About seven years ago now my family got three cats after years of my siblings and I begging. Those cats became our best friends very quickly. Breaking down became a normal thing when I was away from them. That made vacations pretty terrible. Anyone can imagine what it was like when I found out that they don’t live forever. At one point I even purposefully spent time away from my cats to prepare myself. That didn’t go as planned, it turns out I should’ve been spending more time with them to cherish those days because I’ll never forget what happened one day. The day that I learned something that would affect my life greatly.

I walked into my house after a long day of school ready for the Halloween party that night. I remembered that my cat, Logan, that I’ve had for around five years, has been gone for a few days. I mean, my cats are mainly outdoors so it isn’t really out of the ordinary. So, I decided to go on a little walk around my house in hopes that I would find my missing cat. Walking along I was thinking to myself about absolutely anything happening in my life at the moment until there he was. Laying on the staircase that leads right up to my deck. I started calling to him thinking he was just asleep. I panicked. Why does this have to happen to me, on Halloween? My cat that I had been with since third grade was gone. A waterfall of tears arised and I couldn’t control it. I thought there was no way I could go to that party and have a good time.

All the memories of my cat and I came flooding back. Like that time I went on a walk down my long driveway and he stayed by my side the whole time or even that time that there was a tornado and we were both freaking out while sitting in the basement. I won’t lie when I say that I thought about just skipping the party in general, as a matter of fact I wanted to. I’ve never liked pity or any sort of sympathy towards me from other people. I knew that I would be letting my friends down so I decided to go.I started brainstorming what I could do once I calmed down. “I won’t let them know,” I thought. 

Pretending wasn’t something I did often unless it was lying to my parents to cover up something for my siblings. So, I decided why not, I wanted to at least try to have a good time. I walk into my friend's house with a smile on my face ready to have fun. This is after fifteen minutes of preparing myself while on the way there. Laughing and singing is all I could hear. I knew that I was the only one who had control over whether or not I had a good time and I was not about to stop myself from having fun. At first I couldn’t stop thinking about my poor cat but I knew that this would happen sometime, so I had to come to terms with it.

As the night went on, it turned into the best party I’ve been to in a long time. There were genuine laughs coming from everyone, even me. That night I came to the realization that even in the worst of times, pretending to be in the best of times can actually make that a reality. At first I didn’t think I could have a good time that close to something so terrible. I didn’t want to make my friends upset so I pretended. That party ended up being the best party I’ve ever been to. I continue to do this to this day. People will argue that pretending isn’t good and you should let your emotions out, but I learned that pretending works better for me.