7-4-2009

Every Fourth of July my family has a party. We go up to my uncle’s house and spend the day together. The men drink beer and laugh and the women pretend they don’t hate each other. When I was little I think I enjoyed this party, but with age I lost my naivety and with it went the fun. But this story starts on the day before the Fourth of July. It was only the third when I received a call from my mom telling me I should come home now. Her voice was too calm and was void of any emotion. I felt I had something to dread, but didn’t really care. A distant aunt probably made a snide remark or someone’s hysterical over a casserole catastrophe. I don’t really care for either. But what did happen is something I still have no fully come to terms with. When I try to put the hurt into words, my pen just bleeds on the paper, and with it, my heart. So I will make that part as brief as possible. I lost my dog.

The dog who came to my house in the most random and absurd way (through cousins, deceit, and bad judgment), not exactly shocking. But I trained this dog and she became mine. Over a few short years she was just an extension of me. When I was in the kitchen I just grew a third leg (one that often tripped me or knocked the wind out of me with its tail). But that day I lost her. It’s a long story, but I can’t write it. It involves the backlash of human assumption, the heart of a puppy, and the engine of a train. The story ends with a puddle on my kitchen floor that includes tears, a 20-year-old girl, and a little chain dog collar. The day must have gone by but I did not move. At one point a watched the sun come up and my mom asking me quietly to please get dressed for the picnic. I wend to undress, but it was harder than usual. I was only using one hand, there was a dog collar in the other.

At this point there were a couple things I knew. First I had to go to a party where the women pretended to be civil and sweet in their cheap hair and their cheap clothes. These women like nothing more than to converse about petty things and complain about their weight (while eating every morsel of food on the buffet table). They would act like these were the problems of the world and they were worldly people for bringing up such deep intellectual subjects. After they ate came the gossip about who knows who doing who knows who in the who knows where after who knows what. Yeah those women. The second thing I knew, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with them. My parents brought me up well. They are kind loving people and because I love them, I deal with these people. I smile and nod and pretend I don’t think their shameful beings, but today I would have none of that. I did not have the option to physically go, so I chose the next best thing. If my body couldn’t leave then my mind would. I was not going to consciously listen to these people give me 2 seconds of fake sympathy just to think they have to right to banter to me for hours. So at our perfect little Fourth of July party, all those petty women, and all their male counter-parts watched as their 20 year old niece/ cousin/who knows what sat at her table to proceeded to get piss ass drunk.

I don’t know what I drank (some dear sweet men seemed to bring me a bottomless supply of beer), and I lost the day. There was no gossip to sit through, no snide remark whispered into my from behind some fake smile, nothing of the sort. I think I may even have had some fun. My mom says she saw me smile once. I’m sure I spoke bluntly, and let my manners dissolve, but nobody stopped me, they just let me be. And I do thank them for that. The feeling was pleasant, and my heart didn’t ache so much, but I knew it was temporary. That time would eventually come when I would have to stand again in that kitchen. And I would be alone. All by myself. Just me.