and we watched and waited. For two days neither of us got any sleep. I began to feel incredibly guilty about the way I had felt about him. While I was laid next to him watching his troubled breathing for hours I fell in love with him.
Loving him didn’t mean that he loved me. It just meant that I felt more often like giving him tuna and I appreciated his silliness and I defended him against Jodie throwing him up in the air. And believe it or not I got Flick to revolt against all the junior high crap that Jodie put him through. I hadn’t thrown a cat by its tail just to see where it’d land since I was five, but Jodie had never gotten over that sort of thing. Flick would take it when Jodie did it to him, then he’d promptly go beat up one of the other cats in an act of displaced aggression. But I finally got Flick just to scratch Jodie when he did it. It was a one cat revolution.
Flick is half feral and doesn’t necessarily like to be petted or messed with too much and he hates being picked up. You can get close, but not too close.
So, when I saw Flick licking my toothbrush I thought about all the times recently when he’d come lay near me or literally on my feet, even though there were plenty of other places to be. I remembered the way he loved drinking out of glass and when he was hungry or his litter box wasn’t clean he would come to me and only me to have it taken care of. And I realized that he loved me. In his own way, he loved me. I thought about this every once in awhile over the proceeding week as if there was something more to it that I wasn’t getting. There was actually and it very nearly cost me my happiness.
You see, over the last year and a half Jodie and I have fought every single night, with few exceptions, over one particular thing. There was something I needed from him that was very simple (at least to me it was simple) and I felt that I would never have it. To me, if he couldn’t give me this simple thing, it meant that he didn’t really value me or really love me. Because if you love someone you try to be giving, especially when whatever it is that they need emotionally is so easy to supply, right? I didn’t need a guy who would take care of me financially or take out the trash or supply romance or the million and one things that women complain they don’t have. I just wanted him, at a certain time every night to come to bed with me and talk in bed before we went to sleep. It wasn’t about sex, because we have plenty of that. I just wanted time with him away from the children.
But our timing was always off. It became a focalized point of argument. It became a power struggle. This man is a fantastic cook and is funny and kind. My parents love him, the kids love him, he is extremely considerate, to a fault. But he couldn’t seem to do this for me, even though I think he tried. It became so bad that when night time came, we’d just be mad for no reason, anticipating the fight that was coming, or the explosively charged silence. It was like we were possessed or being tested constantly. We’d be fine all day, then night time would come and we were enemies. Sometimes I’d cry in the bathroom and pray that the relationship would end, that he would leave because I didn’t want to be with someone who didn’t love me. But the next morning the storm would pass and I would wonder what had been wrong that was so bad the night before.
Finally a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t take anymore. We started to talk about it and I said that I’d had enough. Mercury was in retrograde. Everything was going to hell in a handbasket. I decided to walk down to the pool and stay there in the water until I was calm again.
When I came back, he was gone and there was this cryptic note, the kind that sends chills up your spine, because when you know the person, you know what they mean. I got in the car and went looking for him frantically. I looked in all the usual places he goes when he’s mad at me. I couldn’t find him anywhere. I went back and checked the computer for bank card activity. He had gone to a liquor store down the street.
When I found him he had consumed so much alcohol that I was afraid he was going to die. Because he’d had gastric surgery a couple of years before, everytime he had alcohol he would get far drunker than the normal person and risk dangerous dehydration and alcohol poisoning. By the time I’d gotten there he’d had an enormous amount of whiskey. He was barely conscious and he admitted to me that he’d been trying to drink himself to death.
He said to me, with a look in his eyes that I’ve never seen before, nor ever want to see again, “Can’t you see that my life is with you? Can’t you see that I love you. It took so long to find you and I can’t bear to go on without you.” In that moment I saw how ridiculous the arguments had been all this time. I saw all the ways, big and small that he showed me that he loved me. I saw the way he had suffered, driving hours every day just to make what he did, and how the pressure of all the changes he had made had nearly broken him time and again, and he had never ever talked about leaving or giving up. In that moment, he was Joyce’s Michael Furey standing in the rain telling Gretta that he didn’t want to live if she was to go away. I had always wanted that, but hadn’t appreciated it when I had gotten it.
Ridiculous as it seems, I remembered Flick then, licking my toothbrush. Flick loved me in his own, with what he was able. How many times do we say to ourselves that the person we choose to be with must do this or that or be this way or that way in order for us to feel loved. Sometimes they just love us as they are able. It is no reflection on us. It just is. Jodie is a good man and I love him. I’m so glad he didn’t have to die to prove it to me.
It’s not like I had left my toothbrush in an unfortunate spot and someone had brushed their hair and it had fallen in my toothbrush. My toothbrush was up high, face level, on the toothbrush rack. But it had hair in it. The hair in it was grey and short and could not have belonged to any human member of the family.
The next morning I caught him, Jodie’s cat Flick, licking my toothbrush. He wasn’t licking Jodie’s toothbrush or Megean’s or Bridget’s-just mine. First I felt violated. Then I began to think about what it really meant.
