Monkey: I LOVE you! You’re so cute!
Cat: Ugh
Monkey: You feel so good, I think I’ll sit on top of you.
Cat: Must you?
Monkey: I need to feel closer to you. I wish I could just crawl inside of your soft, furry little cat skin.
Cat: I already feel crowded…
Monkey: I want to kiss your face. No, that’s not even enough, I want to breathe your breath. Kiss, kiss, ohhh, your face! I squeeze that cute face!
Cat: Is it hot in here? Uh, I can’t breathe…
You guys,
Sure, this is adorable. Unless you’re the cat.
See the monkey? I used to be the monkey. I used to “love” just like the monkey you guys.
And it’s adorable for like, five minutes.
Five MONTHS later? Not so much.
The cat ends up hairless with a twitch and a bad case PTSD.
The cat hides from the monkey and eventually stops returning her calls.
Mauling someone is not “being affectionate”.
“Janet, you don’t love, you take hostages.”
My therapist at the time dropped this pearl of wisdom one day in the middle of her office. It landed with a thud and then rolled underneath the couch where I was sitting, and once I was done being offended, I got down on my hands and knees, pulled it out into the light of day, and tried it on—and it marked me for life.
I’ve never forgotten it.
Don’t love like the monkey.
By-the-way, that’s not love, that’s a bottomless pit of neediness and thank god there was no YouTube or cellphone video back in the day because I swear to you. I was the monkey.
Carry on,
xox
