Dog Love, And Love Of Dogs.

Dogs have been a comfort and a joy in my life from as far back as I can remember. In my childhood, when people frightened and hurt me, dogs were a source of love. 

When I came home from school, and stepping through the door, felt the air tense with anger, and my stomach clenched in fear, for the beatings that I knew were coming, the dog was a soft and quiet presence. I would drop to my knees, and put my arms around her, holding her warmth against me, trying to gain courage with the love she gave.

When I escaped outdoors, down into the marsh behind the house of my adoptive parents, the dog was a sentry on the path ahead. I felt perfect safety, even when in the tall grasses and reeds that grew down there, all I could catch sight of, was a glimpse of waving tail held high.

My dogs have been a constant in my adult life, when the rest of my world was in chaos because of alcoholism. They've been companions, entertainers, friends, comforters.

Our little male dog, who has a tumour on his foreleg, has made me laugh like no dog before him. He was my introduction to dachshunds, and what comedians they are. When he was a tiny puppy, he was the same size as a plastic rat toy our cat loved to attack, and the same color - pure gleaming black from nose to tail tip.

When he was 5 or 6, the first grey hairs began to appear around his muzzle, and I thought that was far too early, since he had all the energy and bounce of a very young dog. The grey has slowly advanced along his nose until now he has the dog equivalent of quite a full mustache. But he still has the energy and bounce of a young dog - one vet suggested that the other dog in the mix was quite likely a terrier of some sort.

Last night, I was sitting on the bed telling my husband what the vet had said. A rush of emotion made me suddenly burst out with a wail of, "It's too soon!"

My husband said quietly, "It's always too soon with dogs."

And that is how it is, and ever will be. This is one of those "accept the things I cannot change" parts of life - dogs die long before we are ready. No matter what their age, or state of infirmity, we can't believe that it has come time to let them go.

I have tried my best to be a loving friend, and give my dogs a swift and painless death. But I realise that I expected to have our little dog for years yet, and I haven't even begun to deal with the reality of his aging. I've been in complete denial.

A program friend wrote: "I actually use my dog as an inspiration about how to live…..to try to capture her boundless capacity to live life to the fullest, each and every day."

For some of us, they will never be "just a dog."

Lonely.

I miss my sponsor. I'm going to drive over to have lunch with her in a couple of days, and I'm really looking forward to it. I miss that feeling of being known for all my good points and bad, and loved anyway.

It's hard being new, feeling my way through all the new relationships. I've met some amazingly wonderful people here, and for that I'm grateful, but nothing can compare with the comfort of being known, of not having to explain. I'm feeling lonely today.

I know this will pass, and I'll regain the feeling of comfort inside my own skin, but today I feel mournful, and a bit lost. I've learned in Al-Anon that this happens now and then; I don't have to panic because I'm not bursting with delight for the day. I've learned to allow myself my sad feelings, not to try to shove them down out of sight, or deny their existence. I can feel these feelings, and survive, it doesn't mean that anything dreadful is going to happen.
It is what it is. So it goes. Tomorrow is another day.

Frustration.

I had a frustrating day today. It was fine as long as I was in my own company, it was when I was around the alcoholic that my day began to go downhill. I had to work hard at letting go, and keeping my mouth firmly closed, no matter how many statements or behaviors meant to provoke, were displayed.

Some days, I can love the person, but I sure don't like them much. Some days, detaching is an act of will, and I must choose it repeatedly. I want to protest, to defend, to explain, to ask the other person not to treat me this way, but experience has taught me, that when the alcoholic is in the kind of mood they were today, any of those choices will only extend my discomfort, by giving them the chance to play head games. The only sane option is to tolerate it while I must, and as soon as I can, excuse myself.

I hate head games. A couple of hours of this sort of thing, and I can feel myself withdrawing away behind my mental barricades,  pulling up the drawbridge, flooding the moat, and sealing up the castle for a lenthy siege. It resets my trust meter back to zero, every damn time.

I've explained until I'm blue in the face that this choice of theirs cannot, for me, be shrugged off so lightly by the next day. When I detach to that degree, I am affected. Even with all that I have learned in Al-Anon, I haven't yet figured out how to detach to the degree necessary to tolerate the behavior, without also detaching emotionally from the person themselves.

When I'm withdrawn emotionally like that, weeks can go by with me feeling a sort of distant disinvolvement; I may appear to be sitting in the same room, making noises of acknowledgement as the alcoholic speaks, but my real self is far, far away. I disengage from them completely. It becomes a surface thing. Tomorrow, they'll be back in a good mood, and want me to be there with them. But I'll be miles away, watching though binoculars.

