When I Cared Enough to Feel...

I was twelve. Working on being thirteen.
When my hamster died.
I had him for a whole summer.
“Houdini” was my first real pet. He escaped three times before actually securing a home next to the fish tank. Hence his namesake. He was kind of a boring pet. There’s only so much fun you can have with a hamster. Only so much fun a hamster will have with you. He did not appreciate my Lego mazes, cared little for me initiating walks in his hamster ball and after living wild for nearly a solid month when everything was said and done...he wasn’t much of a cuddler either. Sometime in the fall the stupid hamster got sick. Pneumonia is near as we could tell. I did my best to nurse that stupid little hamster back to health but when mom came to pick me up from school one day, she came with the news – Houdini didn’t make it.
I bawled.
I sobbed.
I made a scene.
Over a dead hamster.
I wrote the most ridiculous note you’ve ever read about how I loved the hamster. How he was my friend. How he died too soon. And I was completely serious. My sincerity was evident by the tears again streaming down my face. I put that stupid, dead hamster into a box with my letter and buried him under the bush in the flower bed. It was the saddest day of my entire fall semester of my seventh grade year.

I’m twenty now. Working on being twenty-one. It’s been nearly 8 years since Houdini went to be on that giant hamster wheel in the sky. And I laugh. I laugh because I cried bitter tears over a hamster that hated my guts. Not only that, I cried hard! I laugh because I wrote a letter to anyone who might happen upon my shoebox grave to let them know that the little rodent corpse they saw meant something to me.

I’m twenty now. Working on being twenty-one. And I think about the years that have passed me by. Years since I cared enough to feel. My seventh grade year was filled with plenty of tears...long after the great hamster tragedy. My eighth grade year was far from a picnic. I cried often, probably daily. I felt everything. Everything hurt. Evident by the bitter tears streaming down my face. And sometime come my high school years, I quit. I couldn’t handle it anymore. It was too hard to feel. And quite frankly, I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care enough to put the feeling in.

I’m twenty now. Working on being twenty-one. And I wonder what it would be like to again be able to cry over the simple things. Heck, I wonder what it would be like to cry over the hard things. So often I will tears to come. “God, I’m breaking inside! Let me cry! Let me somehow release everything built up inside of me!” And sometimes, if I’m lucky, a single dry sob will come from my throat. I want it to be okay to cry. I want to feel. I want to care. What happened to the girl who sobbed when her hamster died? Does this have more to do with life than merely “growing up”?

I’m twenty now. Working on being twenty-one. I cried the other day and wish I could do it again. I wish I could find my way back to being twelve...when I cared enough to feel...