Life wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Not that I was ever expecting all sunshine, daisies, and white picket fences, but wow. Ouch, world, ouch. I’m a hot mess and likely always will be, but that doesn’t mean that I deserved to be continually kicked when I’m already down. I recently watched a show in which one character asked another to think back to a time when they had little or no stress and I had the startling realization that there is no such time in my life. Not that every moment has been fraught with overt anxiety, but there’s always been some underlying air of the idea that life shouldn’t be this difficult or overwhelming.
Today is the 14th anniversary of when I brought my first dog (as an adult), Caoimhe, home. She was my ride or die for so many years and very nearly almost made it to today, too. Unfortunately, she’d been starting to fade for the past year or so and on the morning of February 7, just 29 days before she would have turned 14, she awoke unable to walk and I had to make the most horrible, yet humane decision borne completely out of nothing but love that a pet parent has to make. It was arguably the worst day of my life to date. And that’s saying something because I’ve had some doozies.
The next four weeks were filled with worrying about my other dog, Declan, because he was having the worst dyssynergia attack that he’d had in since July 2021 (more on that later), culminating in waking up exactly four weeks after that fateful day of bringing Caoimhe to the vet for the last time with Declan urinating blood and having to be there in the room next to where it had all happening only a month earlier – almost to the minute from when we arrived to when we left, thankfully Declan with me that time.
We were just starting to settle into our new normal and find our stride when, BAM! I discovered an unusual looking growth on his belly that looks alarmingly and suspiciously like melanoma yesterday morning. I can’t even begin to convey how much I hope that it’s not. Life just isn’t supposed to be this hard all the fucking time. It’s just not. Surely there will be some sense of relief at some point because this can’t be real life, right?
Relatable Me 