Flick and I have had a turbulent relationship. He hated me when he and Jodie moved in a year and a half ago. He’d scratch me whenever he got the chance and he terrorized my cat. My cat turned into a neurotic mess who lives mostly behind the sofa and poops underneath the bathroom sink and only comes out when we lock Flick in the bedroom. I began to hate him as well.
Then one night Flick got underneath the kitchen sink and ate some laundry detergent. To Jodie, Flick was the child that he hadn’t gotten to raise. He was devastated. We took the little bit of money we had and took him to the Vet. We couldn’t afford to run a lot of tests so the Vet gave him antibiotics and we watched and waited. For two days neither of us got any sleep. I began to feel incredibly guilty about the way I had felt about him. While I was laid next to him watching his troubled breathing for hours I fell in love with him.
Loving him didn’t mean that he loved me. It just meant that I felt more often like giving him tuna and I appreciated his silliness and I defended him against Jodie throwing him up in the air. And believe it or not I got Flick to revolt against all the junior high crap that Jodie put him through. I hadn’t thrown a cat by its tail just to see where it’d land since I was five, but Jodie had never gotten over that sort of thing. Flick would take it when Jodie did it to him, then he’d promptly go beat up one of the other cats in an act of displaced aggression. But I finally got Flick just to scratch Jodie when he did it. It was a one cat revolution.
Flick is half feral and doesn’t necessarily like to be petted or messed with too much and he hates being picked up. You can get close, but not too close.
So, when I saw Flick licking my toothbrush I thought about all the times recently when he’d come lay near me or literally on my feet, even though there were plenty of other places to be. I remembered the way he loved drinking out of glass and when he was hungry or his litter box wasn’t clean he would come to me and only me to have it taken care of. And I realized that he loved me. In his own way, he loved me. I thought about this every once in awhile over the proceeding week as if there was something more to it that I wasn’t getting. There was actually and it very nearly cost me my happiness.
You see, over the last year and a half Jodie and I have fought every single night, with few exceptions, over one particular thing. There was something I needed from him that was very simple (at least to me it was simple) and I felt that I would never have it. To me, if he couldn’t give me this simple thing, it meant that he didn’t really value me or really love me. Because if you love someone you try to be giving, especially when whatever it is that they need emotionally is so easy to supply, right? I didn’t need a guy who would take care of me financially or take out the trash or supply romance or the million and one things that women complain they don’t have. I just wanted him, at a certain time every night to come to bed with me and talk in bed before we went to sleep. It wasn’t about sex, because we have plenty of that. I just wanted time with him away from the children.
But our timing was always off. It became a focalized point of argument. It became a power struggle. This man is a fantastic cook and is funny and kind. My parents love him, the kids love him, he is extremely considerate, to a fault. But he couldn’t seem to do this for me, even though I think he tried. It became so bad that when night time came, we’d just be mad for no reason, anticipating the fight that was coming, or the explosively charged silence. It was like we were possessed or being tested constantly. We’d be fine all day, then night time would come and we were enemies. Sometimes I’d cry in the bathroom and pray that the relationship would end, that he would leave because I didn’t want to be with someone who didn’t love me. But the next morning the storm would pass and I would wonder what had been wrong that was so bad the night before.
Finally a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t take anymore. We started to talk about it and I said that I’d had enough. Mercury was in retrograde. Everything was going to hell in a handbasket. I decided to walk down to the pool and stay there in the water until I was calm again.
When I came back, he was gone and there was this cryptic note, the kind that sends chills up your spine, because when you know the person, you know what they mean. I got in the car and went looking for him frantically. I looked in all the usual places he goes when he’s mad at me. I couldn’t find him anywhere. I went back and checked the computer for bank card activity. He had gone to a liquor store down the street.
When I found him he had consumed so much alcohol that I was afraid he was going to die. Because he’d had gastric surgery a couple of years before, everytime he had alcohol he would get far drunker than the normal person and risk dangerous dehydration and alcohol poisoning. By the time I’d gotten there he’d had an enormous amount of whiskey. He was barely conscious and he admitted to me that he’d been trying to drink himself to death.
He said to me, with a look in his eyes that I’ve never seen before, nor ever want to see again, “Can’t you see that my life is with you? Can’t you see that I love you. It took so long to find you and I can’t bear to go on without you.” In that moment I saw how ridiculous the arguments had been all this time. I saw all the ways, big and small that he showed me that he loved me. I saw the way he had suffered, driving hours every day just to make what he did, and how the pressure of all the changes he had made had nearly broken him time and again, and he had never ever talked about leaving or giving up. In that moment, he was Joyce’s Michael Furey standing in the rain telling Gretta that he didn’t want to live if she was to go away. I had always wanted that, but hadn’t appreciated it when I had gotten it.
Ridiculous as it seems, I remembered Flick then, licking my toothbrush. Flick loved me in his own, with what he was able. How many times do we say to ourselves that the person we choose to be with must do this or that or be this way or that way in order for us to feel loved. Sometimes they just love us as they are able. It is no reflection on us. It just is. Jodie is a good man and I love him. I’m so glad he didn’t have to die to prove it to me.
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