Tag: companion

(This was originally written on June 15, 2024. It’s taken me a while to be ready to release this one.)

My mind swirls and my fingers long to skate across the keyboard, gently tapping out the dance that my thoughts choreograph.

But where do I even begin? It’s been so long since I’ve written. I feel as though I’ve lived countless lives in the time that has passed. And perhaps I have. I am not the same as I once was. For better or for worse, I have changed. Dynamically.

It is quiet in my home now, at 10:15 pm. I miss the sounds of my Chary dog’s breathing, her paws clicking on the floor as she wanders around to stretch her legs or drink some water. I feel the hole that now exists in her absence. She spent almost 17 years with me. And lived multiple lifetimes with me. Only for her to pass away in the most tragic and awful of circumstances while I was away at a photography conference. I am struggling with all the emotions that come with the grief of losing such a faithful companion, on top of the emotions that flood my being for how she passed. It eats away at me, the hole in my heart growing day by day.

I have always struggled with giving grace, as those of you who have been here from the beginning know. I have struggled with forgiveness. And I struggle with accepting the reality that is my life.

These three lessons are what the Universe continues to give me in abundance, so that I may practice them until I have mastered them.

I most definitely have a very long way to go.

Up until very recently, I have countered wrongs that people have done to me with fierce, unapologetic vengeance. If you hurt me, you will also hurt. And it’ll probably be worse for you than it is for me.

But I think I’ve learned that lesson. I no longer care about vengeance. If others wrong me, I now just feel sorrow for them. They are likely so miserable inside. And isn’t that vengeance enough? Knowing just how awful their own internal workings must be? Well, that’s what I have come to embrace. Nothing I do can ever hurt them more than they are already hurting.

So, though I blame others for my Chary baby’s passing, I won’t seek vengeance. Their own internal systems will pay for her loss more than anything I could ever do.

I am not, however, ready to forgive. Nor am I able to fully grasp accepting she is gone. I sometimes hear her whine in the wind, or I wake up in the middle of the night because, in my sleep, I had heard her walking around.

Forgiveness is complex for me. I have discovered that I can only truly, wholly forgive another if I am able to understand them. I couldn’t fully forgive my ex husband for his infidelities in our marriage until I completely understood why he made those choices.

I understand now. I understand infidelity in a whole different light now. And because I understand, I finally have the peace within that comes from letting go of every ounce of anger, hurt, humiliation, and all those other awful feelings that come from being betrayed.

I wonder how people forgive when they lack the understanding of why somebody did what they did?

I wonder how one accepts their reality when they’re in constant shock that this is, in fact, the reality they are living in. I know people who are living in pretty much the worst imaginable reality there could be and they’re not just surviving, they’re thriving, despite the pain that exists.

You know what else confuses me? How is it that I feel absolutely nothing and also absolutely everything all at once? How is that even possible?

I feel a total void most moments of most days. I feel like a zombie, running through the motions, being who I am supposed to be for everybody else, but inside I’m vacant. Well, most of the time.

But then, there are these brief moments that I’m completely UNDONE. I feel EVERYTHING. It washes over me, cold and intense and also, somehow, searing hot, and buries me under the avalanche of emotion. And, man, I am left just EXHAUSTED. Annihilated. Which is all just too much, so then comes the void again, where I fall silent. Because silence is safe. Not feeling is safe. And being safe means surviving.

And that’s one thing I am. A survivor. Despite everything, I survive. Through everything, I survive. For my daughter, I survive.

But, ugh, this way to survival is killing me, too.

The intensity of my emotions is building. It’s getting harder to breathe. I have panic attacks pretty frequently now. I am struggling to stay quiet.

I am struggling.

It’s all becoming too much. Chary passing away in the way that she did is too much to bear. Too much to forgive. Too much to accept.

It has been an anchor pulling me down even deeper. I have been drowning for quite some time – even before I even realized that I was drowning. I am in desperate need of a way to cut this rope, attaching me to the anchor. I need a life preserver. The problem is, I don’t yet have one. I suppose I need to make one for myself.

I just hope I can finish making it in time.