For the first time in many years, I did not receive a Cute Cats Calendar for Christmas. Every year for I don’t know how long, I have been gifted the same calendar, by my aunt. They say you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til you lose it – well, my aunt died in September, leaving an aunt-shaped hole in the world. In amongst life’s hustles and hassles, I am still quietly taken by surprise at unexpected moments, by the ways in which her loss affects me – like whispering, irregular echoes, down a long, empty tunnel. Which probably accounts for the time I’ve just spent raking around online, trying to find myself a calendar.
What made it so difficult was not an absence of calendars, nor of calendars with cats on them. There are calendars with Cute Cats, Cuddly Cats, Adorable Kittens, Cat Shaming, Pooping Cats (yes, seriously! – there are also Pooping Dogs), Cartoon Cats and Cats in Nature. The difficulty was that each and every calendar somehow wasn’t right. Even the exact same calendar (2021 version) that my aunt has given me, year after year, wasn’t right. It’s not the same if it’s not parcelled and tagged, with the familiar curly handwriting, wishing me love and happiness for the year ahead.
If I seem a little obsessive about calendars, it’s because my calendar became incredibly important to me when I began my endo journey. (I say ‘began’ – actually, I’ve no idea when my journey began – maybe decades ago, when the wrong tissues started growing inside me in the wrong places – but, for the sake of simplicity, I’ll say that the beginning was when my doctor suggested I may have endometriosis and, like so many before me, I looked blankly at her because I’d never heard of it.) I digress. The beginning of my endo journey was the beginning of a whole new relationship with my Cute Cats Calendar. It became key to my understanding of my symptoms, as I used it every day to record the type, severity and location of pain and other symptoms that I was experiencing. Over several months, patterns started to emerge, and I became more familiar with what to expect and when to expect it. There were times when I questioned myself: was I ‘programming myself’ to feel pain? But the benefits outweighed the costs as, over time, I was able to introduce an element of control back into my life, to plan ahead a little, and that was a lifeline I clung to. My Cute Cats Calendar was essential to me, a piece of kit I could not leave the house without. I took it with me to every doctor’s appointment, every specialist consultation – thanks to my Cute Cats Calendar, I was always able to summarise my symptoms and maintain focus, which is tough to do in a 10 minute appointment regarding a mystery illness.
Until I was surgically diagnosed, in February of this year, my Cute Cats Calendar was my sword and my shield. I wielded it when I needed to provide accurate information. It shielded me from scepticism. It got me to that all-important diagnosis; then, it became my companion when I was recovering from surgery. I celebrated milestones. I kept an eye on my symptoms, albeit less assiduously than before – I had a life to pick back up, after all. Now, my Cute Cats Calendar shows a new pattern. The words ‘pain and nausea’ still feature every few weeks, but these are less severe than before February, and at least there is some predictability.
My Cute Cats Calendar 2020 has just one day left to go. Part of me wishes I could just flip the year back, by flipping the pages, back to better times. Tomorrow, there will be a Cute Cats Calendar-shaped hole in the world. Other calendars might not be up to the job that it has been doing so well, for so long. But, I tell myself with a sigh, what’s past is past. I’ve bought myself a Sloths calendar, because sloths have smiley, benign faces. That seems as good a start as any to the new year.
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