To Be Loved By a Dog

A few evenings ago, exhausted by my life's tendency to throw things at me in a barrage, I found myself sitting with long complicated heartache yet again. I'd neglected to take The Dog out to do anything that day, so I settled on a trip to the park by the river. I've felt conflicted about using this park, since it's been identified as a generations-old sacred place of Minnesota's native peoples, thus will soon close as a dog park. There's a spot where large ancient oak trees stand in their strength, just before the land slopes down to a sandbar; the place feels sacred, there's something intangible but felt there. I recalled recently reading about a native practice of giving your burdens to the water. I'd been contemplating one last trip. And so we went. 

The Dog was overjoyed, of course. We walked among the trees, then worked our way to the sandbar. It was quiet, late in the evening on a warm night. There's a solemnity to that spot, when no one is around and the sun has gone away, the sky soft cotton candy hues. I perched myself on a boulder and watched the water, and cried. The grief I'm simultaneously so weary of carrying and so wary to feel, had space to emerge. 

My sweet dog, whereas everyone else knows me for my happiness, he's always known me as something of a sad girl. His breed being quite sensitive and tuned into the emotional frequencies around them, I raised him on the words: "Mama's just a little sad." He has snuggled on my lap, laid across my chest, and gently, sweetly licked tears from my cheeks until I can't help but laugh a little. As I sat on the boulder by the river, he looked at me with that face that says "What next?" So, I gave him the old familiar cue. First he tried to consider jumping on my lap, but decided to lay down on the rocky shore beside my feet, sphinx-like, to keep watch of course. After a few minutes, I knew he'd been patient with me, so I rose to continue our walk along the sand. 

Not long down the shore, probably two hundred feet ahead, a woman was stopped with her back to us. Her children and dog had carried on, far off in the distance. I noticed The Dog notice her, as a little pep sprung into his step, his tail perked and whipping serpentine as only it does when he trots. He made his way up to the woman, who stood still looking at her phone. He stopped to the left of her and looked up in delighted anticipation as if to say, "Hello friend, I am here if you would like to pet me." Not everyone understands this (for some reason), including this woman. Instead, awoken from her trance, she realized she'd fallen behind her children and walked away without petting The Dog. He felt something about it, what I can't be sure. He ran up behind her to the other side and cut in front of her a few feet, barking a few happy barks at her as he went, then bolted back towards me increasing in speed. He loves when I egg him on, so I cheered on his approach and clapped for his speed. He blew past me and looped back around tearing off in the direction of the woman again. This was a phenomenon. Something I haven't seen him do in many years, he'd gotten the "zoomies". He looped the woman again, and from what I could see she laughed. He came barreling back to me, clearly exuberant to be running. Whatever his motive was, I couldn't be sure, I could only conclude it must've been to make me laugh. 

To me, that was special enough on its own, knowing so clearly that my dog was trying to brighten my spirits. Then tonight I read something that made me think more about this silly little moment. I read that a herding dog's instincts are to group animals together and bring them back to the handler. Instantly I pictured his looping on the sand, and it occurred to me: when I was feeling sadness over love lost, this dog tried to bring someone to me. 

I often wonder how I got so lucky as to have such a pure hearted little creature to share life with. To sit with me through many griefs, to start my days with quiet, pleasant joy of loving snuggles and uncontrollable kisses, and to be welcomed home with excitement likely to go unmatched by any human I'll ever know. 

To be loved by a dog, an extraordinary dog. What a gift.

loving you like this

I don’t know what to do
with loving you
like this,
I don’t know where to put it
when it has nowhere to go. 

