Tag Archives: loss

Art, insight, life, Writing

My Best Friend: Unsettled Awareness

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I went for a walk today, obviously sans dog.  And something happened in my brain that I haven’t experienced in the decade I had walked with Claddagh.  I became aware of what other people may think about me, as I walk along, alone.

When I had Claddagh, our walks were interactive.  It was just her and me in the world.  I have no thoughts to the perceptions of the individuals passing me in cars.  They only existed as obstacles in crossing the road, completely depersonalized inside their automobiles.

Occasionally someone might hoot out at me, grabbing my attention but mostly I would choose routes of alleyways and side streets without much traffic.

It’s a pretty straight shot along a busy road to walk for a pack of smokes.   Dog-less the short trip is mind-numbing.   I feel the cars pass, and I become extra aware of the expression on my face, my posture, and gait.   I’m in this thought and I avoid eye contact with drivers.  I think about this solo jaunt and I’m sad and lonely.  I am sure my face has that “melancholy far off look.”

Each and every normal thing that I do, for the first time, again- without my friend, I make note of.

“This is the first time I have put gas in my car without Claddagh.”

“This is the first time I am popping into Goodwill, real quick, without Claddagh.”

“This is the first time I am going through a Chick-fil-A drive through without Claddagh.  No one told me how cute she is and if she would like a dog treat.”

“This is the first time I am walking around downtown without Claddagh, and no one strikes up a conversation about her.”

This new internal narration doesn’t make a good movie. I am having a new conversation by myself with the world around me, and I am the only one who knows the inside jokes.

I was barked at by a squirrel for a good five minutes today.  Claddagh would have been amused.

When Claddagh and I would walk, I would try and see the world through her eyes and engage in that way.  The only time I would suspend this reality, would be on “athletic” jaunts where I would want to keep a steady pace and an elevated heart rate; other than that we would be as lackadaisical or as excited as she wanted to be while trying to maintain a lead that wouldn’t choke her.

It was only in the last year or so, that she was beginning to walk on a leash like a well-paced partner, no pulling forward for the lead. I was really starting to appreciate that shift in her maturity, but now I just think it may have been a side effect of her heart tumor.

If you are ever deciding to get a dog, get one that is young at heart and really foster that personality trait.  Much like people, they may age into later years and be mistaken for younger because of the youthful and playful nature they exude.  That is precious energy to embody or be surrounded in.

insight, life, Writing

My Best Friend: 2 Days and 22 Hours

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It is almost one month since I put Claddagh down.

That phrase is so gross to me; “Put them down.”

My dog was already a submissive… she was “put down” in many ways in her early life.  I am still disgusted at it all.

But, you know what?  I will only talk about it here.  I bombarded FB for the first two weeks with my pain… and now in modern decorum I will pretend it doesn’t rip me apart on the inside.  Oh, geez, am I following the steps of my forefathers, who chose to sweep inconvenient truths under the proverbial rug?

People don’t know how to mourn, these days.  Our fast paced society urges us to “get over it and move on” as quickly as possible.  We treat ourselves like processed food with defined expiration dates that serve as suggestions.  You might be cool eating an out of date yogurt at your own house, but if a host of some other house offers the same thing, you cringe.

“Keep it in house.”

See, I don’t feel like I am allowed to mourn my dog companion for more than a couple of weeks.  It isn’t allowed to break me, because their life expectancy is so much shorter than ours, and I should have known better.

I don’t feel like I can allow Claddagh to be the portal in which my previous pain, loss and suffering is filtered through.  I just don’t feel like I have permission to fully feel, even though people say “take your time” and “feel it fully.”

I don’t feel permission because I am always trying to integrate and get along, and no one likes a Debby Downer, or a Miserable Mandie.  I don’t feel permission because the extent of the pain is mine, alone to bare.

After day three, I told myself, “You HAVE to stop crying.  You HAVE to buck up.  No one cares as much as you do about it, and no one wants to hear about it.”

If you make it a mantra, I guess it makes it easier to adhere to, just through repetition.

