Sock.

My ex-boyfriend and I adopted a stray cat.

Well, not formally. With the way our lives were set up, we definitely couldn’t add another mouth to feed to the household, cat-mouth or not. We also weren’t around the house enough; that cat would have had a field day with the furniture if left alone that often. We adopted it in a ‘give-a-can-of-tuna-and-a-bowl-of-water-on-the-porch’ kind of way. A ‘light-petting-with-gloved-hands’ kind of way. We didn’t even actually know the cat’s gender; we assumed it was a boy. And with that assumption, we mutually agreed on a name: Sock. The cat was surely an adult, but was so skinny and frail-looking. He was all black, the only outstanding feature of his fur being prominent white spots on all four paws. They looked like white tube socks, and that’s why Sock became Sock. 

Caring for Sock felt like a true testament of our relationship.

Sure, he’d willingly stepped into a father-figure role for my daughter, helping with homework, daily routine, and motivational pep talks, but our mutual care for this stray cat was the pinnacle. To me, it showed that we both had a heart for animals – that we cared about the community and shared a love for it. It was a cheery-on-top kind of deal. When we first met Sock, I immediately fell in love–I grew up with cats and missed having one. I remember my ex looking at me with a twinkle in his eye. He was so in awe of my urgency to set a bowl of water outside. ‘You’re so cute,’ he said with a grin. 

Sock knew us, too. He’d somehow pop up near our porch when we were all headed out the door for the day. ‘SOCK!’ we’d all yell in glee. Sock would meow with such vibrato, clearly commanding us to re-up the bowl of tuna. Oh, how it’d make us laugh. ‘We gotta go, Sock,’ I’d say as I opened the car door. ‘But we’ll be back later!’ My ex and I would say we had two kids: Zayna, my human daughter, and Sock, our cat son. It became a part of living together, and it was a sweet gesture toward the implication that we could build a future together. That went on for a few months: we’d open our door and Sock would approach, begging for food or attempting to come inside the apartment. Some days, we’d sit outside to journal or talk, and Sock would sit or lie down on the porch next to us. 

Until one day, my ex and I pulled into the parking lot and saw Sock on the sidewalk.

He was bent over, licking something that’d been spilled on the concrete. Whatever it was, he was obsessed with it. He didn’t even come and greet us like normal. After we got settled inside the house, it was decided to investigate the strange liquid Sock was ingesting from the sidewalk. As we approached, the empty cartridge became legible: chocolate milk. Panic and worry set into our chests immediately–cats shouldn’t have chocolate. And a stray cat like Sock, whose nutrition is already likely in the gutter, definitely shouldn’t be ingesting a chocolate drink that’d been sitting in the sun all day. Sock was gone by that time. We called his name, hoping he’d scamper toward the porch, but we got nothing. Naturally, as Sock’s adopted parents, we worried for him. We kept our eyes peeled for his little black tail approaching us every time we stepped outside. Weeks had gone by, though, and Sock was virtually nowhere to be found. 

Honestly, I assumed Sock was dead: his small, skinny body lifeless behind a building somewhere on the property. The thought of it made me sick, but I was a realist. In hindsight, Sock’s supposed death symbolized the death of our relationship. Right after Sock’s milk-and-disappearance situation, I’d found out my boyfriend was talking major shit about our relationship to a friend of his–a friend of his who tried flirting with me twice while my ex and I were dating. In his message, he mentioned his plans to break up with me and ‘take a trip’ to ‘go be around love’. He mentioned that both his job and his relationship made him unhappy, and that both needed to end as soon as possible if he wanted to be happy again. This, of course, felt like ultimate betrayal. He’d never expressed those heavy feelings to me, his partner, even when I intentionally created a safe space for him to do so. He was only expressing love, joy, and contentment with me and our dynamic. He told me he was happy. He was speaking about marriage, new apartments, and shared leases. I would have never guessed that behind closed doors, he had such strong emotions.  I’m such a ‘let’s talk about it’ kind of gal, and I’ve expressed similar heavy feelings to him before. We’ve always welcomed the hard feelings and conversations into our relationship. We talked about them openly and honestly. I wasn’t sure what changed, and he only avoided the talk by swearing ‘he didn’t mean it’.

