I Think About It All the Time off the brat album made me cry
Emily Cox
Today I’m cosplaying as somebody who’s not broke or bitter. I’m going for Fran Drescher circa The Nanny, if she was Latina. It’s really a way to take some control of my life. While I know the etymology behind the oxymoron “pull yourself up by the bootstraps”, there’s still some pleasure in sliding into the skin-tight, knee-high pleather, zipping from platform to calf.
I’m dressing up because one of my pet rabbits isn’t eating. I wish I felt more sorry for her, but in all honesty, she pulls this shit all the time. Okay, maybe not all the time (I’m a better mother than that). But it is, like, the third or fourth time, and it usually seems to coincide with times in my life where I already have enough on my plate. Maybe she’s doing it for attention. She senses I’m busy, and goes “wah-wah, poor me”. Like mother, like daughter, I suppose. I’ve had to drop everything to syringe feed her at periodic, carefully calculated intervals. To make sure she doesn’t die. It’s annoying.
But I can tell how stressed she is. Maybe she’s really just sensing my stress. Maybe she’s an empath. A dark empath. Making it all about her. Either way, the thought of footing the vet bill today makes me want to throw up. I wonder if rabbits were physically capable of vomiting, if she would have chosen bulimia over anorexia. I put her wack behavior on blast, on my Close-Friends story, and quietly thank God that I don’t have human children to wreak psychic damage on.
The little drama queen’s name is Sheila. No last name. No family moniker. I wanted her to be like Cher, or Madonna, or Beyonce. Her brother’s name is Peter. His last name is Nincompoop (not Rabbit), which I think I ripped off from an episode of It’s Always Sunny. I got them both during a long bout of unemployment (depression). I had only wanted one, but they came from my old downstairs neighbors, who kept the parents and monthly newcomers in a tiny cage outside, all together, while they lit off scary illegal fireworks year-round and drank beer on the porch. God, I miss them.
It was cool to see the miracle of life so frequently at first, but eventually the novelty wore off. Once, I watched a swarm of ants disassemble a dead pinky in the corner. I watched in horror as the little helpless, hairless newborn who didn’t make it was left to rot. It was left there like that for a few days. Sometime around Sheila & Peter’s litter, the mom sort of gave up on taking care of them. I got them at 4 weeks, a month too early, and bottle-fed them regularly until they were ready to be weaned. I vowed to be better than their mother, at least. Even if it can be a little inconvenient. For me. At times.
They were the last two left from their litter, all others having gone to (hopefully) loving homes. I only wanted one, but my neighbors asked me to take both. Kinda fucked up, but when I took them both up to my apartment, I initially intended to decide on the better one and return the other. I couldn’t separate them though, and ended up loving them both, even though I was a little more partial to Sheila. That might secretly be why Peter’s last name is Nincompoop. He didn’t clean himself as regularly, wasn’t as cuddly, and would clumsily slide off the bed a lot as a baby. It’s not his fault, though. They’re inbred. I decided that cycle would stop with me, and got them fixed.
Though hundreds of dollars later, they are both fixed, Sheila takes after her birth-mom, and fucks her brother. It used to really disgust me, watching Peter submit & eye me desperately, seemingly begging for help, but I think pulling her off only served to give Sheila a bit of a complex. A chip on her shoulder, only making her more determined to hump her brother. I wonder if she’s repressed, and if it’s all my fault. With parents, it usually is.
Truth be told, I only got the bunnies so I’d have something to help me not want to kill myself so much. Solid plan, right? I needed something to tether me, something to stop me, and ask “But what would become of them?”, and to feel less alone in general. I wonder if my own mother had me for similar reasons. Sometimes we discuss passive ideation. It’s a card we both keep in our pocket, like a sort of “Plan B” in case Plan A (life) fails. We chat about it over the phone, like it’s a regular, natural, healthy response to things not going well for us. Then we remind each other of the pros of living, and cons of dying. Is this normal?
**Sidenote: In googling whether or not I applied the term “oxymoron” in the first paragraph correctly, I found this from Salon.com-> “Being self-made means ‘denying that you're born from a mother.’” So there’s that, at least. And at least me, and my mom, and my idiot rodent daughter are all still alive. Nobody’s managed to kill themselves quite yet.
I’m 25. Nearly 26. Sometimes, I think I’d make a great mother to human children. Like at midnight, when I’m holding Sheila down, wrapped in a towel, forcing a syringe full of wet mushed nutrients down her gullet, and yelling at her to chew. Or how when I want to give my bunnies away, because I’m tired of caring about them, I remember that other people would probably leave them in a tiny cage outside, in the heat (which kills them), or the cold (which kills them), where they would be left for the ants. Knowing these things, and keeping them alive, and remembering the level of care I’m able to give them– the responsibility I hold, makes me think I could go through with real kids someday. But then I check my bank account, and remember how neurotic and selfish and forgetful I can be, and how I don’t even really like being a woman or even being alive sometimes, and then I have my doubts about motherhood.
Whatever. I have to go serve cunt at the animal hospital. And eat something.
When she’s not stressing herself out or eating hot chips, Emily Cox can be found writing. On a phone, laptop, or the back pages of spiral notebooks that once contained her notes from film school classes (useless). Between spreading herself too thin and working in practically every role in "The" "Industry" imaginable and helping autistic children in the public school system, she tries to make time for poetry (albeit not very hard). She is alarmed at the prospect that this bio may come off as pretentious, and wishes for it to be known that she might have peaked in high school.