Children...and Parents.

I was in a department store yesterday, and witnessed something that I haven't been able to forget - a small incident in daily life, but the gratutitous cruelty of it was, and is, disturbing to me.

A mother and small girl, maybe 5-6, were waiting in line at the top of the down escalator. When it was their turn, the mother stepped on, but the little girl hesitated, she was afraid. She called to her mother, but the mother wouldn't even turn to look at her, just said "Oh well, I'm going, I'll see you at home."
The little girl cried out with the beginning of fear in her voice, her mother responded "You'll have to find your own way home," and the child fell to her knees weeping, real terror in her face and voice.
A woman waiting in line behind her knelt down, introduced herself and comforted her, saying she would help the girl go down the stairs if she could do that, and help her find her mummy? Meanwhile, the mother wouldn't even turn to look, just kept going, reached the bottom, and walked away, leaving her child weeping in the compassionate arms of a stranger.

Seeing a child in that place of anxiety and fear, saddens me. I had so much of those two emotions when I was a small child. Panic in a child's voice slams me in my chest, and catches in my throat, with a power that never seems to dim, no matter how far I get away from my own childhood in time.

Little vignettes such as this, bring home to me a truth I'd rather not face - there are many more children struggling through their childhood in the same terror and sorrow that I experienced.

I say a prayer for that little girl, in the hope she has someone with loving arms to gather her up when she is feeling most abandoned by those who should protect her. Sometimes the only way I can deal with this sort of thing is to do that, pray for the child, and then say the first two lines of the Serenity Prayer, to calm my own distress.

Waiting It Out.

When I was in my teens, any "negative" feeling aroused such an agitation within me that I'd take some frantic impulsive foolhardy action, anything to try to relieve the feeling. After I'd lived with active alcoholism in my first marriage for quite a few years, I'd shut my feelings down to the point that life had to be pretty stressful for me to feel much of anything at all, so when I did, it was for good reason - something awful had happened.
Barring that, I lived most of my time in a state of comfortable numbness. I didn't feel bad, but I didn't feel good - I didn't feel.

I thought, when I did think about it at all, that this was a pretty satisfactory coping mechanism. (This demonsrates how far gone into the insanity of co-dependence I was.) That numb state saved me a lot of pain. I also couldn't enjoy myself, but that didn't happen very often anyway, so hey, it was a trade-off, and one I was willing to make.

When the great thaw of my feelings began, I had no way of coping with them. As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, to use the term often used for very young babies, I couldn't "self-soothe." I could wind myself up, I just couldn't wind myself back down.

When I finally got up the nerve to ask for help with this at a meeting, the overwhelming majority of replies were in favour of hard physical exercise, while repeating one of the Slogans, or Step One, or The Serenity Prayer, as a way to block the obsessive thinking. I was very doubtful about this as a suggestion, but what did I have to lose? I was also advised to take action in the beginning of the feeling, rather than waiting until I was in full anxiety mode.

I remember getting myself and my dog ready for a walk, while my hands shook, and I felt an unhappiness that I envisioned as a tsunami that was going to wash down, sweep me off my feet and take me somewhere I didn't want to go. I had been numbed out for years by that point, and feelings were truly terrifying - they felt like a loss of control.

My dog and I walked and walked and walked that evening - she thought this was great, we went about 5 times as far as we usually did, and I somehow, without noticing it, began to relax, and drifted from a state of repeating "God grant me serenity" while trying to regulate my breathing, to a place I'd never have believed possible under the circumstances - calm, and relaxed.

I only realised this when it dawned upon me that I was admiring the various gardens we were passing, and that the knot in my stomach had disappeared.

Over the years, I've learned to self-soothe. I've learned what not to do, if I want to maintain my serenity, and what to do if my serenity is disturbed by my responses to life.

I've learned that I will have times when all I can do, is work my program, and wait the feeling out. I'm having one of those times the last few days. I don't get myself stressed out, worrying about, "What does this mean, that I'm feeling this?" In some instances, I can easily find a reason for my feelings; other times I can't. It isn't important. I can accept without knowing.

In the last week, everywhere I look, I'm seeing good people dying before their time - ones I know personally - my neighbour, and strangers to me - the guard at the Holocaust Museum.

I feel sad. That's acceptable. I don't have to fix it. I can allow it, and wait it out. This too shall pass.