The morning after

[cleolinda]

Eerie Horoscope of Doom:

Quickie: You are in one of the biggest transitional periods of your life -- let it unfold.

Overview: A winning attitude can go a long way toward ensuring a degree of success, especially when it comes to new ventures. Think pink, be positive, strike up the band -- whatever you do, keep your mental state high.

Daily extended (by Astrology.com)
Not all of the important changes in your life need to be dramatic, Hollywood-like moments of revelation. Having a major turning point or epiphany is nice, but it can be overrated. You don't need to make a splash to make a change. True growth happens slowly ... so slowly that sometimes (like now) you might not even be aware of it. Look around today -- did you realize that right now, you're in one of the biggest transitional periods of your life? Let it unfold -- enjoy it.

Just so you know, I'm going to be putting emotional parts of entries behind lj-cuts, because I know it can be triggering, as they say, for a lot of people, no matter who you might be grieving at the moment. And thank you again, for all the kind words. I'm afraid to try to respond for fear of bursting into tears, but I read everything as it hits my email, and I appreciate everything. (If you've just walked in and have no idea what I'm talking about, read the previous two entries.)

"God is watching out for us," my mother declares, as she so often does. We haven't been to church in years, but she believes quite firmly in God's Plan for All of Us. "You were home when it happened. George happened to come home the moment you called for help and heard you. [Sister Girl] is off from work and school this next week"--we were afraid she'd be so upset she wouldn't be able to go anywhere, at which point she might get fired or failed; she's already coming home early from work today--"and we're not out of town like we will be two weekends from now. He went the best way possible for a dog to go, even if it's not the best way for us. And if you had to choose, you'd rather it be easy for him. I'm telling you, God watches out for us."

It's still hard. I do want to clarify that no one yesterday tried to make me feel stupid for grieving, no one at all; my discussion of that came purely from my own self-consciousness. My father used to say that I was "tenderhearted" because I cried way, way too easily (which I did; I was one of those shy, pudgy kids who got teased a lot. Never mind being depressive/bipolar on top of that), and so as I got older, about the time I was thirteen, I swore that I would never cry again. Obviously that was something horribly unhealthy that I did get over, but I think I must have gone two or three years without crying once, even when I should have been. The way it shook out, Sister Girl and I became very like Marianne and Elinor in Sense and Sensibility, and sometimes I wonder if Elinor didn't turn out half the way she did because Marianne was so emotional. When you have someone prone to acting out, the other person tends to compensate for it in the other direction.

I did a lot of things when I was a teenager, actually, made a lot of resolutions--I think I had a good enough sense of humor, but I actually decided that I would try to make people laugh, because they wouldn't pick on me if they were laughing. They would value that. So I would watch how people responded to something I said--I wasn't a class clown; more of a Daria type. I was thirteen, after all. But I watched what people responded to, what they laughed at and what left them cold, whether I said it or someone else did. This is probably why I'm the person I am today, talking to an audience of people, many of whom are here because they found me through movie parodies, about how I am not crying, or trying not to cry, about my dog.

It's easier to talk about anything other than my dog, and yet I keep coming back to him. Mom came to check on me before she went off to work just now--I still have the head cold from Hades, so I sound like I'm crying even when I'm not. Well, actually it's pretty clear that it's more than crying, because right now there's a lot of hacking and snorfling involved. (It's okay. You can laugh. "Snorfling" is a funny word.) We talked about how it's hard because he used to follow us around so much, because you see him everywhere you go. "It's like, I'm going to get out of bed and step over him," I said. (He was napping beside my bed when he went, like he does a lot, and that's where he'd been sleeping at night lately.) "I'm going to go to the bathroom and he's going to be lying outside the door when I come out, I'm going to step over him again. We're going to go downstairs; he's going to stop halfway down and look back to make sure I'm coming. Sam's going to bark at him. He's going to go to the back door and I'll let him out, or he'll flop down by the kitchen vent."

"If he goes out back," says my mother, "he'll hop over that little barrier we put up for Meko and sit on his landing and watch the yard behind us."

"He's going to come back to the screen door and I'm going to wave at him before I walk over to let him in. I'm going to take breakfast upstairs. He's going to run up before me. I'm going to pat him on the back as he passes me. It's going to go on like this all day," I said, and she nodded. "There's like two parts to it--you go around expecting to see him at any moment and then you don't. And then you have to go, 'Because he's dead.' It's like I have to break the news to myself again every time I think I'll see him and I don't. It's like I'm five years old and I don't understand the concept of death. There's just no way this can be happening--he was so healthy..."

