Not Quite Betty Crocker

My dog is very sick.  Ill, actually*.  A muscle in his heart is progressively deteriorating due to a rare condition that we can’t fix, not permanently and possibly not even temporarily. 

It’s been a very rough day.

We are snowed in, my dog had to spend the night at the vet clinic because we couldn’t brave the roads to go get him, and he’s going to die much sooner than we’d anticipated. 

I don’t want to raise another puppy!  I want the full decade out of the work we did with this one!  This is unfair!

~~~

Early in my relationship with my husband, I told him I didn’t want to rely on him, because then what if he left me, what would I do then?  His reply: “you’d adjust right back.”

Why yes, yes, I would, wouldn’t I?  I’d adjust right back just as quickly as I adjusted at first.  So why was it so scary?

I’ve been struggling with how to reconcile being someone who can take care of herself with being someone who is and has a partner, but I’m not sure I have to, not in a broad sense, anyway.  I can be whichever I need to be in the moment.

I’d just left my dog at the specialist’s office.  I had to walk away from my pup’s imploring eyes, feeling like I’d violated his trust by asking him to follow me into that scary exam room – and then leaving him.  Why did I have to deal with this alone?

Because I can.  My husband couldn’t make it so I do this alone. I have lived in a life where I had only myself to rely on.  I know I am capable.

But wait.  I don’t have to do every moment alone…

*switch*

So I called my husband, told him how haunted I was by Indy’s fear, how I wished he’d ignored me altogether because at least then I wouldn’t feel like I abandoned him.  I asked my husband to join me in picking Indy up later because if the news was bad, I didn’t want to have to be the strong one.  I am the emotional one, remember?

*switch*

But then my husband couldn’t make it.  The weather was terrible.  I had to rescue my husband from an aborted drive home (me: SUV; him: Ford Focus) but couldn’t get to my dog.  I was driving in an ice storm surrounded by idiot drivers on my way to get my husband and wishing I wasn’t the one who had to do the saving.  I sucked it up and made it to pick him up.

And then I couldn’t switch.  I got stuck.  I couldn’t go back to leaning, being stuck in my resentment over having to stand.

~~~

Last night I tried snowboarding for the first time and I had a great time.  I was very good at coasting and staying perpendicular to the ground and falling well, but I got stuck when it came to transitions.  They scare me.  I can go straight; I can turn this way; I can turn that way; I can’t link them together.

The difficult part about transitioning is that it feels awkward, unknown, unstable.  You have to let go of something you know and leap toward something you don’t, even if only by lifting your toes.  Scary.

And in much the same way, I have a hard time letting go of my unhappiness at having to go it alone.  Who knew letting go of resentment was going to take the same kind of courage as throwing my body down a snowy hill on a piece of plastic?

Apparently I believe in perpetuity, wanting to always be one thing or the other.  But my dog -- the puppy I swore was the last I’d raise for a decade, the dog not even two years old, the sweet puppy who drove us nuts and taught us lots already – only has 12 – 18 months to live, if we’re lucky. 

Perpetuity is bullshit.  It’s time for me to get better at transitions.

~~~

*Complete heart block with Persistent Atrial Standstill and early heart failure with a ventricular escape rhythm, bradycardia, and a significant systolic murmur.