On Pet Loss

Putting Lucky down was the hardest thing I had to do. Harder than fighting off urges to cut myself. Harder than overcoming substance abuse. Harder than not being on the right medication. Harder than telling my parents about my childhood trauma. I started to write about Lucky yesterday, but broke down. He was such a sweet and loving boy. I look fondly at our moments together, but I’m overwhelmed by grief because I’ll never get to experience them again. 

A few people who add insult to injury are my parents, brother, and M (who is a best friend, but not an emotionally available one). Sure they share their condolences, but they’re just not privy to communicating empathy, which is jarring while I’m so raw with emotion at this time. 

For example, my dad made small talk about the stimulus package while we waited for the vet tech to bring Lucky out. I’m waiting for our final goodbye and already mourning Lucky and my dad decides to talk about taxes? I don’t understand how someone can behave so casually at a time like that. We weren’t waiting at the DMV or in line for check out. We were putting my dog down. Another moment I found jarring was my mom greeting me in the parking lot by asking how I’ll pay for the vet bill. No “I’m so sorry for your loss” or “It’s ok to be sad. I’m here with you” -just a straight “How are we going to pay for this?”. I found it insulting. Despite this, I know that compassion and warmth are not their forte and didn’t hold it against them in the moment. I focused most on Lucky and the actual goodbye, waiting in anticipation to see my boy.

In hindsight, I’m fixating on how utterly alone I felt despite being surrounded by my family, and with that creeps darker thoughts. Negative what ifs and perpetual anger over the emotional support my family could never give me. I question if I really did give Lucky a good life, if my parents actually do love me, if anyone truly cares about me beyond niceties you’re supposed to say in the wake of tragedy. I wish I had discernible truth, but I’ll have to muster the will to entertain brighter thoughts to come to a balanced conclusion.

Here are my brighter thoughts. I imagine Lucky’s life through his eyes and can see the many family members he got to play with, the many households he could live in, and the holidays we all spent together. Introducing him to my parents as their grandson when he was a few months old. Giving him a daddy in my husband. Snuggling in bed and play-fighting until he got tired.

The sad truth is, at the moment, I can’t hold onto these thoughts for too long. I’m left with an all encompassing void, haunted by the places Lucky used to sleep, the idle way we used to play throughout the day. When I was present enough to bask in those moments with him, I savored them knowing our time was limited. This may be a morbid way to experience company with the one you love, but it’s my way of savoring the essence of a relationship. Time is always limited. For me, to acknowledge this while together is the ultimate form of appreciation and true love.

I’m worried about giving up the sadness. In a way it’s all I have left of him. The grief is a reminder of how deeply I loved and cared about him when we were together. The longing to be with him again is so apparent that I can’t think of happy memories without crying. His absence is so painfully present.

I feel an unrelenting sadness when I look at Lucky’s things. All the poop bags we’ll never use, his medication that was just delivered Monday, toys sprawled all over the living room floor, his favorite rug, the foot of the bed where he’d sit waiting for us to wake up. I remember him collapsing, passing out, and how dim his eyes looked on our way to the vet. I was in the car yesterday and couldn’t help but replay that traumatizing trip through his eyes  (or at least how I think he saw it). Through this lens, I can internalize his suffering and know I did the right thing by putting him to sleep. I can believe this was the best way possible for him to go. Painless and peacefully and with all the people who loved him so much. This was the most important thing to me, more important than how badly I would miss him. I’m grateful I could give him a peaceful out, surrounded by nothing but love.

Many things seem irrelevant in hindsight. Months prior to his passing, I was worked up over the fleas, annoyed by my parents on our trip to the Philippines, and stifled by the classic BPD triggers that liked to pop up and punch me in the face whenever I wanted to hang with friends. If I had known I’d be losing Lucky just two months later, I would have spent more time with him rather than obsessing over these minor inconveniences. Here goes me clinging to self-blame, the minimization of my feelings, and perpetual guilt. I wish being kinder to myself came naturally to me. Even at a time when suffering is at an all time high, I like to tack on more self-flagellation. I’ll have to let these undulating waves of guilt pass through me. Underneath it all, I’m only feeling them because I care and want so badly to be with Lucky again. 

I think of how hard it is for me to form strong connections with people and how easy it was to love Lucky, and I understand why it hurts this much to lose him. If it weren’t for my husband, I’d feel completely alone. Maybe not 100% of the time, but loneliness would be my default. I have to work extra hard to convince my brain that people really do care about me. This is why I’m terrified of loss. Losing the ones who care about me the most leave me with the ones who may or may not. 

Since recovery I’ve strengthened relationships and can even count a handful of people who are great at communicating empathy, but this doesn’t mean I’m always confident that they care. My mind is crazy talented at rationalizing why they don’t and it takes a lot of mental de-tangling to accept kind and loving words at face value. This inability to receive love may be why loss is my greatest fear. The pain it brings leads me to suicidal ideation, which is confusing and uncomfortable for someone who isn’t necessarily suicidal anymore. I don’t want to kill myself, but I don’t see a point in being here without the people who love me. It would be agony to live a life without my husband and Lucky, and now I have to endure half that battle. 

RIP Lucky.

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View pics and videos of Lucky on my IG: @yournewpenpal

Grief and Quiet BPD

It’s been four months since I put my dog down. I think about Lucky everyday. The funny way he’d cock his head and flop onto the bed, his way of saying it was time to cuddle. His little under bite, constant neediness, and stinky dog breath. I miss it all. I made the decision to put him down after multiple visits to the emergency vet. He had severe heart disease and was eventually dependent on the hospital’s oxygen crate. I knew it was time. 

