Distance

I've been trying to avoid this for awhile, but I have been feeling really different since I got out of hospital. Better in body, but different in mind.
It's not an epiphany or eureka moment or anything, just the realization that things aren't the same , nor should they be.

It's taken me two weeks to come to terms with two things:

1) I've got the Suicide Gene. It runs in my family. At some point in the not so distant past, I gave up on everything . Without consciously acknowledging it ,I had set out to meet my adolescent goal of Dead by Forty. Hell, I just barely made it to 39.
I must've been a pretty happy person if I felt like drinking until I puked enough blood to require several transfusions. I must've been pretty damn dedicated, because it took me years to accomplish.
I decided to put down the beer a couple days before I got sick. I drove myself to the ER after the bloody vomit started.
I wonder if I could've done that if I'd been drinking? Would I have even bothered? Unlikely.

The most vivid memory I have of the whole ordeal was looking at the yard-wide swath of black blood that I had just left on the wall and thinking, "that's exactly the same splash pattern on the wall as when I found Mom."

I would have died on the bathroom floor. Lovely.
It probably would have been days or even weeks until anyone found me. They'd probably find some bones and two enormously fat cats.
Which leads me to my second realization.

2) I now only have one cat . Opus , my ex-tom, has been missing since shortly after I got home from hospital. I've been hoping that somone will call, but since I found his collar under my futon, it's unlikely they will have my number. My vet is only a block away, and has a busy lost/found bulletin board. I recovered my other cat via the board a few years ago, but not this time.
If he could come home, he would come home.
I loved my kitty, and I will miss him, but it's not the end of the world. I hope someone good adopted him-once a stray, always a stray, I suppose.

Still, everything seems far-away at this moment. There's too much to process all at once. I need to regroup, establish a healthy routine for a while and plan my next battle carefully.
This time I swear it won't be with myself.