Do I bury it deep inside of me,
and hope something else good grows from it?
How might I eradicate it from me,
like a surgeon?
then place it in a jar like a specimen —
but what container could hold it?
when that isn’t what it’s meant for,
I can barely hold it
though it came from me,
up from the dirt and ashes in me
saw your light and reached,
in slow and steady stretches
I never knew this is what loving someone was —
I thought it was always fire,
like the steady flame waiting
found itself in fuel,
and love ravaged and burned,

Though neither is it a flood,
no rush of dense and heavy drink,
filling to the very brim and overflowing,

It isn’t consuming or engulfing,
love comes steadily.
When in the light, basks, and warms,
in microscopic changes,
a slight expansion and synthesis,
so that, one day,
where it wasn’t
now there it is.

though I hold it, it is both mine and yours,
you don’t know it, but I know it tenderly,
you may never know it, but still
it is a gift to have grown and bittersweet sadness to carry,
loving you
like this.

Struck

The problem was, my heart got so bruised, so broken I had to put my vulnerability on lockdown. Even in the worst of the pain and confusion, I knew I didn't want to keep it that way. And I missed the companionship, so I guarded myself and sought relationships I didn't need to actually invest in. Relationships that were guaranteed dead-ends. 

Much like those serendipitous conversations that strike up with your seat neighbor on an airplane. A brief, beautiful bit of humanity in an interaction that feels so simplified – a kind of ordinary magic. And yet, when the plane lands, you don't exchange information, you might not even know each other's name. As if the agreed-upon course of the context, you exit the plane, walk down the jetway and each join the swirling sea of strangers. No matter how profound it may have felt in the moment, you may never think of the person or the conversation again, even though you carry it with you. 

This era turned out to be exposure therapy, teaching me that not every ending is earth-shattering. But it also brought to the surface a sense of being taken for granted and devalued. And in the last of the string of such relationships, I began to snap out of it. I could see through the facade I'd built for myself, that I'd been choosing supposedly-safe relationships when in reality I ended up getting hurt because they didn't really care about me. And I didn't want to tolerate being disposable anymore – that was the very thing that shook my core in the first place!

When I began to realize the relationship I was in was one where I was merely a stand-in, that's when someone strikingly different crossed my path. Someone rare. And although I try not to let myself entertain the thought, I think it ruined me. It brought me back to what it feels like to not just be a buoy someone clings to for a while. The magic of the airplane seatmate who you were meant to know not just encounter. I was caught by surprise how clear it was; a grounded feeling that I was wary to trust. 

But life had its way as it does... So, I find myself back at a familiar yet distinctly different place, wondering "Now what do I do?" Only this time I'm not heartbroken, I'm...struck. Struck by the feeling of that reverberating in me, and doubtful that it's something you can simply hunt for a replica of and find. That's not how it works. Maybe for some of us life will only entail brief airplane connections. Having magic you get to hold onto might be the myth of the cinematic happy-ending, granted to some by dumb luck. I'm sort of left waiting to feel differently; to be open to the possibility that special could be more than something I had for a few moments in my life. More than a figment of the imagination to hopelessly long will realize. That I'll even know what it is, should I see it. 

They Won’t Break You

I’ve been accused of being an over-thinker by, like, many people. And they’re not wrong. I’m also a deeply-feeling person who observes and absorbs a lot as I move about in the world. My neurodivergent brain, though frustrating at times, has its gifts too, like super-strength pattern recognition. “Don’t overanalyze it,” I’ve heard countless times in my life. “Sure,” I think, “right.” 

So, I have the simple job of sorting out when my emotions have propelled me into overthinking, versus when I’m processing to make sense out of my experience after the emotions have settled.

Something jarred me emotionally this week and I jumped to immediately thinking “Here we go again, of course! I can’t do this again; I cannot handle this again,” about the inevitable emotions. The strange thing was, the emotions came and went, and my mind resumed the “I can’t, I can’t” scripts, only I didn’t feel like they were true anymore. Now I actually noticed them and they were so clearly just fears. 

It struck me how much more emotionally resilient I felt than I realized I could, yet that the narratives I formed years ago while slogging through the most challenging emotional weight I’ve ever endured, those still tried to protect me from something I don’t actually need protecting from anymore.

I am still a flawed, messy, and wounded human, but I’m certainly proof that therapy works; digging into yourself works. 

