These gorgeous pups do not live with us. They were two dogs that Lucy would walk for Maggie whenever she was out of town. She walked them pretty often and, especially during my recovery, I'd tag along. The dogs would eventually come and stay with us a couple times while Maggie was away. It was comical, these two big pups bounding around our tiny apartment.
And I fell in love.
I hadn't even realized it until Maggie said they were moving. Even as I write this, I can't help but get emotional. Occasionally, I'll drive by their old house (like I did today) because I miss them.
To describe what they did for me is to describe the rain on your face or the wind in your hair. If you've ever had a dog, you might understand how a pupper's presence can change so much. How it can improve a situation.
Is it weird to have fallen in love with someone else's dogs?
I'm weird, I guess.
You all know about my hysterectomy as a remedy for the heavy and constant bleeding I'd been experiencing for nearly a year. Leading up to it, I was angry, depressed, anemic, and feeling isolated.
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| Feb 2018: We're all smiling at the end of a celebratory night. You suck it up so people don't see. |
A few weeks into recovery, I began to feel this deep sadness. A well
of doom. I would cry and cry. I thought I was going crazy, and it was
complicating everything. I didn't know how to connect with my family,
who I'm actually close to. We'd have barbeques
or beach days and I wouldn't know what to say to anyone. My marriage got ugly. I
needed my husband and I didn't know how to ask for help.
You all know this story. I started seeing a therapist (whom I love). We went to couple's counseling-- loved THAT therapist, too-- and we're still happily the Boorish-Heathens.
But therapy doesn't solve your problems. You still have to do the work. And it's hard work. You have to face the shit you've probably been avoiding your whole life, and it's likely to rub you raw and disrupt your life. It'll transform your relationships because you're transforming.
So these dogs, Koko and Zazu, they helped me do the ugly work. They've seen me crying. They've seen me bundled up under a blanket, shivering. I've been on walks with them where I was breathless and weak. They never seemed to give a flying fuck, but they were always so excited to see me. We'd walk up to the house and they were already looking out the windows.
Lucy would open the door, and out Koko would bound, her big, sturdy
body, so reassuring and real.
In my limited experience, being with a dog when you're feeling like shit is like medicine. It's like they're immune to what ails you, and absorb your pain and filter it back out into the world a harmless thing. They help you bear the burden and improve the environment at the same time. And you just have to love them in return.
Koko and Zazu are not my pups, and I love them like I love my own Rascal. Koko and Zazu are not my pups, and yet they helped me through a perfectly shitty time. My own perfect shitty misery.
Maggie, we may not know each other very well, but for you I have so much gratitude and love. I'm always kind of amazed when things work out in such a cosmically beneficial and seemingly random way. Like you and Meredith and me and Meredith and you and Lucy and how our needs seemed to converge at that time. I didn't know I'd love your pups and I didn't know they'd help me, and I don't really have the words to tell you what that means.
So much mahalo to you and Koko and Zazu.