"I know," she says.

I told her I was the kind of person who gets all their crying out the first day, but now I don't know that this is true. You can rationalize so much of it away--he was happy, he did have a good life, he did go quietly, he didn't suffer, there wasn't anything else we could have done--the vet said he (the vet) couldn't have done anything for him if he'd been standing next to him when it happened--but after you've sent all the blame and regret packing, if you can manage to do that, you're still left with this roadblock of emotion that can't be waved or articulated away. It's just there. "There's just nothing for that but time," my mother says.

So I am here, even though I said I wouldn't be. I may put off the linkspam a bit longer. But she's right, you know, about God watching over us--well, let me rephrase that. Even if you don't believe in God, you have to admit that a terrible thing happened in the best possible way, rendering it "really sad" rather than "fucking traumatic." I can't imagine what state I'd be in right now if I weren't on Lamictal (day 20). Far from medicating me out of creativity, I've actually been more productive since I went on it. I think I'm in the middle of a hypomanic period at the moment, as I've been working on Black Ribbon all week so far, but it's taken the edge off, the "manic" out of "hypomanic"--I don't feel chained to the desk until I've gotten everything out. I can get up and get some tea and not be afraid all the ideas will be gone when I come back. I've got a horrible head cold and yet I've been spending most of the day out of bed working. And the best part (she said wryly) is, I've been running a low fever, on and off, for three days now.

In the meanwhile, here's the partial entry I had in Semagic to post yesterday:

Can I just tell you how much I enjoy breathing through my mouth? So much.

Ran a mild fever and alternated sleeping with writing. I don't know if I'm having some more hypomania--I'm also at that point in my hormonal cycle when I'm usually more creative--but I tell you what, it's quite an experience to try write down what you're thinking, but be so feverish that you're not making any sense. And what was I writing about? Espionage for Black Ribbon, of course. It was basically this total MacGuffin situation of, I need someone to hand something over to someone under the cover of a masked ball, and I kind of don't care who or what, I just want it to involve a major antagonist. So I sat there this afternoon and hashed the whole thing out--it went from "plans for... something. Something sciency" to "some kind of written note" to "a vial of something." And there were these endless crossings and double-crossings and then finally when I had simplified the whole subplot down to something that actually made sense, I kept trying to figure things out that I had figured out two minutes previous and promptly forgotten. I know this because I was freewriting, and I'd interrupt myself half the time: "And then the handoff happens, but what's his motivation for wanting to help them? What if he thinks that--wait, we just discussed his motives two paragraphs ago, duh."

(Yes, I am "we" or "I" when I freewrite, and sometimes "you." I don't judge you, you don't judge me.)

By the end of it, though, I'd had a major breakthrough that will actually inform most of the storyline of the second series. Sometimes the most important writing you do isn't the pretty writing; it isn't even the writing that anyone will ever see. Sometimes, it's the writing you do when you talk to yourself, figuring things out.

I think I was actually referring to the writing I was doing late Tuesday night. Wednesday proper, I was a bit more lucid and making more sense. That, or I was working on a less logically taxing part of the storyline. I was working on the second orange volume, the Paris one, because I'm incredibly clear on the third installment but incredibly fuzzy on that second one, and it seems bad to be ending the first story and not be sure of what's happening in the second, since the second picks up pretty much the same day as the first one left off. I mean, just in terms of the logistics of who stays in Paris and who goes back to London--since the last scene in the first one is at a train station, I kind of need to have that part of the second one settled before I end the first one.

But a lot of things are falling into place. I have a few specific events that are kind of floating around the series in general, and I've been mentally moving them around from volume to volume to see where they fit. A masked ball has been moved from the beginning of three to the end of two and combined with a ball that was already there. (This is the ball with the handoff of the MacGuffin. This is how you know I'm a girl: it involves espionage and fashion. And if, some years from now it's published and you're reading it, you can smile when you get to the part about how it has a Marie Antoinette theme.) But it's funny, because I've gone two or three years without any major progress on any of this, and so the directions I'm going in are a little different now. I don't regret the hiatus, though; whenever there's a time-out period of some kind in my life, it usually results in something else being better than if I'd gone ahead with it at the time. In this case, I feel like I know a lot more about structure and pacing than I did three years ago--what needs to happen vs. what I idly wanted to happen, whether it really made much sense or not. Like my mother says, I guess, sometimes it's just a matter of the passage of time.

