FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Outside it’s bright, there’s a gentle breeze blowing through the trees, it’s warm and dry. It’s a nice day, for England. For England, it’s a nice day.

Below, people run around on their day-to-days doing whatever it is that they do. Tails still or wagging, ears tilting to listen in to the usual cacophony emanating from the nearby city. It’s a locale I know well, but one that feels foreign to me now.

I shouldn’t be here. I’m sat by the window in my underwear, fur brittle in the heat, tail limp where it touches the floor, ears wilted, eyes half-lidded.

Inside it’s running thick-hot with memories. Recent. Not-so-recent. Nine years old.

I gave up a third of my life for this.

It’s humid. I can barely move between the rooms without fighting through half-remembered kisses, primal fucks and so many ‘I-love-you’s I couldn’t dream of keeping count. None of it meant a thing.

This is not my home, it’s a place for me to stay. I’m an intruder here. An insect kept alive and on display for the satisfaction of another’s macabre curiosity.

It’s barely been a week since it happened. It wasn’t up for discussion. There was no trial. You had played judge, jury, executioner in your mind. I’d already had my head sliced off and everything, all that was left was to kick it off stage.

And it landed here. I gave up a third of my life for this.

I didn’t get a vote, I didn’t have a chance. You made your decision, it was out of my paws. It was in your head for years you said. Or a year you said. Months at least you said. Well the past few weeks you said. You’d say whichever one you thought fits the current argument better. I pointed that out, you said I’m being unfair.

I’m being unfair?

Let me remind you: I gave up a third of my life for you.

You didn’t tell me what was on your mind until you were set to ship me away from my home and my job. There’s no other word for that than cruel. No forewarning. No chance to prepare. No opportunity to fix anything that may have been broken. Then again, what is there to fix? All your complaints are displaced excuses to blur the fact:

You fell for somebody else.

And you lied to me about it. Of course you should have told me. Of course we should have talked. We’re adults, you know? We’re allegedly empathetic people. But we didn’t talk. You were never interested in working it out. You were interested in using me as your personal support bubble, fuck buddy, comfort animal, house wife, gift giver until you felt ready to branch out.

Sugar coat it all you like. It’s the truth.

I don’t remember the exact words or the order they came in. What I remember is that you couldn’t meet my eyes, your ears were folded. Your button-tail would’ve been tucked between your legs if it could’ve been.

What I remember is being sat on the couch, staring at our new TV on our new TV stand in our new—and first—house, looking at my PS5 and my games and thinking: I’ll need to box those up. And crying.

You waited until [i]after[/i] the holiday I took us on to break it off. You had already cheated. You were bugging me about what you wanted for your birthday until the day I found out. It was intentional, don’t fool yourself that it wasn’t. You knew [i]exactly[/i] what you were doing.

You tore my life from me like a child’s toy.

We bought our house together [i]this[/i] year.

I fought for it, real sweat, real tears, real goddamn panic attacks. I developed a phobia for solicitors.

I am not living in our house any more.

[i]Our[/i] house.

Soon enough you’ll buy me out.

I won’t have a home.

Won’t be on the property ladder. Likely never will be again.

I don’t have a job.

I had to move, so I had to quit.

I sit here and it feels like you’re killing me in real time.

It feels like I’m dying or I’m losing my mind.

The anger doesn’t help. I can’t stop crying.

The fact is: I’m still there, in our home, right beside you, my life falling apart as you make sure I know it’s really over.

I remember the bargaining. I remember pleading with you, even though you were the one who lied, even though you were the one who led me into the corner and splattered my brains across the wall. I [i]begged[/i] you to reconsider, to compromise, to give us another go.

What the fuck was I thinking?

All the bullshit you put me through, I never once gave up on us. I stuck through all your lies, your demeaning jabs, your gaslighting, your projection. All that damn projection.

You projected your frustrations onto me, your anger, your despair, your impossible desires, your fears. You projected on and on, until the final moments and past them. You still believe so much about me that isn’t true, because you won’t listen, you never did. Because it lets you feel better about what you’ve done. But I stuck through all your shit because I thought I saw the centre of you and it was warm and alive, loyal, loving and [i]kind.[/i]

I was wrong.

The biggest failure of my life is that I projected onto you too. It’s not that you stopped loving me as I loved you. It’s that you never did. I should have left you at least a dozen different times, but I didn’t. I was scared. I didn’t want to be alone. I thought building on top of a progressively more broken base was a feasible way to love. I was wrong.

So yes: I’m still there, in our home, right beside you as you make absolutely certain that I know it’s over. You mean our relationship, I hear my life.

It’s not just my heart that breaks, it’s everything. I realise how little I have outside of you, how utterly fucked I am. Over and over again.

When I met you, open palmed, you said ‘this is what you get for loving me’, but your paws were empty. I took it all and spent eight years in debt to the idea of you, drowning.

See, when you picked me at seventeen I thought I was in love, not knowing what love meant inside the gas-lit steel cage I’d been caught in. I was a prisoner, paying rent at the cost of no less than everything.

I lost friends for you, went to bat for you, exalting my own marionette. When I was out late without you, you’d call, tell me to hurry home because my life isn’t mine, it’s yours, and I’m selfish for living it.

Why did it surprise me when you cheated?

You’re a child picking up shiny things, playing with them until they grow dull, and discarding them. I’ve seen you do it a thousand times. To objects, hobbies, people.

I just never thought you’d do it to me.

I gave up a third of my life for you, but you’re all foreplay, no follow through.

Now I sit here, half-naked, on display. Exhausted, overheating, under-groomed. Nobody’s first choice of mate.

I, the insect trapped in amber. You, the prodding kid. Exactly how it’s always been. Our dynamic hasn’t changed a bit. A shift of tense is all it takes to have you walk away. I never left, I became displaced.

But I’m still there, in our home, right beside you, falling apart in real time. A part of me always will be.

And I’m still here—it’s not a home—staring out at all the lives I’ll never live.