Dear Lauren:

Regarding the stray cat: she wiggles out of your grasp. Plenty of sober people’s grasp is not strong enough for a cat to escape. So as far as that cat goes, your drinking did not cause her death. it was an accident.

Regarding your own cat: she may not be at all affected by the introduction of the stray cat.

The event is a tragedy and the sight was horrible, I have no doubt. It is not a sight one forgets easily. But pay attention: there are a few factors here that are not connected:

* your drinking- you did not drink and drive and then had an accident. You took a stray cat home to feed. Lots of people do that, and drinking has nothing to do with it.

*your grasp of the cat- cats wiggle out of lots of people’s grasp, very often. You probably didn’t want to fight against her escaping your grasp by holding too fight and hurting her.

*the cat, being a stray cat, was already in danger of being run over, compared to house cats. The timing of it included you being right there watching it.

We can never predict what will happen randomly following our decisions. For example: I take my walk this afternoon (right after this post), I walk by this house (no way to avoid it) with Lucy, a dog outside. She is so happy to see me she runs into the street (true happening so far) and gets hit by a car (didn’t happen). Did I cause her demise? After all if I didn’t walk, she wouldn’t run to meet me and she wouldn’t be hit… not that day. (And if I walked drunk by that house, that would have nothing to do with the results)

anita

Man, that sucks so much, but you couldn’t have foreseen it, drinking or no drinking. It was just a sad, brutal thing to happen.

I feel for the poor cat, and I feel for you.

Dear Lauren/ Irose82:

You are welcome, and please, do post anytime, any topic.

anita

So sorry for what happened.

Hello All,
Want to share my life story with you so that
I can welcome your suggestions and try to
apply them.
2 years back , all of sudden after a party,
one of my close friend after drinking (dont exactly know how much) passed away in the
morning. It was a very sudden loss because
he was fit and fine before that. I am
not exaclty sure how did this happen
and still at times wonder.
I some how came mange to survive this
loss but after 2 months a ache started in
my chest and suddenly my anxiety level
with high (because I was told that my
friend died of heart attack) and from then
i have been lost and associated my anxiety
with my friends loss and life has been
a complete downhill.
Now I have so much of mixed feelings like
How can I be happy if my friend died?
Any small pain in my head triggers
the memories of my friends loss!
Then I also feel ashamed of myself
by thinking if my friend is somewhere(heaven)
how dissapointed he must me with me.
Fear of uncertain death!
I completely live by all the above memories
and replay them continuosly so that i
can get solution.
This has affected my sleeping and i hardly
sleep at night.
I have tried yoga, meditation, positive
thinking and it has helped alot and i am
definately better now. But its just
that I am not able to sleep peacefully.
And whenever I couldnt sleep much
the whole above circle starts again.
Now i believe that letting go my past
means having peaceful sleep and that never
happens and i am still stuck fighting
the thoughts.
Please help me to come out of this circle
so that i can come out of the being happy
guilt!