Above all else, I fear powerlessness the most.
//3:36am; current listening: nothing
My family's dog died last night. I never thought I'd say this about a dog, but she was complicated. I don't think I have ever seen a living creature love anything as much as she loved my father. She loved him so much it stressed her out. She thought it was her duty to protect him, to a point that bringing anybody new into the house was a whole thing. Several of my friends were afraid of her because of how fiercely she protected our house. She also had a high prey drive, which meant that she had two pretty bad run-ins with our cat (who was there first), and she killed my mother's bird. She bit several people over the course of her life. And, as bad as it sounds, she didn't really have much of an excuse for any of that. Since she was a pitbull, people assumed that she was a rescue, that she had been abused by her previous owners and we were kind enough to take her in and try to smooth out her rough edges, but such was not the case. We got her when she was a puppy. She never starved, or was left outside, or was expected to fight. She was born with the belief that it was her duty to protect.
And she was also a goofy, ridiculous dog. She would try to attack the hose every time my father turned it on. She had to be tucked into her pile of blankets under her bed just right. On hot days, if you took her on a walk, she would simply flop down on the ground and refuse to move. She was kind of a drama queen, if I'm being honest, but in the best way. She wasn't super lovey-dovey, but I loved scratching under her chin before she went to sleep. She was a scene stealer in the documentary about my father, she was briefly internet famous, and one time, I tried recording scream vocals and she started barking along with it. That was the kind of dog she was. She wasn't my dog, not really, but she was a huge part of the family. Of course she was.
About two years into us having her, my mother said something fascinating to me: "I think we were supposed to have her. I don't think anyone else would be able to handle her." And I think she's right. Because we trained her. We muzzled her when we had to. There were many things she did, from biting people to killing my mother's bird, that would be the last straw for many people. But my father kept her. We sort of just lived with it. In some ways, that completely breaks my heart. Because everything I've described, the good and the bad, was simply this dog's nature. We were meant to have her and we were meant to lose her. I think we gave her the best life she could have possibly had--she spent most of her days sleeping in my dad's chair in his office, or hanging out with him on the roof. She got a great big walk in the morning, and on the weekends, my dad would take her into the woods. Almost every night, she got a big soup bone that she'd chew the marrow out of, and at any given time, there were at least two people in the house who loved her very much, who tried to understand her and tried to forgive her. Maybe it doesn't sound that deep, but I'm writing about this right now and I'm just so fucking sad about it.
I was certainly not her favorite family member. Dogs are a lot of work, and she was not my dog. But I keep thinking back to how when I first moved home from college, I was afraid of a lot of things. Some of my paranoia was unfounded, but it came from a very real place. I spent months worried that there was a chance a particular person was going to break into the house and try to hurt me. But I knew that as long as this dog was there, I was safe. She would protect me. She wouldn't even question it. She would just do that. That isn't something most people have with anyone. That isn't something I'd ask of anyone. But I had it with her. And it made those months so much more bearable. She never knew that, and she never can know that. But it means the world to me.
My family doesn't do pet ethuanasia. Pretty much every pet we've ever had died in our living room, in a comfy bed, with at least one person by their side. My mother, bless her, sat vigil beside this dog's predecessor, despite the fact that she had no particular connection with him. It's for several reasons. The first is that my father is traumatized by the way his father used to handle dying pets: taking them out back and putting them out of their misery, though I doubt he'd ever admit that. The second is that pets hate the vet, and spend most of their lives afraid of it. How awful would it be to be taken there to die? I don't know. It just seems strange.
But she died at the vet. You must understand, she wasn't very old. Certainly more than halfway through her projected lifespan, but only by a year or two. So, yesterday, she was clearly very sick, and at my mother's insistence, my father took her to the vet. The vet ran some tests, and said it would probably be best to leave her overnight for observation. We all thought that something a little weird was going on, but that ultimately, she'd be fine. That was the last update I got from my dad. My mother was worried that she might have heart failure because of how sudden her decline was, but my dad told us that her vitals had stabilized and her blood pressure had gone back to normal-ish. She died a few hours after my dad left her there. He didn't know that was going to be the last time he saw her. Of course he didn't. If he had, he would have asked for some painkillers from the vet and brought her home.
Side note, I hate vets, but that's a rant for another day.
I hope she knew how much my dad loved her. I hope she knew that if he had known that was her last night, he would have brought her home and stayed with her until she passed on. I hope she knew how much we all loved her.
I've spent my whole life terrified of what happens when you die, mostly because I'm scared that God or the universe or whatever is out there thinks I'm a bad person. If she had the capacity for that, she never had to worry about that. If we go anywhere, I know she's going to a good place.
All of that is to say, rest easy girl. You've earned it.
//12:17am; current listening: TO LONDON OR THE LAKE by NIGHT SINS
Sometimes I feel deeply disconnected from the people I care about. Not because I feel like I don't have anything in common with them, but because I think there's a part of me that cannot accept that they care about me too, even if there is evidence to the contrary.