Comments

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

I'm just catching up on LJ this morning: I'm so sorry to hear about Lucky. He was a handsome boy and lucky to have you! (Was he an English Cocker Spaniel?)

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

He was. You can tell because his nose is longer. : )

[sexion8.livejournal.com]

I think grief is a lot like a poison--you push a little of it out every day.

Also, the way he went cheated you of closure. It'd be different if he had been battling a long illness or got hit by a car; you then have something to pin it on. But this was just complete and total robbery, like a thief in the night.

I'm glad you're writing about this. It will help you.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Thanks. At the same, time, though--re: closure--if one of us had to suffer, I'd rather it be me than him, you know? He was, seriously, the sweetest dog I've ever known, and I don't begrudge him the easiest passing he could have had. I'm kind of lucky in that I don't have any negative emotions about the actual way he went--no suffering, no pain, no illness or violent accident; it just hurts that it was so soon.

[fishsanwitt]

you're still left with this roadblock of emotion that can't be waved or articulated away. It's just there. "There's just nothing for that but time," my mother says.

Your mother is a very wise woman.

::many gentle hugs:: for your loss.

Rainbow Bridge

[want2bspry.livejournal.com]

Like you said -- dogs are part of the structure of your life.

When my pups go, I'm sure I won't know what to talk about or do or who to hug to make it better . . .

Don't feel guilty about sharing -- everybody can relate to losing a pet. I'm sure Lucky will continue to inspire and spread happiness in memory and stories for years to come.

Remember the Rainbow Bridge . . . He'll be waiting for you there.
http://www.indigo.org/rainbowbridge_ver2.html

It just sucks so much now . . . your family is in my thoughts.

[bunnymonkey.livejournal.com]

Hey, just wanted to say I'm thinking of you, and I'm so sorry for your loss.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Hey, at least I'm writing. : )

[girlupnorth]

I really relate to the things you say about Lucky - how he followed you around, and was always near you - because that just how my dog behaves. And I can't imagine my and my family's reaction if she would die. So I really feel for you and your loss :(

On the more optimistic note, anytime I read one of your entries on writing, I feel the urge to take out my notebook and get down to the things I'm working on. You make people believe that even the more difficult part of writing can be fun.

And if, some years from now it's published and you're reading it...

I think that "if" should be a "when" :)

[girlupnorth]

And uh, I know it's not the best time for this, but I have some yousendit links on my hands... have you heard/are you interested in hearing new Tori Amos songs? From the 'a piano' boxset?

[edda.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Thanks. : )

[copernica3.livejournal.com]

I am so sorry about Lucky. I'm crying just reading your earlier entries. *hugs*

[biblio-filia.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry. I lost the dog we'd had since my mom was pregnant for me to leukemia when I was around twelve- I literally grew up with that dog. Your entries make me miss my dog at my parent's house...it just makes me want to go home and pet him and kiss him. We're all thinking of you.

[corkdorkdan.livejournal.com]

I think I heard about a famous book where the writer wrote part of it, and then took a few years before coming back to it. I'm thinking maybe Huck Finn? It's an interesting idea that you could get blocked by a lack of experience or knowledge, and then after going through a few more life experiences, suddenly have a much clearer idea of how a story should unfold.

[snapdragon76.livejournal.com]

It's perfectly natural to grieve over losing a beloved pet. I speak from experience having recently lost one of my cats at a very young age. I bawled like a baby when he went.

Best wishes to you and your family, Cleo.

[editornia.livejournal.com]

So Sorry to hear about Lucky, Cleo. Condolences. I think he must have known you loved him. That counts for a lot. *Hugs*

[brigid31.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to give my condolences about Lucky. I lost my beloved dog two years ago (she was quite old but it was still a terrible day) when I was aways at school. So even though the sadness hit me right then and I cried for quite awhile but I had the same double grief experience when I got home and she wasn't there. I'm so so sorry.

[kpachayagolobka.livejournal.com]

Just because we're here due to m15m or something like that doesn't mean we don't want to hear about your life-- it's strange how the internet works like that; I have several LJ friends (most of whom I've met through LOST discussions) who go through some rough times and we always find ourselves supporting one another. I find that a lot of the people here are the same type of person, and we're all glad to do our best to be here for you through anything that happens (though I'm sure you've noticed this).