If left to my own devices, I look out the door and say “All I really want is my dog.”  And I imagine what that looks like, only to further upset the state of my heart.

Honestly, I don’t care if I upset you if I end up crying in reminiscence of my dog; but because I am empathetic, and I know you don’t want to hear it, I will self censor.  I am not looking for your pity or sympathy…. I know you don’t know exactly what to say and it may be uncomfortable for you, that every topic you excavate leads back to me and my dog.

I am sure it is annoying, or at least uncomfortable.

I’m sorry, but I’m not.

I suppose if you don’t know what to do in the awkwardness, just smile.  Know that I experienced a facet of love in life that I would have otherwise avoided, and that in and of itself, is bound to make me a better person in the long run.

I know she wasn’t as interesting to you, as she was meaningful and profound to me, and that is okay… but try not to sweep her memory away in your urgency to bring me back to whatever you feel is your self perceived center.  I will take my time, and I require no rush on your end, for it will not bring any benefit.

She was “my girl”, ya know?  I don’t even know if I am allowed to use the same distinct whistle if I find a new dog friend… I feel bad for chiding my cats with her same belly rub rhyme.   Things are flowing into each other with my other animal friends,  where it once was distinct and individual.

And I liked that, ya know?  When her whistle was our whistle and not like any of the other whistles that were common for the other animals we mutually knew.

I kinda wish I got a Chilton manual on how to deal with this,or a “When your Dog Dies for Dummies” book,  even though I know, internally all I need to know.

Life cycles are beautiful, until you see the shame in loss.  My dog should have lived forever… I mean, that is how I feel. I never thought about getting another one, even though at times I thought about re-homing her due to my own personality flaws.

I’m looking at rescue dogs, trying to find a face I recognize.  Not Claddaghs’ face, per say… just a face that feels familiar in the rustic part of my being that is perfectly adapted to animal companionship.  I know it will happen when it is meant to… if it is meant to.

No worries here.  I just miss her so damn much and rightly so.

 

insight, life, Writing

My Best Friend :Soul Training

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Sometimes you meet someone new, and you just instantly know that you will be friends.  You are not sure why, or what it is you have in common, but something flows between you that is almost effortless, and it is like a breath of fresh air in a world full of stifling pollution.

Usually it happens at “just the right time.”  “Just when you need it most.”  You may even feel “saved.”

Is Dog, God?

I’ve been seeking some sort of salvation my whole life.   Mostly I want to be saved from being lonely.  Lonely isn’t just a word, though; it is a big concept.  It’s definition isn’t even vast until you start researching the synonyms… “godforsaken” is my favorite.

Godforsaken!  It sounds pretty profound but it breaks down to “forlorn, desolate, miserable,”  basically Emotional Shitsville in a country called Isolation.

I’ve come to accept that I don’t think like a mass majority of people, and that can be scary for both parties.  Words are steeped in various meanings and history has shown that  words are manipulated and it isn’t rare to rule with an Iron Fist.   “A certain amount of violence is needed to keep them in line”- sort of mentality that I am way too familiar with.

I’ve written five chapters thus far.  It’s time to talk about my failures as a human.  My dog has been gone for 24 hours.  I’ve been unable to censor myself online about this journey.  The only thing I hope to gain from it, is a living record for myself and anyone who cares for whatever reason.  I haven’t been perfect, and none of us are.  Is a dog God with such unconditional love?

Have you ever just brushed someone away, and said, “No, not now?”

Or, maybe had a bad day and then poured all that anger on to an unsuspecting person?

Yeah.  I do.  I think that this is an unavoidable byproduct of life if you don’t become aware of it.   One of the shittiest feelings in the world is when you know you harmed someone else.

In the beginning, both Claddagh and I had our own quirks.  Her nervous behavior and my own anxiety would clash and being the dominate in the situation, sometimes I would take it out on her aggressively.   The worst thing she ever did was chew on stuff that she shouldn’t and occasionally steal my food and coffee, if left unattended.  I didn’t get mad a her about that stuff… I would express aggression toward her when other things were going wrong in my life, and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

One day I had a melt down and she really took the brunt of it.  Afterward I felt so guilty and ashamed, so much so that I consulted friends about finding her a new home.   I didn’t deserve her.  That feeling never left me.  I didn’t deserve her affection and love, because I did the one thing that you should never do, which is fly off the handle and harm someone you love.  Somehow in that large heart of hers, she always forgave and came back to my side.