//1:21am; current listening: NYMPHS FINDING THE HEAD OF ORPHEUS by NICOLE DOLLANGANGER
I think everyone has at least heard of the idea of "revenge bedtime procrastination"--basically the idea that people willfully stay up super late despite the fact they have things to do in the morning. It is supposed to be one of those things borne from late stage capitalism. I used to do it all the time when I worked at my old job. I'd have an 8am shift and go to bed at 3am, knowing full well I'd feel like absolute dogshit in the morning. Doing that kind of made sense to me at the time, because I was so fucking busy all the time. If I wasn't in class, I was at work. If I wasn't at work, I was in class. You know the drill.
I was desperate for just a few hours where I was doing something simply because I wanted to. I don't really have that issue anymore. Plenty of time for myself and all of that. And yet...it is 1:38am and I should have started getting ready for bed three hours ago, because I have class in the morning. And I did plenty """"""""for myself""""""" today. I went for a walk last night because one of my friends called me and I kind of embarassed myself while I was on the phone with them because I got startled by a ten foot skeleton decoration that someone put up in the neighborhood. They already know I scare pretty easily (ironically enough), but still, not a great look. Anyways, I love it when houses go all out for Halloween, because it just makes me feel so nostalgic--I grew up in a neighborhood full of that. So, tonight I decided to go for a walk around 8pm tonight to get some photos of the skeleton thing.
I'm kind of obsessive about getting my 10k steps in every day, but I do genuinely enjoy walking around any neighborhood at night. Most of the places I've lived had somewhere nice to walk, a lot of those two story houses that look like something out of that one house from the American Football album, a lot of big open streets. This is by no means a unique observation, but sometimes there's something really soothing about feeling like you're the only person in a place. I don't know why. It just is. All of that is to say that I ended up walking around my neighborhood and listening to music tonight. It was nice. It was also, and I cannot emphasize this enough, a thing I was doing for myself.
There are people in my life tht tell me I need to take a break, take time for myself, do some "self care" or whatever. I hear them. I really do. But a lot of the time, I fear that I don't actually need to, because I am not actually exerting that much energy by socializing or going to school or anything like that. I don't actually do that much for my friends. I just hang out with them. I don't work that hard in school. I just turn in my assignments and hope for the best. There really isn't much for me to recharge. I am not that depleated--or, at least, I shouldn't be. When I look back on when I graduated from college, or my first year of grad school, I get why I was stressed out and exhausted all the time. And I'm not really exhausted now, not for long stretches of time like I used to be. So why am I still acting like I am?
I say all of this to say that it is now 1:47am and I am supposed to be awake in a little more than six hours. But I can't bring myself to get up and go over to my bathroom and brush my teeth and get into bed. Going to bed feels like a truly herculean task.
//1:53am; current listening: WE SLEEP IN HELL by AIDEN
I've been considering trying to have a proper ""blog"" of some kind for a bit. Not because I think anybody is particularly interested in what I have to say, but because of the space of it all. Journals take up too much room--I should know, I have a whole box of them dating back to 2008 in my closet back home. And there are other sites where you could theoretically post about the happenings of your life, but usually the point of it all is that you are being percieved to some degree. I don't really see that being the point here. You simply exist. It is a room, not a town square. Some people may enter. Some people may even stay. But you will never know. And they never will know if they are alone or not. I like the idea of a space like that, at least in the metaphorical sense.
So, here I am, I guess. I'm not listing this page on the website's index because I don't necessarily want people to read this. But some people will find a way. I had an old geocities site where I linked all of my unlisted YouTube videos--video diaries, mostly. That page wasn't on theindex either. People still found it. I didn't mind. I just thought it was a bit odd. It was strange--some of my most private thoughts, things I would quite literally die about if anyone I actually knew found it. But a bunch of strangers? It didn't matter to me really.
I've always liked posting too much on the internet, which I think is one of those things you're not really allowed to tell people, because it's extremely embarassing to admit to. I used to not really understand what the point of it really was--I mean, not in a nihilistic way. I mean I super missed the point. I'd be vulnerable. Too vulnerable. But isn't the whole idea that you're supposed to curate how you're seen, that it's the one place where you can mostly control the narrative? Why didn't I want that when I was younger? Why didn't I think of that? It's not like I had much control over my own narrative in my own life.
And I think there is a part of me that might like the idea of someone stumbling across this site through whatever algorithim neocities has in place, scrolls through the People section of this site, somehow finding this page, and wondering which face is mine. Maybe trying to make a game out of it, looking for tells for who is actually the person usually holding the camera. Would they be disappointed if they found out who it was? That I'm not how they pictured me? Probably not. But maybe they would. And that's interesting to me for some reason.
// 11:21pm; current listening: WINTER FALLS by BOW CHURCH