I lost my best friend in February. I found out she was sick in January and was told she would survive for a few more years if I put her on a special diet. No cause for alarm. Everything would be fine.

            Not even a month later she died in my arms.

I could save her – potentially – if I had 4000 dollars and a car to drive 3 hours away to a vet who would keep her for ten days. Maybe that will work.

            Just maybe she’ll live.

            It’s her best shot.

            The only thing echoing in my head: “I don’t want her to die alone.”

            Not scared and in pain and with strangers

            Not abandoned when she needed me most.

            So, I didn’t take her to the vet.

            I didn’t beg and borrow the 4000 dollars.

            In a blind panic I asked friends for a car, but there were none.

            Didn’t matter in the end.

            She was going to die at home.

            She was going to die where she felt safe and happy.

            She was going to die in my arms while I whispered how much I loved her.

            People like to make fun of pet parents for loving their animals with the same or more intensity than they love people. They often don’t understand that for many of us, people are dangerous and pets are safe. People activate and threaten while pets soothe and heal.

            I am a trauma survivor with complex PTSD and some cocktail of ADHD and/or autism.

            I hate people because most people only want to hurt me.

            I don’t trust people because no one can truly be trusted.

            I prefer the company of animals over the company of people because animals don’t make me want to kill myself.

            It’s no exaggeration to say that Lola is the reason I’ve stayed alive the last eight years.

            It’s no exaggeration that after she died, I wasn’t sure if I would survive 2023 without her.

            I’m not convinced I will survive 2024.

            I got Lola in February 2016. David Bowie, one of the musicians who kept me alive during my teenage and college years, had been dead for a month and I was sobbing because a boat of Syrian refugees had drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. My friend texted me a picture of this absolutely perfect scruffy brown and golden furred sweetheart with ridiculously big ears, large doe like eyes, and the biggest smile I’ve ever seen on a dog. She was a dorkie, a yorkie/dachshund mix and she was going to be euthanized the next day unless someone claimed her. My sobs grew louder as my sense of helplessness engulfed me and I thought I was going to drown in my own tears. Another soul I could not save.

            Except.

            A bright light.

            I could save this one.

            Yes, it was “just a dog,” but she was marked for death and I could save her. I could bring her to a good and loving home and maybe my act of kindness and love would have ripple effects across the world in ways I’ll never know or understand. Or maybe I was just saving a silly dog, but that silly dog saved my life.

That silly dog chased my demons and my nightmares and my dread away.

That silly dog sat with me as the 2016 election result was announced.

That silly dog climbed into my lap as I sat on the kitchen floor, sobbing because I didn’t know how to buy cyanide pills and the fascists marched into the capital and the White House.

That silly dog made me go outside and see the sun and feel the breeze and acknowledge that there was still good in this world and it was worth fighting for.

That silly dog reminded me to eat because she would not eat unless we ate together.

That silly dog reminded me to go to bed because she would not sleep without me.

That silly dog tore me from social media and the computer screen and the news to play and snuggle and nap and remember that the brightest lights often shine during the darkest moments.

That silly dog taught me that I am not my father or my mother.

That the chain of abuse ends with me.

That I can love and care for another being with a love that is pure and not manipulative or painful or abusive.

That silly little dog taught me that, not only can I love with the intensity of a thousand suns, but I am worthy of being loved with equal intensity.

That I deserve to survive and thrive for simply being who I am.

            When I rescued that silly little dog, I rescued myself and for eight years I had a reason to stay and to fight and to hope, even when things seemed bleak beyond measure.

            And then she left

            And I was alone.

            And the weight of a lifetime of trauma and missed opportunities and non-existent love crashed over me.

            And the death of 9 million plus crashed over me.

            And the numbing continuation of business as usual,

of eroding freedoms,

of wasted lives,

of murders,

of mass shootings,

of death threats,

of book bans,

of historical erasure,

of increasingly restrictive laws,

of lost autonomy,

the horror of realizing that I could not travel freely in my own country,

that I could not move to a new location without research,

without a support network,

without fear,

crashed over me.

