Do You Believe in Dog?

There are days when I chastise myself for not writing. For not putting my words on a page where I can see them, mold them, form them into thoughts. When I’m writing, I can dictate, ration, revise. I can spread my words across the page, control the tempo, lessen the impact. It lets me show up as an edited version of myself. Vulnerable, but virtually unassailable. Or maybe, ONLY virtually vulnerable – depending how you look at it. Either way, I get to choose.

Then, there are days like today, when something needs to be said and there ARE no worthy words. No matter how you phrase it, how you write it, you can’t capture the essence of the feeling. No matter how you try, you can’t manipulate your sentiment into an adequate expression of compassion. There’s just no language for it. No human-readable text can effectively act as a conduit for despair. And still we try. We have to. Because language is all we have. Art is all we have. Creation, movement, physical touch – is all we have. And on days like this, it really feels like we’re losing that too.

On days like today, I feel helpless and disconnected, but also a bit cowardly. While I frequently defend the validity of my virtual community, I admit it’s been a useful place to hide. There’s safety in the distance that goes beyond simple introversion and crosses over into avoidance. Territory where I can camouflage my existence, and even partially disappear. This is where I feel most at home.

And there are times when I relate my life experience to the rest of world’s, even days when I dare to compare myself with other moms, just because I have a dog. And yes, I make my dog my world, but it’s my world. And I mostly like it here. Until days like this.

It’s when the semblance of order in the outside world is shaken and its existence threatened, that I struggle most to show up. Even the edited version of me has no authentic representation. Not only do I lack the words, I don’t even speak the language. And then I wonder if I really do live the way I write. Camouflaged, in hiding. Have I traded my shot at real intimacy for the convenience of selective disappearance?

Today, people are grieving on a level I’ll never comprehend, because of senseless acts of violence no one can explain. And I know I should say something to acknowledge their grief, but I have no words, and I feel like their grief isn’t mine to acknowledge.

I can pretend that being a dog mom is equatable to human parenting, but I don’t send my dog to daycare, afraid she won’t come home. We can go to the dog park without the risk of open fire. If a dog tries to bully, or gets too aggressive, we address it with their handler. But these are humans we were ultimately responsible for. How do we handle that? It’s just not the same.

And sometimes I wonder if I’ve lived this way on purpose. If I’ve orchestrated every action, every decision, every connection, from a place of fear. Did I censor my existence? Did I ration my experiences to control the narrative, to lessen the impact? Am I really at a loss for words, or did I choose not to speak the language?

Maybe I’ll never know for sure. Maybe I’m not meant to. Maybe it was free will, or maybe it was God’s plan. Either way, I’ve been spared the pain of devastating loss. I won’t sit around and wonder if my child left this world, knowing how much I loved him. Knowing how much he mattered. I won’t have to wonder if he loved me too. All I have to do is take a look at my dog, and I know that she knows. And I know that she loves. We may not have the words, but we speak the same language. We feel at home here. Protected. We believe in each other. I believe there’s a plan for my life, and with a little reassurance, I believe in God too.