She was able to see the intangible sadness that had always existed in me.  She knew that there was a certain sense of Godforsaken loneliness inside that she wouldn’t be able to fully fix for me, she was a willing “band-aid.”

That is the interesting thing about animals, their senses tell them so much about their world, yet they can’t articulate the depth of their experience to us in ways that we can relate.  So we find middle ground that makes us both feel good.   That was the goal anyway,  so any deviation from that goal feels like devastation.

I’d like to say that I never got mad at Claddagh again, but incidences did arise.  I was never as aggressive with her again, as the time I thought I should re-home her but that didn’t matter.  I hated expressing anger at her because I knew above all that she was just a pure spirit.

Today was day two of waking up without her.  I slept in until noon just to avoid the reality and because writing all of this out and drinking vodka is very tiresome.   I still want to cry but I feel resistance. My eyes go through patches of cloudiness that I can’t seem to rub away.  I know I am dehydrated.  I just want my dog.

Here are some weird facts about my Claddagh;

1.) She never, ever would shit on the trail.   She would always find a place off trail to do her business, and I thought that was super respectable.

2.) She never once peed or pooped in the house.  Not one accident like that.

3.) One time she got sick in my car, she purposely puked in the removable cup holder.  Another time she got sick in the barn loft and made sure to puke on the tile and not on the carpet.

If a dog could be considerate, I think that these three facts really represent that about her.   She knew that I could get into stressful states, and it’s like she did everything she could to not make that worse in me.   She knew that if she stayed out of the way, that I would come to her in defeat and just hold her and cry.

It took a while for us to learn that in each other.  When to walk away, to calm down so that everything could be handled with more patience and decorum.  No doubt these are useful attributes with all living beings, and Claddagh held space for me to work on cultivating those traits.

In twenty four hours, I am missing attributes Claddagh had that I took for granted; from catching pesky flies and mosquitoes, to not helping me finish the last quarter of the hamburger… just weird small things you don’t think much about.  Last night I was eaten up by bugs, and I made myself sick by finishing the last of the burger because it seemed somehow wrong to throw it into the trash.  I just sat looking back and forth and the burger and the empty spot on the floor where Claddagh would be patiently waiting for her portion.

She could have food sitting in her bowl all day, and yet she would wait to eat until I was eating.   I wish I was as good of a human, as she was as a dog.

doggle, insight, life, Writing

My Best Friend: How we met

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Messes, Money, Grief, God.

What does this mean for me? 

What do I need to get rid of?

 

Every time I look at Claddagh’s water bowl, the tears reemerge.  I threw her bed away.  I tossed all her toys in the trash.  I put her leashes in a free box.  Her is hair everywhere.

I use to be so anal about having hair on my clothes.  A real lint roller bandit.  The day Claddagh and I found each other, I let that go.  I knew that there was no escaping her shed.   I didn’t even think twice about it.   It’s like a part of myself died, or that my hyper-vigilance had at least taken a new direction.

 

Who cares about hair on your clothes when you are madly in love?

I’ve known so many wonderful dogs over the course of my life.  We had dogs in our family from my earliest memories.  Pepper; Muffin, Maggie, Buffy, Sprocket, Lucky, and Elsie were all Family dogs belonging to the direct family that I spent most of my childhood around. Each was so unique, but none of them were really “my dog.”

I dreamed of the day I would finally find my own companion.  The desire started about the time I was twenty-five.  I had been in a three-year relationship with a man who had a beautiful golden retriever named Kelty Krumb.  Kelty reminded me of Falcore from The Never Ending Story.  I fell in love with that dog, but I still lint rolled all the time.   One of the hardest parts of the breakup was losing the dog in my life.