To make matters worse, his friend wasn’t even a proper safe space–he was telling my ex’s business to whoever, whenever, leaving our ‘dirty laundry’ in the street for everyone to see. With that, the trust was broken–an initial impact that led the charge in the decline of our relationship… but we’ll get to that later. At this point, I constantly wondered what he was actually thinking–sure, he was expressing his love for me daily, but what did he really feel? What was he really saying when talking to his friends? And at what point was he going to spring into action with his plan to leave and ‘go be around love’? The insecurity that the situation introduced was deafening, and to make matters worse, we still hadn’t seen our cat son around. 

So I lived in anxiety about the relationship at that point–fear that my partner was being two-faced: pretending to be happy and in love, but secretly planning an out or expressing his unhappiness with everyone but the woman he was partnered with. I lived in anxiety about that damn cat, too, only because he represented a tie I had to my ex, and that tie was more and more severed by the day. If I fast-forward past the (several)  additional events that severed the trust and love between us afterward, it was no surprise that I lashed out one evening. I demanded he bring his ass home to pack up that night. I was exhausted from the constant lack of consideration and negligence he’d shown me and the relationship. The trust was already broken, and he’d failed to help rebuild it. Sock had died, and so had our strong foundation.  

2 days after his sudden and dramatic move-out, I was hurting really badly. I remember that morning vividly–I had on a shit-ton of concealer to help deter notice from my swollen eyes that had been crying the night before. I painted on my best fake smile for my daughter, and we were headed out to school and work. I hadn’t seen Sock in weeks at this point and was grieving the sudden end of my relationship.

‘Mom, isn’t that your cat over there?’

my daughter said to me as I locked the door. I looked toward her gaze and saw Sock across the street, lying in the dirt by the mailboxes, licking his fur without a care in the world. I yelled his name so loud that I heard my voice echo against the brick siding of the other buildings on the property. Seeing Sock felt like a glimmer of hope across a shitty sky–I guess my brain thought if Sock were actually alive, then maybe, despite everything, the relationship could be resuscitated, too. This introduced a feeling of ‘right person, wrong time’. I put way too much pressure on a stray cat, obviously, but I felt it was all symbolic of the relationship. We thought he died, and I felt our relationship did, too. But it turns out he was alive the entire time, probably healing from his upset tummy to come back stronger. I thought maybe my ex and I just needed some downtime, too; that we’d come back stronger after this break.

I started leaning into my own healing, certain to be ready for the resuscitation of our relationship… whenever that would be.

Imagine my surprise when I saw Sock’s lifeless, mangled body in the middle of the road outside the apartment’s property a few days later. Well, I couldn’t be 100% sure it was Sock. It’s not like he had a collar I could reference. Riddled in blood, I saw a pile of Black furry body parts, 4 white paws disfiguredly placed in a pile on the side of the road. My stomach hurt so bad after seeing it. I didn’t have the chance to go back and investigate closely. I had to get to work, so I called the city to come remove his body and sent a prayer to the heavens for him. I was almost certain it was Sock, though, because the Universe needed me to know that the relationship was definitely over. There was no hope for a comeback. It struck me like a knife to the chest. My entire morning was thrown off as I stifled gags and tears during the commute to my daughter’s school. My daughter and I still did our daily affirmations like every morning, but I sobbed my makeup off when she went to school.

Much like Sock’s death, our breakup was sudden and harsh. And much like Sock’s disappearance, I didn’t know if the relationship was going to last or be okay. And much like Sock’s general lifestyle and circumstance, the relationship was in a risky place, bound to encounter some sort of danger. It all felt connected somehow.

This propelled me to a place of hurt that penetrated my soul. Everything is a sign to me. I believe there are mini messages and meanings from the universe in everything that happens to us; everything we witness. I work hard to make sure I don’t miss warnings, blessings, or intuition. In my heart of hearts, I knew seeing Sock’s run-over body meant my optimism regarding my ex’s and I’s space-and-then-reconnect theory was misplaced.

Sometimes things just end tragically, and it’s something we must accept.

