the desire to be dissolved

I need an ending / So why can’t you stay just long enough to explain?

Note: this post has taken a month to work through;¹ grief plays tricks on you. We talk about loss in so many different ways, but no one really preemptively signals how it feels like a repeated lull, back and forth, moving in the same place.

This is also four days early, but I am taking a mini-vacation at the end of this week so bear with me, please.

It hasn’t been a full month, I’m aware. But grief is a precarious thing, and I feel like an unreliable narrator as I try to document the inconsistencies. This is potentially the most volatile piece (so far), but giving space to document these vulnerabilities seems like something I just need to do — writing these thoughts in my physical journal, keeping them ‘safe’ seem like I am concealing the realities of what it every day has grown to feel like. It isn’t simply emptiness — there’s a collapse of something within that I can’t find a name for.

I’m an anxious person — if you need proof, just ask my therapist. This isn’t meant to be a “broadcast your mental health for relatability” signal; if anything, this is probably my least troubling characteristic (my PTSD wishes it could say hello). Acknowledging my anxiety is just predictability on my part: carrying this everyday requires a lot of planning, addressing numerous possibilities, trying to ‘solve’ problems before they have even materialized (if ever. But no worries, I have options A, B, and beyond Z), and figuring out solutions for problems that arise from hypothetical solutions. Life can be hard; however, participating in reality, a world where my brain isn’t the only ‘thing’ which I talk to, can be even harder. Being diagnosed with GAD as an adult didn’t offer relief; it’s another task that reveals why you still feel like a complete stranger to yourself. If this sounds awful — it can be and often is. Having lived with this for decades simply means I have learned to obsess over impossible things on an infinite loop without an adequate or viable solution, so what’s one more thing to literally worry about for, like, the rest of my life? (Or at least until my brain sedates me into short-lived sleep.²)

The only moments where I briefly have a quiet moment from my internal lecturing is when I hear certain songs pop up on my music playlist. You would think that with all the momentum of twenty-first century technologies & ‘refined’³ algorithmic processes that my music playlist would have learned on my tenth skip that I don’t want to listen to Paramore anymore. It isn’t that I don’t love Paramore, because I grew up in the Millennial Emo/Teenage Angst Warped Tour world: Riot! was *everything* for teenage me as I learned how to navigate the burdens of advanced high school coursework, juggling family and personal obligations, learning to be a work-in-progress, functioning human being, dealing with unrequited crushes, working, and trying to live in the world rather than observe from the outside. But in the afterglow of a post-adolescent life, Riot! is too painful to listen to.

As I was driving home a week ago, I thought it would be beneficial to overcome my fear and hesitation. I do well with the first two songs — ‘For a Pessimist, I’m Pretty Optimistic’ & ‘That’s What You Get’ feel like blips on my radar that don’t extract a reaction. As ‘Misery Business’ fades, I am wholly unprepared for the introduction of ‘When It Rains.’ Before the initial drum sets the song’s tempo, I’m already in tears. By the time I make it through the end of the track, I’m a sobbing mess. I can never get through ‘Let the Flames Begin,’ and I haven’t listened to ‘Miracle’ in a very long time now; I listened to Riot! a few weeks before Ozilla’s passing, but now it just feels like an awful long time ago — a world before it completely shifted. Even the thought of listening to this album right now makes my breath catch in my throat, and it isn’t the good ‘I’m nervous but this is a good nervous’ sensation you get before a big presentation or before a (potentially great) first date.

There are other givens that are too difficult for me to process. Listening to The Supremes is downright impossible; Ozilla’s nickname for much of her life was ‘Baby Love.’ I can no longer wear most of my undergrad sweaters because I wore one the evening that I held her for the last time. We had to buy a brand-new bed set because I just couldn’t bear to lose any of her hair, and the retired bed set is now folded neatly under her crib and beside the Nightmare Before Christmas blanket (the one she was wrapped in on her final vet visit). I don’t enjoy anything on Animal Planet anymore because it was the last channel we had it on before we received the call from the vet’s office. These were all obvious losses in the day-to-day because I understood what these mementos would be connected with. Even as I sit here and think about the everyday items that I avoid now, they feel like fitting prices to pay as I think about Ozilla’s overwhelming absence. She wouldn’t understand, but I certainly do. However, younger me would be so upset to hear that adult me can no longer listen to Riot!