So I got serious about “Mandie-festing” the perfect dog.  I lived in dog towns, and my friends often had dogs.  Sometimes I would spend more time hanging out with the dogs of my friends than I did with my friends.  This all kicked into high gear around 2006 when I was living in Nederland, CO.  A small town up the canyon from Boulder.

“A dog in every Subaru.”

I could buy a bulk brown sack full of dog treats from the grocery store for very cheap, so I was constantly packed with treats for the dogs I would see in town.  I got to know dogs by name better than some of their owners.   I paid attention to the attributes I loved about each animal.  I knew that I would know when and where and who when the time was right.

There were two predominant dogs in my life during this time.  Gullivan and Mountain Girl.  Gullivan was my friend Tammi’s companion.  Gullivan and I created a fast bond and he would always greet me at my car for a treat and some love.  We could play rough and he was just amazing.

Mountain Girl belonged to my friend Michigan Mike.  I was casually sleeping with his roommate for a few months and was able to spend time getting to know Mike and Mountain Girl.  She was the epitome of dedicated and independent.  She was a large St. Bernard, and she roamed about the town without being leashed up.

She would walk down to the pub, where Mike was often found, and she would lay outside waiting for him to come to take a smoke break.  And if she ever got tired of waiting outside the pub, she would saunter back home for a while to eat and drink.

  I really feel like Mountain Girl was Mike’s guardian angel. 

It was an emotional hit to the entire community when Mountain Girl passed away.  She was this gentle giant ambassador of the community at one time.

I wanted a dog like that.

The ultimate, to be able to sit and stay, unleashed for a period of time and to always know where home is.  I can say that Claddagh went above and beyond my expectations in the time that we had together but she had not yet reached that pinnacle.

2007 happens. 

I had lost my brother on July 25, 2006.  I terminated a pregnancy in early 2007 after a one night stand during a blizzard and the condom broke. If I am honest with myself, I was lonely as fuck.  I couldn’t find human companionship that was equitable on both sides, meaning “we both want to be together.”

I was always like “Don’t call me your girlfriend.”  But then I’d meet someone I would be interested in pursuing and they would just want to fuck.  I had had enough, and I wanted someone of my own. Loyalty and trust I could believe in.

I had been house/cat sitting for a friend for three months while she was out of the country, and about two weeks before she came home I knew that it was time to go to the Humane Society.  I didn’t know what I was going to do  after this gig or where I was going to live, but I knew that by my 27th birthday,  I would have a furry friend. It would take two weeks and three trips down the canyon before I’d find her.

I had heard that Boulder had a no-kill shelter with a 100% adoption rate.  This seemed worthwhile to me. 

A place that I want to check out.  On my first attempt, I turned North instead of South and ended up in Longmont. I turned around again and went back up the mountain.  I tried again a few days later and made the same mistake.  Again I was in Longmont.  I am usually great at directions but I kept getting twisted around.

The second time I figure, “why not check it out?”

I find a little mutt puppy who is kind of sickly.  We walk around outside and he poops green.  I am enamored by his tininess.  I say that I am interested in him.  I’m full of ideals of raising a little puppy.  Longmont requires a 24 hour hold, and a call of confirmation to a landlord that having a pet is allowed.

My friend doesn’t care if I get a dog, as an animal lover herself, and says to pose as her using the landline.   They call, I get approved and I can pick up the puppy the next day.

Remember I am house/ cat sitting? 

My friend had five cats in a one room cabin.  The bed was in a loft, and the cats would hang out there during the day and night, when they weren’t knocking potted plants off the window sills.  These cats were missing their Momma and letting me know it.

The morning I woke up to go get the puppy, there was cat shit on my pillow, six inches from my head.  I knew immediately that even though my friend would be home soon, there was no way I could have that sickly puppy around all these passive aggressive cats.   So, I called and canceled my adoption.

The feeling that I was supposed to have a dog didn’t pass.  I needed to be realistic and I needed to try again to get to the Boulder Humane Society.   A few days later I tried again, this time I turned the right way and found the place I had been looking for.

I was ushered into the kennel area with an older couple and a younger couple.

