Life-defining moment

On April 24, 2017, I saw a stray cat that keeps coming back into our house, asking for food. He
was just a little kitten, a typical scenario in which a stray cat comes to your humble home and selects you
as its owner, or, in a more intimate and endearing case, a cat selects its human. I decided to welcome him
into our home and adopt him a week following his daily visits. It was my first time getting a cat. I had to
make a lot of adjustments as a first-time fur parent. It was difficult at first, but I guess other fur parents
were right in asserting that having a pet or two appears to help you cope with your mental health,
especially if you are an emotionally sensitive person. That was not my case; I was simply looking for a
completely disinterested roommate.

Now fast forward to September 27, 2022. It was MSU-IIT's welcoming week; I had seen this
before, but I didn't mind because I assumed my cat simply enjoyed walking outside our home until one
night he didn't return. I became concerned because I suspected he had been stolen or was ill, and I
discovered on the internet that when your cat walks away from the house more frequently than usual, it
indicates that they are ill and do not want you to know because they are aware of the kind of feeling it
gives their owner. They don't want to see their owner upset about their condition, so they hide it and leave
to prevent inconveniences. When I lost him that day, I was so distraught at school that it took me a long
time to move on, but I'm not sure if I ever did. It's as if there's a hole inside me that I can't fill with
anything no matter what I do.

I chose this as my life-defining moment because I'm still learning what I lacked in this aspect and
trying to put myself back up incrementally. After losing my pet, I became a very emotional person, I
wasn’t able to accumulate and articulate my thoughts very well. I got ahead of myself and grew
indifferent, nearly to the point where I didn't care who or what I lost. When you think about it, it's
somewhat narcissistic. I guess I haven't quite reached the tipping point yet, but I'm glad to say that
although I'm still afraid of embracing something that would make me emotionally invested in it, as we all
do, I'm still trying to work with myself, which indicates that I don't want to serve myself insufficiently as
that would be quite cruel. Dispersing my emotions has been an extremely difficult undertaking for me,
but I'm still trying to work with myself. This experience has made me see things differently and not just
from a narrow point of view.