As I sit here and think about Ozilla — as I do, every single day — I think about the unforeseen casualties along the way. So many little fragments of living, experiences, objects, and things that now make her death feel so sharp. The first month or so I was convincing myself that her absence could be explained: traveling back to our home and Ozilla wouldn’t be home because she was at my parent’s house for the week; visiting my parent’s without her simply meant that she was at a boarding facility because she needed TLC (not that I have ever actually entertained leaving my littles at a boarding place).

Another thing that you are not prepared for with grief is the deliberate self-deception, tricking yourself into the belief that you aren’t living in the netherworld of neither the here nor there. The reality is that grief is so impractical because it ebbs and flows, a surge here, a dull ache there, but it’s always unwavering, keeping you company, keeping you both overwhelmed and alone as ever. It changes the way you feel about absolutely everything — how you feel daily isn’t the most unpleasant sensation, but the unpredictability of what it touches and how it transforms materials, experiences, memories, possessions without you being aware. I figured after numerous losses in the past that I would be aware of how to navigate this reality, a world that I don’t understand but remember, but the truth is that I feel as lost as ever. No one really prepares you for continuous precariousness: a day can stretch beyond temporal constraints, and every little piece of your world now can feel so fragmented and more vulnerable than anticipated.

Grief has only intensified everything I feel within. My anxiety used to be predictable, but now it feels like it’s heightened every illogical thought into a full-scale worry that fills me with dread. The very idea of taking a vacation fills me with fear. I feel like I am in a perpetual state of alertness, ready to jump into action for whatever horrific or unexpected turn of events may show up. There are so many different ways I could find the means to rationalize these experiences, undulating impressions that I know will be impossible to fully convey.

My anxiety is responsible for the intrusive memories where I replay Ozilla’s last night. I go back over every detail, still questioning what we did, why we did it, what could have been different, would things have been different if I had stayed home, why didn’t I see the signs. I repeatedly lose myself in the details of that weekend because it’s easier to find little moments where I can blame myself for failing to see hints that might have made things turn out differently. Grief and anxiety make you live a life shuttling between the impossible and the actual, questioning and planning for the possible and absurd. You spiral about failing to do the one thing your brain has convinced you that you particularly excel at: the intensity can certainly feel like you’re drowning when you should have prepared yourself for this one thing. Everything feels intensified, but you can’t explain those surprising moments where you lose your breath and think about all the ways that you could have been better prepared (but just couldn’t have seemed to do it).

Flashing before me are all the things I wish I had done more of: more holiday photos — more sporadic photoshoots in general. Less time worrying about work and more time picking up dog toys. A little less frustration about wanting to sit right next to me in the nook of the couch. More days off. Less anxiousness about upcoming vet visits (who knew her ticket had been punched already?). More of the favorite, everyday activities — like going for car rides around the block with the window half down, letting her attack the windshield wiper, allowing her to dig in and tug on replaceable winter blankets. Perhaps less of a need to control her impetus need to have the “final bark” whenever she heard the delivery person (whether it was our routine mail person or UPS).

The everyday losses hurt more than I can bear sometimes. I miss the regulation that Ozilla provided as my partner, as my best friend, as my child, as my emotional support, as the first semblance of responsibility I felt for something so precious that needed me. I miss the daily scratching on my forearm — Ozilla’s signal that I needed to step away and give her time and attention (but specifically without it seeming like she was asking for it). While it seems like simple bonding time, I miss how much it provided me an opportunity of relief that I had lost for so long.