The set up was to take the laminated sheet of the dog you were interested in, up to the counter and they would set up a meeting.   The people are looking at the sheets on one side of the cage, and I am at the other side of the cages without the paper.  Just checking them each out, looking for a familiar face.

The elder couple is standing at the front of “Pasha’s” kennel.   They look over the paper, and write down her name.   “Pasha” is paying attention to me, so I ask her to sit. And she sits.  I ask her to lay down, and she lays down.  I ask her if she wants to come to play with me and she talks.  She doesn’t bark, she talks.  I already know in this moment she is mine.

 I grab her paperwork and go stand in the cue for a meeting.

The elderly couple is in front of me.  The volunteer asks to see the paperwork they are holding, they give it to her and they tell her that they would also like to see Pasha.  The volunteer asks them if they have Pasha’s paperwork.  They say “no”, and I sheepishly say, “I have Pasha’s paperwork.”

The volunteer tells the couple that she will set them up with the dog they chose first, and “If Pasha doesn’t go home with this kind lady today, we can set you up with a meeting with her.”  My heart is fluttering.

I already felt like I was so close to losing her and I didn’t even know her yet.

I chose to meet her in an outdoor kennel.  There were some toys and a baby pool.

Pasha and I were left alone to check each other out.

She didn’t want toys.

She could care less about the water.

She just wanted to be near me.

She listened as I talked to her, she leaned against my legs and talked back.

The elderly couple sat in the kennel next to me, their “first” dog of interest was frantic, jumping and barking. 

They looked over longingly at Pasha’s excited but mellow demeanor.  She did not jump on me, she did not lick or drool.  She just told me ” We found each other.”  And so I paid fifty bucks for the greatest love I would ever know up until this point.

I didn’t know what I was going to call her. 

Pasha didn’t fit, so for about a week, I called her IMA.

I.M.A.= Incredibly Magical Animal.

We slept together with all the cats in the top loft.  I would heft her up the crazy ladder that slipped out from underneath me more than once and our life together began.

I finally settled on the name Claddagh Moondancer Wonderdog.

Claddagh because of the Irish wedding band, the hands holding a heart with a crown, signifying “Love, Loyalty, and Friendship.”  She was my partner, and I would honor her as such through her name.

Moondancer came along when the snow fell, and Claddagh would lie about needing to go outside to go potty.  She would just want to slide upside down like a penguin on snow drifts.  She would prance through the thick blanket of white, like a deer.  Under a full moon, it looked like she was dancing on the moon itself.

Wonderdog is pretty self-explanatory.

My friend came home to her cabin full of cats and Claddagh and I camped out until the snow fell and we moved in with friends who needed some child care and help to start a small business.

Claddagh came with me to work every single day,

whether I was working at the New Moon cafe in Nederland, or working for my friends in Gilpin.  Every single day, my dog accompanied me, and I swore I would never work another job that would keep me from her for long periods of time.  I was blessed to have it work out so perfectly over the years.

I understand people get pets that they only see a little bit throughout the day or night… but I seriously got a companion.  She was more than “emotional support animal.” 

I didn’t have a doctors note or anything.

I just lived in an incredibly dog-friendly town, and Claddagh was the most loveable dog you could meet.  She treated everyone like they were there to specifically see her.

She would give her full attention and love.  She would talk to anyone who came into her sphere.

Only once, during our time together, did she sense that a person was “off”, and backed away as if disgusted.  It was like she hit an energy bubble, and she backed away as if to say “this isn’t a sphere I want to be in.”  The woman was homeless and talking to herself, she looked rather disturbed.

All the regulars at New Moon knew Claddagh. 

They loved her.

On my days off, I would grab a coffee and paint on the patio with Claddagh right beside me.  Once a week we would go on a date and get a burger and french fries and share it on the patio of First Street, and later Squirrels in Corvallis, Oregon.  Any place that served beer, burgers, and fries and had a dog-friendly patio, was my kind of spot. I met a lot of people because of Claddagh.

There is so much more to her story. 

I am going to cut this chapter off here.

