One thing I don’t like about humans is how we force the value of certain things onto one another. Things that are deeming “socially acceptable” and “socially unacceptable” are enforced without too much of another thought. I don’t think it’s inherently a bad thing, when you look at the grand scheme of things, but I also don’t like being told how I should rank the things that are important to me, particularly when people don’t know who I am or how I’ve lived until now.

Some people like to tell me that my commitment issues are because of my abandonment issues, and I’m inclined to agree, because, statistically, it’s very likely. Although, people who don’t know about my history call my commitment issues “frigid” and “narcissistic”. In truth, it’s not that I think I’m better than others, I just don’t care to make time for them. Just because I don’t see any value in spending time with you, doesn’t mean I think I’m better than you.

The reason for this conversation, which has been primarily with myself, however, is because I’m sitting in jail. The world seems to hate me, but as I’m apathetic to it already, I don’t really know how to feel about the matter. The only reason I do the minimum to fit into society is that there is the ground law that you must adhere to the basic levels of society in order to enjoy anything it has to offer … the problem with that being that the world is a society. I could easily just recede into the landscape, but that would deny me rights to anything as now everything seems to be owned by some governing body or other.

One of the more bitter parts of not sharing the values of others is that is somehow affronts them. Somehow, my lack of value on married life and children is suddenly me sneering at it. It comes back to narcissism again. Where are the people who respond to those who are different with just “oh okay, not for me, but that’s good for you”? How is this a progressive and understanding world where one’s own preferences can’t even belong to them entirely? It’s picked at and scorned at by the preferences of the collective.

The value of family is the hardest thing to talk about, because I have very little to say on the matter. Having very little, however, just makes people wonder more and more about why and somehow convinces them you have a lot to say. Sure, I’ve said a lot to a psychologist and sometimes have poured out my emotions during some drunken discussions, but often I honestly don’t have much to say about it. And then they’re offended that I don’t want to share what they think I’m withholding. But I can’t be offended that they’re being nosy, because it’s ordinarily perceived as them caring.

It’s exhausting.

One of the more common arguments, however, is the value I place on my bonds. You’d think, seeing as they’re my bonds, that my opinion would be the only opinion that mattered, but apparently that’s not true. I had a cat. I loved my cat more than anything. She was a bit on the older side but she’s been with me since I could fit her in the palm of my hand. She’d been abandoned too. I found her on the sidewalk in the middle of a storm by a riverbank. I love her more than anything else, and nothing could come between us. I loved her more than any fling I had, more than any relative and more than any friend. She was the only thing that seemed grounded in my life. The only one to never leave me. But I’m she’s not allowed to be my one and only. Apparently I need to have family and friends and a relationship and children. Children is the one thing some people vehemently insist she cannot replace. But she is my family, she is my friend and I don’t need romantic love. And she is my child. I raised her. I care about her more than I care about any smaller human. She’s as important to me as any child. And yet, my loss is not acknowledged. Thousands of strangers who did not know her and did not know that child only sympathise with his family. But what about mine? What about the only thing that I had in this world? They don’t even talk about the ways that he tortured her. They brush over it and say that he was merely bullying her. But if he was just bullying her, I wouldn’t have had to cremate her. He poured different things into her eyes before strapping her down and cutting pieces off of her, eventually hammer her to death from her tail to her head. What I had cremated didn’t even look like her anymore. At first, I was even able to refuse to believe it was her. But he hadn’t bothered to take the collar off. And they’re all so outraged, not over her death, where she stood no chance and was brutally murdered by something ten-times the size of her, no, only I grieve for her. No one understands. And it isn’t as if I filled his eyes with bleach and soft drink and nail polish remover. It isn’t as if I sliced bits of him off and then caved his body in bit by bit from his feet to his head. No. I am twice the size of him, that is the only similarity. I didn’t torture him like he tortured my poor, lovely cat. He ripped apart my heart and life, and the only thing I could do about it was strangle him.

I don’t value things like others do. Even less now as it becomes more apparent that no one cares about what I value. The value that I hold for things in my own life isn’t important to the collective. I don’t place a lot of value of human lives, for their values are shallow and unimportant to me. But that didn’t make me a bad person. What made me a bad person was that, after I had her body brought to me on my doorstep, his father had said “it was just a cat”. It was just a cat … And he was just a child. They’ll never see that I took something of equal value to them away from them just as he did to me, and I’ll forever be marked as insane and monstrous. All because I had something I valued. He might not have seen the value in her life, but neither did I see the value in his.