is when you're crippled inside - John Lennon
I'm caught in a really weird place right now. As I mentioned in my last entry, my dog is on his last days. He's been having really labored breathing. I don't think he's sleeping due to the difficulty in breathing. I know he's not eating and he's losing a lot of weight. I took him out the other day and his collar is at least 3/4" - 1" too loose.
And when I took his leash out, he gingerly rose from his bed, slowly walked to me and sat patiently. His old, normal self would have been jumping and excited and fighting the zoomies. This is not his normal self. I think it's all one big circle of pain. He can't breathe, so he's tired. He's tired, so he doesn't eat. He doesn't eat, so he loses weight. He loses weight, so he can't move.
I tried to ask him to hang on a little longer. My family is really geographically fractured right now. My son is traveling in Europe, returning this Tuesday. My daughter is a counselor at a camp in the Sierras all summer. My wife and other son were in Washington DC last week, and my other daughter was house sitting. It was just him and me for a bit of time, which I appreciated, but I really wished that he'd hang on to give the rest of the family a chance to say goodbye to our dear friend of nearly 10 years.
But honestly, I don't think he's going to make it. I hate to see him in pain and struggling to complete the most basic of tasks. But here's the kicker - I'm crippled inside. I'm having the most difficult time.... feeling anything. A few years ago, my depression was starting, so I went on anti-depressants. Then about two years after that, it got really bad, so my doc increased my dosage. Things have been great since then. But I may have inadvertently been overmedicating because I just have the hardest time feeling or expressing emotion.
Thus far, it has served me really well. No more road rage, no more yelling at kids, no more losing my temper, no more deep drastic periods of depression. But the pendulum swings both ways. I haven't had any real moments of joy, no elation, no extreme happiness. That's not to say that I'm not happy, because I am. But I just don't get those swings between high-highs and low-lows... and that's part of life, right? Sometimes you're up and sometimes you're down. Not me. I'm status quo all the time.
And I hate myself for it right now. I want to feel sad. I want to feel pain at the thought of losing the only unconditional love I have in my life. I want to mourn the fact that dog likely won't make it to the weekend. But I can't. I just can't.
God love him. In his nearly ten years with me, he:
- started a kitchen fire
- chewed through a barn door
- attacked a dog tied to a baby stroller
- barked at animals on the TV incessantly
- ate countless pounds of chocolate
- got into the garbage almost weekly
- peed inside the house all the time
- was tormented by smaller dogs and cats
- was incapable of being around other dogs
- would sneak onto the couch when no one was home (but he didn't know I have cameras!)
- would steal meat defrosting in the sink
- would get car sick every time we were in the car (which he eventually outgrew)
All that said, he also would:
- be excited to see me every day I came home as if he hadn't seen me in weeks
- be the only one to greet me at the door, regardless of time, when I came home from a work trip
- know exactly when I needed him to cuddle me
- have the funniest way of sitting, almost human-like
- watch you with curiosity when you cooked in the kitchen
- love to sunbathe for hours on end
- be obsessed with fetching a tennis ball in the back yard for as long as you would throw it
- walk backwards for a solid block while he eyeballed other dogs while on a walk
- open closed doors to the point that I had to child lock them
- figure out how to open child locked doors
- learn how to open cupboards, eat entire loaves of bread, then close the cupboard as to hide any evidence
I will remember him fondly.
a video of him setting my kitchen on fire:
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