I was right about this message, too, because that same day, I found out my ex was attempting to go on a date with another girl. He was flirting in DMs. He didn’t skip a beat. It had barely been a week since our breakup, his clothes and shoes still sitting in my space; pieces of his existence still present in my home. Since I’d already spent the day grieving Sock and coming to terms with what his death meant to me, I felt pretty numb at this point. It was almost like seeing Sock’s body prepared me.

This is when I took inventory of my personal growth–the old me would use this truth as a mask of anger to help me detach and entertain the many suitors who want a chance with me. It would make me despise my ex immediately–and honestly, a piece of me does–but it did not deter me from my personal healing journey. Yeah, I’ve been sobbing myself to sleep. I’ve been avoiding social media, playing coy with my friends, journaling until my hands go numb, all to guide myself through healing. I’ve sat in the discomfort of abrupt loss. I’ve sat with the pain and fear of starting over. I let my grief brew, and I’ve let it naturally flow through my pores until it leaves my system. It still hasn’t left. His inability to do that does not, and should not, determine my healing journey. 

I don’t even think it takes away from our relationship.

It would be too easy for me to think, ‘oh, he’s already flirting and showing his ass one week after our relationship ended. He never cared about me. He never loved me.’ It makes sense to feel that way, and I must be honest–I definitely felt that way immediately after hearing the news. Those feelings are actually what drove me to block him everywhere, down to his email address. My feelings of acceptance, peace, and grief didn’t come immediately–I had to buckle down and think rationally. I had to pray, cry, and meditate first.

That’s when it hit me: It’s not that he didn’t love me or care about our relationship. It’s that I was dealing with an emotionally immature man who cannot be by himself or hold himself accountable. There was love there, but he is not able to echo the emotional intelligence I bring. He was so out of touch with his peace that he could not sit in the discomfort of loss. He needs a distraction at all times to avoid facing himself and his mistakes. This was something I’d already known, though, through several incidents leading up to the breakup. This was no surprise, but it still felt like one. I felt in my heart I needed to stand still, hold my ground, and heal on my own terms. I told myself I couldn’t be concerned with his destructive and selfish behavior. I was hurting, and I still felt sorry for him. I had to feel it. I had to sit in it. Loving and grieving openly and honestly was my choice, and mine alone. I think it took a lot of growth and bravery to come to those terms within myself. 

The day after I saw Sock’s corpse, I put myself first and took a day off. That day is still a blur to me, because I did nothing but lie in bed and cry all day. I only got out of bed to pee or get water. I cried out to God to hold me and my heart. I punched my pillows and screamed in silence. I stood in the shower on the hottest settings, still numb to its touch. And when it was time to get my daughter from school, I had to use every ounce of leftover energy to leave the house.

This was pain, but this was acceptance. This was healing.

It’s easy for grief to show up in different ways. It’s easy to lean into your initial emotions and act in uncharacteristic ways. The real work comes with looking inward to dark places you wish to ignore. Grief is introspection. Grief is sitting still as the world continues to turn; it is an endearing silence that welcomes change. I didn’t force myself to heal in one day like I usually do. When I rested my head on my pillow that night, I told myself, ‘You are not okay. But one day you will be.’ I knew the sun would rise again, and that I’d have to go back to work. I knew I couldn’t retreat into solitude forever, no matter how much pain I was in. I knew I had to continue living this life, in pain, in grief, in regret. The next morning, I woke up early and took an extended shower. I cried a little, journaled a lot, and put on an outfit that makes me feel beautiful. Then I took my ass to work. I cried in the bathroom on my breaks. I did deep breathing between calls. 

When the day was over, I patted myself on the back. I did it. And I knew I’d have to keep doing that until I woke up and no longer cried over the heavy feelings of loneliness–one day at a time. I drove home in silence and tears, then parked my car outside. I sat there for a while, attempting to give myself the motivational drive to go inside and start dinner for Baby Z. My feet felt like they were covered in wet cement. 

“On the count of 3,”

I said out loud to myself. And when I said ‘3’, I opened the car door and walked up my porch steps. Before I touched the doorknob, the sound of a meow graced my eardrums–faintly, but prominent enough to make me turn around–and Sock came running up to me. Actual Sock. I dropped to my knees in tears and showed that cat so much love.

He wasn’t dead. My love for my ex isn’t dead either, although the relationship is.

And I won’t die from this loss.

-Z