death in the family

It's as the title suggests.

Three weeks ago, one of my cats got lost. For context, my family has seven and she was one of the first generations in our family. We loved her to bits. But she got lost and was never able to go back home, though we do suspect that she made the effort. She was blind, so it was a very very massive effort. Just yesterday, we received word that one of the residents of the compound opposite us spotted a dead cat in their area who upon inspection (on the resident's part to a poster we had of her) looked dangerously similar to her.

I didn't want to believe it. If I'm being honest, I'm still in denial. But the evidence is overwhelming, so I'm in between the state of acceptance and disgustingly overwhelming hope that it might've not been her. That it was a different cat because we weren't the only pet owners to put collars on our cats. That maybe she wasn't the only cat in our area that wore a pink collar. That maybe she was taken in by lovely people and is currently being taken care of the way she deserves. That she's anywhere but the dumpsite her body was thrown into after the neighbors threw her away in the garbage.

It's hard. I've thought as far as to killing myself because the pain and self-loathing became to much to bear at one point. But when those thoughts passed I could only think of my mistakes. All the shortcomings that led to this. Why hadn't I gone into that area to look for her? Why did I prioritize other things over looking for her? Why did I let myself believe that she was somewhere safe? Why didn't I let myself think that she was in a dangerous and bad place? Why did I not think of these hundreds of things over the course of the three weeks? Why didn't I do these thousands of things just to make sure I wasn't missing anything? This isn't to say that I didn't have any help. My aunts supported me and helped me look for her because she was family. But in the end, I was the most able-bodied out of all of us, so who to logically blame is obvious.

I've hated myself so much these past few hours and I don't think it's going to get any better. I'm still holding onto the thought that maybe it's not her body that was found. At the same time, I'm letting myself adjust to a world without her. Or more accurately, I'm not stopping myself from doing so. Because that's the natural human reaction to loss right? You adjust. You move on. I've decided to leave out some details but this already paints a pretty good picture.