            And the constant checking in with friends all over the world and trying to say something that is encouraging, but not negating the Hell they are going through crashed over me.

            And the realization that some things can’t be mended. Some things must be destroyed for healing to begin crashing over me.

            And the realization that I am alone and will always be alone because there are some hurts that go too deep, that remain too raw to ever allow for healing crashed over me.

            And the guilt of my own compliancy, of my own failures to do everything to prevent harm, to resist white supremacy, to learn the truth of my country and myself crashed over me.

            And the fracturing of my family and the siphoning away of my own life and dreams and goals and the constant calls for help but the silence that followed whenever I dared to whisper my need for a break crashed over me.

            And I could no longer withstand the weight of it all.

When Lola died, I died, and no one noticed.

            No one noticed because I am the sole breadwinner and I must keep up my incredible rate of production up to feed my 5 person household.

            No one noticed because I launched a podcast that I loved and wanted to be my future and I cannot afford to lose listeners by taking a break. It’s hard enough to market my work and get people to listen let alone contribute to my Patreon and we desperately need the money and I enjoy this; don’t I enjoy this?

Do I enjoy this?

I thought I enjoyed this.

I did enjoy this when Lola was alive, when I was capable of enjoying things, but all I feel is this number, aching void in my chest and nothing matters, but I cannot let anyone know nothing matters because no one will understand.

            No one noticed because I rewrote my adult fantasy noir three times in one year and I was getting ready to launch it as a podcast in 2024.

and that meant crafting the scripts.

and recording the ads and trailers

and creating the website

and drawing the cover and promotional materials

and I want to add appendices and hand drawn illustrations in the book when I launch the Indiegogo to entice people to support me.

and I love this.

I love drawing queer anthro crocodiles.

and wizard anteaters

and I love talking about my world because I am proud of my world.

and because my world feels timely and important

and because my world contains my trauma

and maybe I can speak of my pain through an anthro crocodile war criminal and a traumatized human journalist.

and people will understand how much grief and anger and loss I hold within my icy heart.

and they will look beyond the smiling, cheery faced,

the productive work effort that will drive me into an early grave at forty because my worth is tied to my productive

because my father never loved me

and my childhood friends never loved me.

and my mother never loved me.

they only used me,

they only needed me to be the parent they never had,

the only grown up.

And I have not spoken of how my youngest childhood friend came to me and told me to seek help before I did something unforgivable.

And I have not spoken about how my other two childhood friends knew I was suicidal and said nothing and did not want to say anything and only stood in that room while my youngest childhood friend pleaded with me because he forced them.

            And I have not spoken about how we fell behind on bills because I was seeking treatment.

And I have not spoken about how I spent two months reliving my trauma and trying to convince myself I am worth fighting for. My future is worth fighting for. That I am not a terrible monster, but a hurt human being who was thrust into a parenting role before I was born. Who is not solely responsible for the world and all its horrors.

            And I have not spoken of how I set new boundaries with my childhood friends and they did not want to hear them and when they heard them they did not listen and when I started to reinforce them I was called selfish and petty.

            And I have not spoken of when I tried to tell my two childhood friends how I feel about them and how I feel alone and hated and I want to move out that they did not respond to my pain but panicked about their own futures and asked me what the plan was and then proceeded to tell me how I make them feel unsafe and everything I do wrong without taking accountability for themselves.

            And I have not spoken of how my youngest childhood friend broke because my two other childhood friends hate me and how he nearly took his own life and had to go to treatment and once more my childhood friends did not care. They treated it like a great chore and did not want to talk or listen to my youngest childhood friend’s pain.

            And I have not spoken about how we bought a new dog, the one thing that could bring joy into our lives, and my two childhood friends immediately despised her and blamed us for bringing home a dangerous animal only because she is a Pitbull and was frightened when we first brought her home.

            And I have not spoken of how my two childhood friends no longer speak to me or my youngest childhood friend and we are now going to buy our own house and leave our two childhood friends to their fates, which I pray will not be dark, but light and happy and beautiful.