There is so much to process.  My eyes are wet and dry at the same time.   I want to honor her.  If you are reading this, thank you for taking the time to get to know my best friend.  I look forward to sharing more about her as I am able to sit and write it all down.

insight, life, Writing

My Best Friend: The Good-bye, Goodgirl.

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Today started like every other day. The cats woke me up and I poured food in their bowls, and Claddagh and I got up and I let her outside. I got myself a glass of water, not really feeling coffee, and did as I usually do; sift through emails, check the updates on social media.

My uncle came out with the trash, as he usually does, and perched himself down by the bins to give Claddagh her morning treat.  That fake bacon stuff she loves.

My uncle made note that she wasn’t acting herself, and looked like she had thrown up.  I figured it was just some stomach upset that she was looking to relieve by eating grass and then throwing it up.   Concerned, I checked her out and over all she seemed normal.

As the day went on I noticed she wasn’t acting as normal.  Our friend Devon stopped by, and usually Claddagh is up and very talkative when he shows up.  She is always excited to tell him something.  Today, she stayed very calm, and didn’t say a word.   I didn’t pay much notice to that but shortly after he left, Brody dog came out and as usual ran at the fence to bark at the neighboring dog.

Usually Claddagh is the ring leader in the barking nonsense.  She waits anxiously for Brody to follow her out and raise a little mayhem.   She didn’t move.  She stayed glued to the ground, watching Brody raise a ruckus.   This was odd enough to give her further inspection.  Her stomach seemed bloated but she wasn’t whining or crying.  She didn’t wince in pain, regardless I found the swelling to be disconcerting.

This of course led me to Google to ask about swelling belly in a dog, which lead me to bloat, which they say is an emergency situation.  Of course it has to be on a Saturday, right?  Claddagh is still getting up and moving around, but she seems so lethargic.  I sit with her in the yard and she pukes up the treats my uncle gave her, and a bunch of bile.

I call the vet, and wait for the emergency on-call to call me back.  He does, and I give him a run down of her symptoms.   He doesn’t think it is bloat but tells me that I can call back.  I tell him I will keep an eye on her.  I do and by the hour her stomach is getting bigger and bigger.  She is finding it harder and harder to walk very far without needing to lay down.  I call the vet two more times.  He still doesn’t sense bloat.   Finally around 9:40pm I decide she has to go in.

I want to hope for the best but I feel sick.

Claddagh uses all her effort to get into the car.  We arrive ahead of the Vet, and sit out side.  Claddagh doesn’t want to sit down because she knows she is going to have to get back up and it’s getting increasingly difficult for her.

I run down the list with the Vet and he takes her for x-rays and blood work.  He says he will call in about an hour.  I drive the two blocks home to wait for the call.

At 10:53 he calls with bad news.  Claddagh has a large heart based tumor.  He gives me three options;  I can go to Ft. Collins tonight for an ultra-sound, he can give me medicine to get her through the night (maybe) and take her for an ultra-sound in the morning, or I could put her down.

The condition she had, and the way the swelling was affecting her; her heart was so big that it was cutting off circulation to the other organs in her chest.

That is so like her, you know?  To have a big heart, so big even that it would work against her longevity.   As much as I wanted her to come home with me, I knew that potentially waking up to her, gone, would be too much for me.   And even though she wasn’t really having a painful condition, her breathing was so labored and her deterioration was happening so quickly, letting her go seemed like the most humane thing to do.

I told her how much I loved her.  How special she was to me in my life.  I gave her all the kisses and told her how hiking would never be the same.

The medicine worked quickly.  Her eyes became quite dilated and then she was gone.

I had to make so many decisions in just hours today, and no matter what, there was not going to be any saving her.

I had walked back to the vet, to put her down.  It was a harsh reality to walk out of there with a leash and a collar and a bill for five hundred dollars.  I wish I was walking home with my best friend, or at least empty handed.

This morning there was no inkling in my mind that today would end up this way.

I have to re-learn how to be “Mandie without Claddagh.”  She was the longest relationship I have ever had in my life.  We spent almost every day together starting on September 13, 2007.  She was my birthday gift to myself, and she did not disappoint.