And if I had to sum up my most valuable lesson it’s the importance of the practice of sitting with what I feel. There have been many times I thought that what I was feeling would break me, I know now precisely because that’s how it felt. I had to change the story I tell myself to “it feels so heavy” and stop entertaining the thought that I would break. Big waves of emotion still come, you just get better at riding them and keeping your head above water.

Devour It All

My grandma is nearing the end of her [very long] life. We were never especially close, so for me seeing her body slowly dying is strangely humbling and grounding. What I mean is: it gave me some perspective on life, to be watching hers end. It brought some reflection and oddly gave me hope about my own life. If I were to have 60+ more years of it, what would I want that time to be about?

My grandma had always been someone who liked what she liked, wanted what she wanted, and was very put together — things I’ve not easily done in my life thus far. But she’ll also be remembered for being supportive, kind, and loving — things I value and aim my life toward. It stirred something in me, sitting with her while her state is so different than I’ve ever known her, and giving her the love and kindness I can right now. I haven’t even fully put my finger on it, but I left feeling a sort of poignancy. She lived this interesting, at times exciting, and certainly rich life, though not without its heavy burdens. And all of that is hers. 

Maybe what it brought to the surface in me is my philosophy on what life is about and that is two things: our experience and the relationships we have, where we make an impact. Those that grieve are proof of the latter, but so very much unknown is the former. 

My grandpa had left impressions on my life, pleasant and silly little reminders of him to glimmer in the mundane moments – "coffee doesn't taste good unless you spill a little" and the whimsy of defying physics by snagging your belt loop on a door handle. In spite of being madly in love with each other until he died, my grandma went about life so differently, so what reminds me of her is a bit different. She loved sweets, but was unfortunately always under the pressure of being a woman and measuring her choices. At family gatherings, it was always the brownie. She’d shyly have half of one…and always come back for the second half. And so I always think of her when I have a brownie, I say to myself “Eat the whole thing.”

In a way, that’s the lesson I take from her loving what she loved and wanting what she wanted: in life, devour it all. 

It Started in June

The body really does remember what we ourselves forget…

Tuesday, right away and all day I was anxious in this certain, specific way that usually means there’s a pent-up emotion that needs to come out. It’s frankly a bit miserable because I just have to ride it out until it releases. Usually it’s not something that’s in the forefront of my mind, instead a sneak attack of some repeat feeling that’s snowballed. 

I went to bed with it still churning, not letting my mind turn off to sleep. Thoughts of last summer came to mind, first memories that were good, then ways I felt so alone. But then intermixed was this grief from several summers ago. 

I recalled sharply how shaken I was. I co-opted my parents on a North Shore trip for a change of scenery. That night, I did my best to sob quietly on the floor on the mattress from the roll away bed we had to order to the hotel room. I was scared to be alone with such immense pain, it felt like it was swallowing me. 

That grief was so deep it took years to feel some semblance of normalcy. So intense it still reemerges with pieces I haven’t sat with, like the heaviness of that night on that mattress on the floor. So intense because I had trusted someone so much who utterly shocked me. Here and there I’ve been remembering the crazy-making of that time. How not myself I was, trying so hard to make sense of a thing that just wouldn’t make sense. 

A thing that all started in late June, several summers ago. And my body remembered before I could. 

Every Time

Every time I tell myself it's the last time. Every time I feel like I can't survive it again. 

Eventually though, my relentless heart yearns. Somehow it keeps believing that something good is out there for me, even though time and time again, being hopeful only gets me hurt. And each time it makes it harder to continue to hope. 

People will say kind things, like they believe that a good heart won't go to waste...but I don't. Because I have given everything they could want, they'll say, and still toss me aside, let me go, push me away. I find myself more afraid to keep hoping that my heart – that I could be chosen, than I am of the pain of being unwanted. 

Because it's not about not being good enough or believing I'm unlovable. If I'm honest, it seems entirely random. Coincidental. I don't believe in fate or destiny, or things being meant to be. I think we all just collide. And I'm increasingly unsure, each time, if I can keep trying to collide with someone in hopes that maybe they will choose me.