There’s a severed squirrel tail in the parking lot at work. I’ve seen it while walking on my break twice a day for a week now. I don’t know what to make of it. Because it’s separate from the body of a living, breathing thing, because there’s no blood or gore, and maybe because there’s no distraught squirrel standing to the side of it screaming Why God why? it seems fake to me. Like a bearskin rug – not fake to the bear, obviously, but so far disassociated from life that it seems more closely related to the torn appendage of a stuffed animal. But it is real. I poked it with my toe and everything…
I think about the squirrel who used to have that tail and I wonder how he’s doing. There’s a very good chance that he’s dead. I’m not sure that having your tail ripped off would kill you, but I have to assume that everything that led up to the moment when the tail became detached was probably traumatic and violent and maybe, just maybe, involved a Gila monster. (Or so I hope.) But maybe he’s alive and if so how is he coping with life post-tail? Is he sad? Wistful? Does it hurt when he sits? Is he angry? Does he even know that he doesn’t have a tail anymore? Is he more aware of his butt as a result?
I don’t mean to sound stupid (and this does sound stupid, so I apologize) but everyone is, in their own way, a squirrel without a tail. (This may or may not ever become insightful, so feel free to drop out of the tour here and go straight to the gift shop.) We all lose something (or multiple somethings) at some point in our life and find ourselves standing around saying, “Why?” or maybe “How?” and almost definitely “What now?”
Sometimes those things are ripped away from us as brutally and painfully as a Gila monster snatches the tail from a nimble squirrel. It hurts and you sure as hell know it’s happening, because look, there’s a fucking Gila monster right there and he’s got your fucking tail in his mouth, the prick. More often than not, however, we give those things away ourselves. Or push them away. Or throw rocks at them until they run away. There are pieces of us scattered across every city and town we’ve known - torn chunks and scraped flecks like breadcrumb trails that lead us backwards, reminder by bloody reminder, to what we were in the very beginning.
None of this is to say that we aren’t whole things now – quite the opposite, because our ability to self-mutilate is second only to our ability to heal, regenerate and re-become something (different, of course, but fully formed, too). But still, there are bits of us missing, things we never thought we’d have to go without, things we never even knew could be separated from us at all. And that never stops being painful. Dull twinges, phantom pangs.
I miss a lot of people. Some are gone, some are far and some are near, but feel far all the same. I’m an incredibly distant person and my losses are primarily of the pelt-them-with-rocks-until-they-flee-screaming variety. For as different as I am now from what I was at the beginning I’m not something utterly new. I’m still distant and I still throw rocks from time to time. Sometimes I think the only improvement I’ve managed is that I’m slightly more cognizant of what I’m doing, though that doesn’t seem to stop me from doing it. And I’m not trying to say that I’m especially lonely, either, because I’m not. I may not be all that enamored with my reticence but it is ultimately true, in that I’m not someone who needs the whole of the world outside my window. I can see it all just fine from my little hut on this quiet hillside of this quiet island in the middle of this quiet lake. And it’s never too hard to catch a boat back in to the mainland.
But I’m still sorry. I can’t ever seem to manage to shake that feeling. I’m sorry for all the arms and legs and hearts and eyes and (probably) tails that I’ve ripped off my body and kicked to the side of the road. I wish things had been another way or at least that I’d known well enough to say something at the time. To say why. Or to say goodbye. And maybe words weren’t necessary, but the parting goes two ways, and sometimes I wonder about the lives I’ve been shed from and what it meant (if anything at all). I suppose that’s all I wish I could change: I wish everyone knew what they meant to me. Some meant nothing at all, which isn’t meant to sound harsh – sometimes in the pressed lanes you pass close without touching and there’s nothing wrong with that. But by and large those lost relationships meant something significant to me and that’s what I mourn – the chance to say thank you.
Eventually (I presume) that severed squirrel tail is going to deteriorate and disappear and someday (if not already) the squirrel it belonged to will disappear as well. So it goes with all of us, constantly appearing and then disappearing in a decades-long magic trick that tends to go light on the showmanship but manages to leave the crowd wanting more every time. Except we never really disappear completely because we keep leaving all these scars on people. Scars that twinge. Scars that we cherish.
Because you are a squirrel. And you are someone’s severed tail. And sometimes – but hopefully not often – you are a fucking Gila monster. So be sure to say thank you when you’re thankful, and know that if you’re reading this, I’m thankful for you.