When life felt overwhelming or I felt myself on the verge of “losing myself within” (a euphemistic title for ‘breakdown’), I always found comfort in running. Two miles at an incline would turn into five or six at different bursts, but I loved the peculiar feeling when you step off the treadmill, where you briefly forgot what the real world, reality, felt like. I would run 3 times a week, sometimes 4, in an effort to find a rhythm to keep my brain quiet; when the pandemic and grad school became overwhelming, I lost that pleasure — other responsibilities made running feel like a privileged burden that I could no longer tolerate.

However, I made time for Ozilla’s little scratches. Mostly, her timing felt unfortunate: she wanted to be cuddled when I was in the middle of an important chapter for class, when I was lecturing over Zoom, while I was getting ready to cook dinner, during final revising sessions, in the middle of a pedicure. As I sit in her loss, I often lose track of these details — moments where I become engrossed in something, forgetting to step back before it’s too late. I become wrapped up in ‘checking’ boxes off, fulfilling duties or expectations, daily and redundant activities, and I exhaust myself where it becomes difficult to wake up to simply being in the moment. Now I realize how much Ozilla offered regulation when I seemed so unlikely to discover it myself; she was my protector without even realizing how easy it was to preserve my sanity.

Now I think of the unexpected losses that come with her absence.

I stare at her urn whenever I’m sitting on the couch with her siblings, missing how much she would force her existence to tiny spaces beside me. I carry her urn back and forth, wherever I go, because I cannot bear the thought of leaving her alone — and I can’t bear the thought of being without her still. Just the thought of listening to Paramore feels like a sharp ache in my side; I have blocked them on every streaming service, even though they were such a formative musical experience for me as a teenager. I miss The Supremes: I have to skip their songs on my writing playlists when I teach or work myself now — ‘Baby Love’ was just the obvious loss to the other casualties. House slippers feel like a pointless investment when there isn’t anything that forces you to create random pairs between your collection. Socks, too. Beanies, gloves — heck, cold weather gear feels like a pointless investment for me.

I miss the inessential car rides, listening to the subtlest under-the-breath cries to get me to scratch her head. Three dog bowls doesn’t feel like a magic number. There seems to be little value in having an oversized bed when only two dogs enjoy sleeping at your feet. I miss the chorus of incessant barks, their howls always in some kind of discordant harmony when I would arrive home. I miss the little tippy taps along the hardwood floor, the unnecessary shaking during the faintest rain mist in the morning, being watched as I got ready for the shower (and knowing the exact moment when the shower head turned on, she’d be down the hall in the opposite direction).

All these losses accumulate and create that chasm that you cannot write, think, or question your way into occupancy. And it isn’t simply that her bigger-than-life character is lost, but that everyone else whose life she participated in experiences that loss. And while they might be capable of moving forward, to learn to live and deal with the loss, I find that I am unable to do so. My anxiety kicks in, telling me the most painful questions I will never have the answers for (and I probably don’t want them). What happens if you just forget for a moment? How will you honor her if you briefly allow yourself to draw a veil over the incredible life you had with her? Where will you store all of these little details, these mementos, the sensations and experiences, feelings of a life that was once full of nothing but her? Why would you want to get over grief and loss when mourning her life, your life together, means you begin a new chapter at her closing?

My anxiety does a lot of things, but the most painful part is knowing that it intensifies everything — it can be unbearable but comforting, knowing that this is what the rest of my life will look like. It means I’ll have to learn to ‘deal with’ losing these mundane activities, to learn to live with the loss of Paramore, of cold weather gear, of the ‘final’ bark in our daily dances with one another. Every day I move forward means that she stays in the past. It means I run the risk of allowing her to become a distant memory that, someday, I will only know that her memory is a faint contour in my mind. And it terrifies me to think of the “what if?” scenarios — the worst case conditions where our princess Ozilla, my Baby Love, becomes a young adulthood memory.

