Love Hurts

But I Believe In It.

The last 24 hours have been a great lesson in what it feels like to be a human.

First I’d like to say that being human and feeling human are sometimes miles and miles apart. I am always being human— I just don’t have a choice. However, I often feel like a squirrel on cocaine, or a sloth on opium. Often I land somewhere in the middle, and I feel like a cautious but trusting puppy. Stuff to do and learn, but easily distracted. Rarely do I feel human, because I sometimes don’t understand this human species.

But back to the last 24 hours.

I paint. It’s hobby I’d like to make a second career someday, after I piece together a career as a writer. Lately I’ve been creating pet portraits, like anyone’s cat or dog, I’d paint them. My family sent me a flyer about an upcoming pet portrait exhibition to raise money for a local humane society, so yesterday I painted our Darla. Quick acrylic piece, deadline for entry was today, but it came out well, I think. She’s a really cute pit-bull mix, friendliest dog to every person she ever met, and I tried to get that sweetness in her likeness. I signed the canvas and left the painting to dry around 11 a.m. while I worked on housework, dishes, putting away laundry.

Then around noon, Darla, at the age of twelve, did her own signing off, and redeemed her ticket for the afterlife.

Darla, AKA Pooper

And I can report that when you hold a life as it’s leaving this plane of existence, there is a current of electricity that cycles through your hands as the final breaths release.

In the moment after, in stunned silence, I felt very human. Pain is a centering experience, because if you’re in it, you’re present with it, you get grounded by it.

The couple of hours that followed were full of feeling human, feeling loss, and feeling lost. I have lived through many good-byes, and none have been easy. Darla didn’t let on anything was amiss, and she didn’t experience suffering, and for these things I am so grateful.

Today I am a mixed bag of human feelings, mostly aware of the overwhelming number of vacancies in my day, now that we have one less heartbeat in the house. And friends, I know this is not the sort of thing that brings grand insight, really, nor is this piece a particularly uplifting bit of writing. As a matter of fact, I’m sorry to report it’s mostly sad, and gods above and below, I do not want to spread sadness.

But I do want to remember love.

And this feeling human business often comes with ways of barricading one’s self against love, and compassion, and vulnerability. Not today. Today I will share my heartbreak, and share my absolute joy at having a loyal companion for twelve adventurous years. She deserves a parade in doggy heaven, with tons of people and beef stick snacks.

I will endeavor to live as loving and trusting as Darla lived, though I will have better breath, hopefully. I will continue to fall in love, and I will surely be ripped apart, and that’s okay. It really is worth it.

I am a fully feeling human.