We said our goodbyes in a small tent just outside the hospital and because of his condition we didn’t have a lot of time. I held my boy, crying out loud, surprising myself. My untamed emotions don’t  normally present themselves with so many people around. “So many people” being my family who are not so emotionally available. Vulnerability and openness are met with discomfort and awkward silences. I shouldn’t have been surprised when my dad talked about the stimulus package and COVID while waiting for Lucky to be brought out.

Because of my upbringing, I rarely cry at funerals and in front of people, afraid that I’ll make the people around me feel uncomfortable. Afraid that my untamed emotions would be too much. It feels more  fitting to be an observer of grief rather than a participant. At funerals I find myself people watching, silently empathizing from afar.  I was never great at accessing my own  emotions unless alone. Granted, losing your pet is different from losing someone for whom you cared for, but was not in your care, I still found the distinction between the two processes of grief worth exploring. 

I remember when one of my best friends passed away. I was 23. This happened during a period of  ignoring her calls, texts, and soft blocking her efforts to hang out. Was I splitting?  (Hint: absolutely). My anger stemmed from the sting of rejection (real or imagined, I can’t tell now). I  thought she preferred a mutual friend over me and became resentful of their closeness (hello, insecure attachment), she made jokes about my suicidal ideation, and was just all around rude (or appeared that way when the idealization phase wore off), at one point humiliating me at a party about not having real friends. At her funeral, I watched her mom kiss and caress her cheek. I was sad for her mom, but still splitting and couldn’t feel my own feelings of loss until well after the funeral.

My delayed emotional reactions came like a phantom. A flurry of mixed emotions came through first thing in the morning-anger and guilt about not making amends. Regardless of how bitchy she was being to me, I still should have confronted her or at least ended the friendship. Then  came the spikes of sadness. A year later I finally grew to miss her.  A bitter pill to swallow is that I’ll never see her again to resolve any of this.

I wish that my relationships with people were like my relationships with animals: free of pesky BPD triggers, like splitting and premeditated grief. Comparing this to my relationship with my dog, the grief I feel about his passing is so straightforward. Your animal is in your care; you know to just love them unconditionally, flaws and all. You also don’t exchange words that run the risk of being miscommunicated, words filtered by the “BPD lens”.  With Lucky, I don’t have to worry about being rejected or humiliated. I don’t have those BPD defenses to  interfere with my love for him. I’m just this raw nerve when it comes to loving Lucky, which is nice but also cuts deep now that he is gone. 

This raw nerve feeling  may be why I keep friends at an arm’s length. I don’t want to experience the sting of grief when people inevitably leave; sometimes I think it would be easier for me to split rather than ever miss anyone. At my worst, I perceive closeness in relationships as a high risk, low reward venture. I’m ashamed of my emotional immaturity, but tired enough to crave change.

Steps to Change:

Detect premeditated grief as an expression of a fear of intimacy.

First thing I want to do is accept the logic behind the borderline’s intrinsic fear of intimacy.  I’m reminded of  how often I’ve experienced grief (premeditated or real) in relationships.  Borderlines experience loss in the anticipation that our loved ones will leave or reject us, just like I experienced loss when splitting on my friend (before she passed). I was angry, but I was also projecting.  My mindset at the time was “if I could be having these hateful thoughts about her, she’s probably having them about me. Time to split!”. I was afraid of her no longer thinking the world of me, grew jealous of the time spent with our mutual friend, and convinced myself to leave. The logic behind premeditated grief is “leave them before they can leave you”. In my relationships when I feel those “leave them before they leave you” vibes, I will now associate them with my fear of intimacy acting up again. 

Self-compassion, always.

Second, I want to validate my fears. The fear of abandonment is so severe that I don’t know how to experience intimacy, at least not completely. This is what makes it so hard for me to express my love to anyone. Because I know down the line the harder I love someone, the harder I will anticipate them leaving me. I’m afraid to love because I’m afraid to lose, but I know this fear stems from a zero sum mentality, which is nothing more than a cognitive distortion that prevents me from experiencing intimacy completely. I understand how this fear came to exist and will no longer shame myself for it by processing the feelings with sustainable coping skills, like venting to a loved one, journaling, and absorbing more content that will help me understand the fear of abandonment.

Learn from my mistake.

Third, I want to pinpoint the error in my ways. I remember feeling relieved when my friend passed away because while I was splitting on her, I felt like she was dead to me anyway. This isn’t a sentiment I can share with someone who isn’t familiar with BPD. Our mutual friends would have looked at me like I was a monster, and at times I felt like one . I shouldn’t have ignored her. I should have at least told her how I felt.  Deep down I know she was important to me, otherwise I wouldn’t be splitting on her in the first place. Sad that my only indication of having cared is the vitriol I feel once a bridge is burned, but at least I have the awareness of precisely what I will do differently the next time I’m splitting on a loved one. Talk to them, and if that isn’t an option -find the gray in between those gradients of black and white.

Find the Gray.

Ask myself: what was the incident that bothered me? What parts of this person am I not liking or finding compatible to me and why? Are there any aspects of their character that I appreciate? What are my values? Does keeping them in my life align with those values? What do I want out of this relationship and where do I see it in the long run?

What grief taught me:

It took losing my dog to reflect and see that I needed to change. My love for Lucky shines a light on a better version of me. One that will weather the inevitable BPD storms, accompanying relationships, for a fraction of sunlight experienced when I choose to love with my whole heart. In conclusion, I’ve learned the hard way that while it may be complicated to have relationships with people, I can’t live without them.  I might as well make the best of my time with my loved ones while we’re still here.  Even if it means I’ll be a sniveling mess when they leave. 

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