I dont know how people do the things they do. People amaze me everyday. In saying that, Im thinking along the lines of how differently people handle similar situations.
When I last posted, things were very difficult. Not the worst they had been, not the same pain as Ive felt, but pain all the same. It was not the same darkness I was used to, but dark all the same. Grief is a strange thing and how extreme the contrast between this post and my last will be! Prepare yourself haha.
I know many people have suffered much greater loss than I have, so when my grief for my dog came and hit me with the force of a seizmic earthquake I felt kind of, well, embarrassed for how much it hurt me. My chronic way to deal with things is to hold them inside me, turn them over and look at them from all the different ways I can imagine, so i can understand it. Not the best thing to do, but what I do anyway. But grief really is baffling. They say there's steps to loss, like denial, grief, anger, compromise and all this other stuff. But really I don't think you travel through them in stages. I was all over the place, I went from one step to another in different extremes, sometimes in the space of a few minutes or maybe a week. I couldnt make sense of it.
I did not handle my loss well.
To me, my dog being taken from me was like a punishment. I wasnt living up to this godlike ideal in my mind, i wasnt at the same spiritual level or maturity level as my friends, I wasnt supporting myself, I wasnt sane. And all these things I took as reasons to why God was punishing me. Id never say it out loud, because somehow that would make all my judgements upon myself true and my fear that my nature was stained with these unsightly dark things real.
To me, God had already stripped me bare. He'd taken my home in Adelaide, my future as a Veterinarian, my relationship with someone i loved, He'd taken family members home to him too soon, taken my body's strength and functionality and worst of all my mind. Its not fair to think that way, but think that way I did. And all of it in hindsight, I think (im still working out the why), it was what was best for me. In saying that, Im not without a slight tinge of regret though, even now. I still wish I could go back and do things differently often.
Then he gifted me with Barma, who essentially saved my life and gave me back a will to live. And then He took him back. And the darkness I had barely started to break free of began encroaching once more.
So I ran away.
I up and left rather suddenly, to a pretty weird place in all honesty haha. Id tell people where i was going and they'd be like, "where???". I fled Tasmania and my home where I'd hear phantom barks; feel a weight at the end of my bed when there was nothing there. I fled my painful memories and my baby in the ground, to Bendigo to live with my aunt on a farm.
At first it was crazy, I felt the separation from my home as a welcome relief but also with the strange sensation like Id lost some limb on my body.
My dreams were full of thoughts and pictures of home:
My aunt was good, there is plenty to do on a farm and I had something to do everyday, outside, with wind in my hair and breath in my lungs. The stress of the change was good and bad for me physically. I got wrecked lungs and was sick for ages, constantly going to the doctor it seemed, after I first moved and my lungs are still a piece of crap now from it. But I got strong. All my atrophied muscles came back and then some. First time i lifted a hay bale my legs shook and i could barely stand and now im chucking them easy peasy (well not entirely easy peasy, seriously, have you lifted a lucerne bale?? That stuffs heavy!).
It took me a long time to get a job, but eventually, when the timing was right, i got two of them! In the interim, my body started healing and the fresh air cleared my head. I got off medication and started feeling AWAKE. I had animals surrounding me and they help me best. I struggled to fit into my new ward and missed everyone back home sorely. Still do!
My grief for Barma and the people Id lost didnt go. Its like Id forget for a moment and just get caught in the momentum I was gaining, and then suddenly there'd be something, a small memory, a smell, a color and he'd be there in my mind and it'd kick me in the chest. Even as I write this, remembering him hurts. But its a good hurt, because it means I wont forget. And Im so afraid of forgetting. My days have been a constant tug of war between the dark pulling my memories away and me clinging tightly to them, straining to remember. Im afraid one day too many will be lost and ill lose who I am.
I also finally stood up for myself for once in my life. It took a long time, with trembling hands, lowered eyes and a small voice, but I did it. It gave me the power to finally claim back another (rather large) part of me Id lost.
The darkness always threatens and it hovers. I know it waits for its moment. But Im learning what those are and can finally deny it the power to claim me. I do not know if I will ever be truly free, because my creativity comes with a price it seems and every song I write and every painting I paint and every new garden my mind starts to seed is paid for with the black water. But letting it pour out of me in words like this and talking and keeping the world in as realistic light as I can manage (trust me its hard, I paint it so colourfully and fanciful all the time. Its where my mind has always gone 'off with the fairies').
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| Accurate depiction of my brain lol |
I can draw and paint and create alot now, I am starting to feel like my old self again. In saying that, I am not the same and I am sad and glad I am not as I once was but its interesting getting to know who I am on the other side of it.
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| I won something for my art! |
I have two jobs now, one I truly love. I work with animals! I feed and clean and medicate and diagnose and it gives me great joy when Ive worked hard with a beautiful dog or cat and get to see them off to a new family. I feel like that lady off of 'the Help', how she talks about 'her first white baby' and how she raises them up and then has to leave them for a new baby. I kinda feel like that. My first fur baby I raised was a beautiful black 7 month old Kelpie who I met on my first day at work. Everyone said she had crazy eyes, because they were this vivid yellow on jet black. She was so so smart. I really bonded with her and taught her to sit and stay and started teaching her tricks. I wasnt the right home for her though, and she was just what i needed to get my confidence up in the new job. So she went from this crazy, bouncy little thing, to this clever sweet girl who got along with everyone. I remember the day I gave her away to this beautiful new home where I knew shed be so happy. Its so bitter sweet.
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| Experiemented with graphic design, I drew a cartoon of her! |
Im so incredibly blessed. Things are still so uncertain and my mind is flawed still, it cannot take very much. I see blessings now that I didnt see before and I feel a whole new appreciation for ordinary things. I am still sad sometimes and have to have a good cry over my Barma and the things behind me, but for once I can see light where there was darkness. I see goodness where I only feared. I see the world as HF sees it sometimes and it is beautiful indeed. I feel so full of joy over small things and for how far Ive been allowed to come, for how much Ive been served and loved along the way, and still more even now. I do not know what the future holds, but its not a long dark tunnel anymore, but rather open meadow on either side, the sun on my eyelids and wind wrapping around my legs.
Im so happy. Im so free.
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