I guess I have a heart after all
October 13th, 2008Every since my rabbit’s death, I’ve surprised myself at how well I’ve been taking it. Friends would send me condolences by email and by post, and I would just stare at their words and not feel a single thing, like why are they sending me this? Tiggy who?
After a week of this, it started to concern me. Why was I acting like this? I’m not a complete stranger to death. I’ve only ever had one person close to me die, but I’ve never before had to witness the moment where life crossed into death. What was wrong with me? Why was I completely emotionless? Did this mean I just didn’t care about her? What kind of stone cold bitch with no soul was I?
I had two options. Either,
1) I was handling it rationally. My heart was on the same page as my mind: It does no one any good to cry over something you can’t fix. She’s dead. Move on. (Cuts like a knife, but it’s the truth, isn’t it?)
2) I was in denial, and pushing every memory of her away to the secret room in my brain where I hide everything I don’t want to remember.
At first things were going “well”—but after a week and a bit, the truth started coming out in more subtle, less obvious ways. I got uncomfortable in Cats during that scene where the cat haphazardly stumbles around in his old age. And then the dreams started. Not horrific, death-related dreams, but the exact same kind of dreams I had about my grandmother when she died—dreams that involved the recently deceased, perfectly alive as if nothing had happened.
I know myself fairly well. If I’m dreaming about it, it’s bothering me. That secret room I shove my unwanted baggage into? It’s a locked room in my subconscious, and it only opens when I’m unconscious to keep it locked shut. If something this huge that’s bothering me, it’s eventually going to come out somehow if I don’t do anything about it.
And I didn’t.
So it did.
Through my eyeballs.
When I cry, you can pretty much equate it to a rubber band snapping—you can stretch it and stretch it, but eventually, even the most flexible of rubber bands have to snap. I have a surprisingly high threshold for emotional stress, but if I don’t find a way to release the pressure on that rubber band, it will snap.
So it did.
The scene: My mother was talking to me, and as I often do, I was ignoring her. I was in the kitchen, and she was passing through the foyer. To get my attention, she decided to open the front door and pretend the dog had escaped. All I heard from her? The door open, “Winkey! get back here!” and then, “He’s crossed the street! Go after him!”
Fear tore through me. My dog has crossed the busy street we live on four times now. He could have been killed every single time. He never comes when I call him. My cat got hit by a car on this street. He died. I can’t lose another pet.
I raced from the kitchen to the front door, only to see my mother holding my dog with the door open, and my father standing next to her. He was safe. I walked back to the kitchen, my blood still pumping. I though I was okay. I made it to the sink, fell against the counter, and then I just bawled.
Bawled, because I miss Tiggy.
Bawled, because I’m a horrible pet owner.
Bawled, because I love my dog like my baby.
Bawled, because I can’t lose another pet.
Nothing about that was rational. My dog was safe. Nothing had happened. But for a moment there, I didn’t know. Unless you’ve ever been in that kind of a situation, you have no idea what it feels like to be bolting down the pavement after your runaway dog or helplessly watching your baby dodge through cars knowing that the last time you saw him might be the last time you ever see him alive.
They say everything happens for a reason. Following that train of thought, tonights impromptu waterworks has brought forth two things: a realization, and a decision.
The realization: I guess I have a heart after all.
The decision: The pup is definitely going back to school.