My heart is broken right now.   I am in a bit of a shock and I can’t imagine what tomorrow looks like without my Dita.  For those of you who knew her, she loved you.  She loved everyone, and always thought you were here to see her.

I couldn’t have asked for a greater love in my life, and for that I will be eternally grateful.

 

insight

Things Left Unsaid

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I think I am having a sort of identity crisis.  As I mentioned in a previous post, a belated mourning.  It’s been slowly building day by day creating a depression like I have never known before.

My life is very isolated right now.  I see one or two people on a daily basis.  Mostly I just see my grandmother, but at the same time, despite living with her, and taking care of her; I avoid her.

It is sad to see the loss of memories of some one who was so proud of her ability to retain information, to  loose a little bit more of it everyday.

Recently she asked me how my mother died (her daughter)… and I replied “Cancer.”  She responded with “what kind?”  I had to ask ” is this a quiz or do genuinely not remember?”  Her answer was shocking… she didn’t remember.

My mother passed away of ovarian cancer when I was four years old.  My family bottled their sadness and harbored their memories of her to themselves.

As a resilient and adaptable person, I just didn’t give it too much thought.  I did what people expect you to do, which is “get over it and move on.”  I had a little brother to look out for and influence.

There have been times in my life where this depression surfaces and causes me to question  where I came from, maybe what I missed out on, but people in my family have been hush hush .

I have noticed that over the past year with the passing of my grandpa and my aunt, that my grandmother’s mental hard drive is crashing.

My dad remarried when I was 8 and he had a daughter with his new wife.  That half sister of mine is married now and had a baby this year.  My step mom is a very active participant in their lives.

My full blooded brother died in 2006, and that was the first time I felt the pangs of losing what I know to be a part of myself, and the living memory of a mother who didn’t stay too long.

The things most girls want to grow up and be are a good wife and mother… but not me.
I feel a huge rift in even contemplating that life because it feels so distant to me.

Where do I come from, why do I feel such sadness? Will it ever get better?

I don’t know the word “mom.”  Even when I say it out loud it sounds foreign and awkward.  How could I ever be that which I do not truly understand.  I find jealousy at how easily “mom” rolls off the tongue for everyone else.

I hate that my sister gets to use it with such frequent consistency. It never felt right to call my stepmom anything but her first name.

I live in a world full of moms, and daughters, and because of my past I don’t feel like I fit in at times.  I wish I could conquer this void.

It recently came to my attention how Disney movies often run a program in their scripts that kills off the mother figure leading the main characters to be highly vulnerable to influences of say, a witch in disguise.  And I wonder if I run in manic directions because I don’t have a mom to run to.

I am well aware of the benefits of a good hug, the oxytocin and the bonding, but I don’t hug or touch anyone very often because it too, feels foreign.

My grandma use to hold me and comb her fingers through my hair, but now she is frail, and when I do hug her, I feel that I may break her.  This breaks my heart a little more each time.

Love to me is synonymous with sadness and loss, and I am not sure how to remedy that physical and mental reaction.  I enjoy being alone because most people just don’t understand how deep this program runs.  I can tell disappointment in others when I don’t say “I love you” in return.

I am not close with my mothers brothers, I don’t really know anyone she grew up with.  And in that I fear that when my grandma passes that I will have little to validate my existence outside of my own creations.  This sadness is so strong lately that I don’t want to create much, mostly because I don’t feel like I have many people to share it with.

It all feels sort of pointless.  And since I am not out for fame or fortune, I wonder for who does any of this benefit?

Recently because of Robin Williams death, people have been more vocal about their depression and sadness.  And I believe it’s a great topic for discussion, but I find that when people realize how depressed a person is, they find a conflict of caring and repulsion.  No one likes hanging out with a Debbie Downer all the time.

This is another reason I am reclusive at times.  I just don’t have the energy to be happy or funny all the time.  I don’t enjoy how worn out I can feel from pretending.

So I don’t pretend.  But is taking its toll on me, and it saddens my grandma, which turns into a cycle of us throwing sadness back and forth.

This is no way to live, and no way to die.  I wish I knew a way out of this cycle.