I try to remind myself that there is always a pre- and post- life. I don’t remember a pre-Ozilla life, much like I don’t recall a pre-Ronaldo life — her littermate who we rescued from being sent to the animal shelter simply because he was no longer wanted.⁴ I don’t remember a pre-Sydney or pre-Athena life,⁵ either. But I know their post-lives will be just as unbearable, just as I sit in a post-Ozilla world.

As I move through the afterlife, I dwell on all of the everyday losses. But I mostly want to remember how grief is forever, even when you don’t think it is, even when you don’t expect or anticipate it to be. I want to remember Ozilla’s little scratches and live in that afterglow, the shimmering light that she brought me during darkness. And as I close my eyes and think of the everyday things that I have lost, I try to remember that I gained much more with her precious life in my world, dancing to her beat, always stepping in line with what she needed from me.

I think of how much life was taken from her, from us both. And I have tried to convince myself to end this positively, that we had a life worth living, a full life, a wonderful time — but I can’t. It was not and never would be enough. I get what it means to want More Life, to want more time to live in the glow of someone’s life without the inevitable, impending existential threat of mortality lingering in the shadows. To want to have more time for the mundane. To want to enjoy the moments as they happen, without looking back on ‘what if?’

But I know my brain won’t let me, because anxiety — like grief — is a cruel confidant. And you have to live with these memories, and I have to live in a post-Ozilla world where my anxiety forces me to rethink every decision we made, to reevaluate if her life was full enough, to reconsider how much precious time is left with our others, to mourn the possibilities and incapabilities of a life that you have to live now. I want to live in her afterglow, but all I can do right now is sit in her afterlife.

I hope month four is better, but I don’t think it will be — and I have to be okay with that, too.

1. All other writing has halted, unfortunately. I have been trying to find that spark within but it’s been rather evasive lately. Hopefully it comes back by the end of this month or early next month. ↩︎
2. The only great thing at this moment is that I am nursing a severe cold; my body is so physically drained that I have gotten 6-7.5 hours of sleep per night. I’ll take this illness as a minor win. ↩︎
3. Debatable. ↩︎
4. Ronaldo is also the light of my life, and if you’ve ever had the (mis)fortune of meeting us in person, you would probably get this as a first impression. He is my everything, my rock, my faithful companion, a complete Mama’s boy that I have always been fearful of losing to his irregular heartbeat someday. But he still continues on, thankfully. I could write a novel about our relationship, but I will simply say: Ronaldo was and remains the first ‘male’ creature that I loved and will always love. Fun fact about Ronaldo: he follows me everywhere I go. Literally everywhere. Sometimes he gets ‘lost’ (he has extra hair) so he will pace throughout the house and try to hunt me down. So I tend to slow my movements when I am at home. Another regulation technique from my boy. ↩︎
5. The other wonderful lights of my world. Sydney was a happy accident in 2014, and Athena was an even more enthusiastic accident in 2015. Even as I move through this grief, I do my best to fulfill my promises to these babies that I would be a strong and loving fur mother. They would never see the crushing weight of sadness, how unbearable it can feel to catch a breath at times.
   
   Sydney is a pug/shih tzu mix & Athena is a Doberman. A really fun fact about both. Sydney loves carrots, you can’t even say carrot out loud without her howling and barking at the fridge. We’ve had to replace it with other words like ‘special veggie’ or ‘snack’ (Scooby Snack falls under this). She caught on to ‘orange treat’ so we’ve had to retire this. But I love her excitement because while young children might not always be fond on veggies or fruits, Sydney cannot get enough of them — and she lets her bark be heard to prove how much she enjoys them.
   
   Athena grew up with small dogs so imagine that: she believes she too is a small dog. Her favorite thing? Sleeping in our laps, even though she is at least 40-50ish pounds more than the others. But the only thing she loves more than sleeping on our laps is when I playfully put make-up on her; she closes her eyes and wags her tail when I use a makeup brush or beauty blender to put on fake blush or powder. Makes it harder to finish my make-up on time. ↩︎