And I have not spoken of how I keep thinking about the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC and the small plaque commemorating a man whose name I cannot name who killed himself to protest the world’s failure to prevent the horrors of the Holocaust and World War II.

And I do not speak of how I cannot escape the nihilist feeling of waste as I watch my country and other countries prepare for a war that no one wants but they need to distract from the real problems at home.

And I do not speak of the silenced dead crushed by steamrollers and debris,

suffocated by dirt and gas,

blown to pieces by bombs and machine gun fire,

and tortured in dark hellholes, never to see the sun again.

And I do not speak of the Palestinians, of the Sundanese, of the Congolese, of the Tigray, of the Black people of the United States, of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, of the Syrians, of the Uyghur, of the Ukrainians, of the Yemeni, of the Afghans, of the Mexicans, of the Colombians, of the Hondurans, of the Guatemalans, of the Colombians, turned away at our borders,

murdered by our bombs and our tax dollars,

oppressed by our allies.

and I have not spoken of Cop City and I have not spoken of Manuel Esteban Paez Teran murdered in cold blood.

 and I have not spoken of terrorist charges being placed against protestors and concerned citizens.

and I have not spoken of the houseless being purposes starved and taken away, disappeared, and no one cares because they smell and they need help and God I don’t want that “trash” in my neighborhood.

and I have not spoken of New York’s mayor attacking his own people,

of Abbot kidnapping and shipping innocent people to God knows where

of children still dying on the border

of Biden wanting to kill more children at the border and in Palestine

of DeSantos murdering trans kids and queer kids and drag performers.

And I have not spoken of people with uteruses dying because doctors will not save them.

Because doctors are too cowardly to save them.

And I have not spoken of people killed by one of a dozen different strains of COVID-19 because the economy is more important than saving lives,

And I have not spoken of those who still believe in the American lie and who willfully live in a fake reality.

and I have not spoken of my fear that I have no future not because I will take my own life but because it will be taken from me by those who live in a false reality or those who want a war because nothing gets the blood pumping like a war. Or because a person with a gun wanted to kill someone that day. Or because someone found me terrifying because I did not want him or because he cannot tell what my balls look like or because he cannot tell if my breasts are real or because I do not want to live in this nightmarish, soul sucking, bone crushing, flesh feasting, festering world.

And I have not spoken of my fragile, fluttering hope that maybe I can leave this piece of shit world and help create a new one, a stronger loving world, that I will never see but maybe someone else will. Maybe someday, people will no longer live in fear and hate and want and no one will ever know the grief of the 21^st century. The grief of the 20^th century;. The grief of our ancestors and their ancestors and so on. Not the grief of what was loss, but the grief of continued loss.

Continued pain

Continued trauma

The grief of not wanting to live in this nightmare but being trapped in it because people are more terrified of the unknown then the monster they know.

Because some people grew fat off the teats of their oppressors and tormenters

The grief of having to waste time fighting the hateful and the fearful instead of loving the people who mean the most to me.

The grief that our futures and our dreams are constantly threatened by those who do not matter, but held power over us because of a fucked up, corrupt system.

The grief that not enough people want to change the world and those who do are quickly killed.

I wonder if the stars grieve for us.

I wonder if the universe grieves for us.

I wonder if aliens tell sad tales of humans, beings infatuated and committed to their own destruction.

I’m often told people are not supposed to hold this much horror and tragedy. They are not supposed to feel this much grief, the grief of the entire world, but I think that’s bullshit.

Maybe, instead of ignoring the alarming and painful distortion caused by celebrating Christmas while Palestinian children are pulled out of the rumble, but embracing the horrifying, painful absurdity of the world.

The calculated and organize system of leisure for some, death and pain for others, but a remote death and pain, an entertaining death and pain, something that can be viewed in snippets and passing glimpses through a small rectangular box. Pain we can turn away from when it becomes too hard or it make sit hard to enjoy Desperate Housewives.

Maybe if we, as a collective, faced that pain and that grief and that guilt and that complicity face to face, eye to eye, started into the fucking abyss that we feed with our ignorance and indifference,

maybe if we truly grieved in one voice, the world would change.