I also hope the head cold resolves itself-- there is NOTHING worse than crying with a massive head cold. My great grandmother died when I had one and I thought that I'd be next my head was so swollen.

[kinkydork.livejournal.com]

i am so sorry to hear about your dog. i manage a fund for vets and pet owners to send in donations in memory of their pets (the fund goes towards research), and sometimes we get the most tearjerking letters and it kills me. i always go home and hug my puppy after i read those letters. my mom has a 13-year-old dog and i'm terrified thinking of what it would be like without her around since we've had her for more than half my life. anyway, i think that was my weird way of telling you you're not alone in your feelings. my condolences.

[ladyelaine.livejournal.com]

Condolences on your loss. Don't feel horrible about feeling horrible. Pets are part of the family as much as parents, children, and siblings. It's natural to grieve just as much for pets as for humans, because we love them just as much.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

Heh, I should know by now that when you say, "I might not write an entry tomorrow," there's always an invisible asterisk that says, "...or perhaps I shall write the second volume of the 2007 Encyclopedia Britannica, or a complete re-write of the Pentateuch in which Frank the Goat speaks to Moses on the twentieth day of the month of Lamacital. We shall see." ;-)

(Yes, I am "we" or "I" when I freewrite, and sometimes "you." I don't judge you, you don't judge me.)

There's a joke, or maybe it's an observation, about subjective pronouns and subjective mental states in there.

(This is the ball with the handoff of the MacGuffin. This is how you know I'm a girl: it involves espionage and fashion. [...]

Does it involve things being hidden in bodices? *eyes light up*
--
*ongoing hugs*

[lily-handmaiden.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

[adoresixtyfour.livejournal.com]

Crying the next day isn't unusual--in fact, it's expected. Hell, I was tearing up yesterday reading all the comments yesterday and thinking about the kitty I had put down three years ago. It gets easier over time, but sometimes the memory will sneak up on you.

*more hugs*

[cran.livejournal.com]

I friended you because of your movie parodies, but I've stuck around because I like reading about your life, too. Your reaction to Lucky's death is completely understandable and I'm not all that surprised that people are being so cool about it, because anyone who's ever had/lost a pet knows they're more than just an animal and their death hits hard. I've had my little calico cat for 17 years (since I was 8!), and she's in perfect health and looks half her age, but I know she could go suddenly, too, and I know I'll be inconsolable when it happens. So, talk about Lucky all you want; we pet lovers understand.

[bohotremere.livejournal.com]

My heartfelt condolences on the passing of your dog Lucky. My husband and I had to say goodbye to our 14-year-old greyhound at the end of May. I think that at least for now, it's smiles more than tears when I think of him, how he was and the things we did together. Sly apparently hand-picked his successor, and Toby has been like a gift from our old hound that we get to enjoy every day.

I think of two quotes that I remember when I hear that someone has lost a pet:

"Grief is the price we pay for love."
"Don't cry because your pet is gone...celebrate because he happened."

Though admittedly the second one takes time to be able to do. Months or even years down the road, old dogs will sneak up on your memories at the strangest moments.

[girlalmighty]

I'm glad you're writing about it, though, even if it hurts. It's important to be able to express that, instead of just damming it up inside, Elinor-style. You know we're here for you, any way we can be.

(Yes, I am "we" or "I" when I freewrite, and sometimes "you." I don't judge you, you don't judge me.)

I do exactly the same thing. And I know what you mean, about coming back to stories much, much later. Sometimes it just works better. Sometimes the things you needed to really get to the end were things you still had to learn or conversations you hadn't yet overheard. Or sometimes you're not just there. It's really strange how that works.

And oh man. Espionage and fashion. I'm such a girl, that sounds aaaawesome.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Hee! You laugh, but I actually have Marie Antoinette pictures like the one in your icon pulled up on my computer to look at, as well as a number of paintings.

[qualinesti.livejournal.com]

I just want you to know that my cat is angry with you. She knows that your recent entries have prompted me to put her though the mortification of picking her up and squeezing her until her little eyes pop every time she comes within arms reach of me.

Because, believe me, I *know* how much a pet means to a person. I dont like to think about how I would handle it if I lost my cat.

[yarha.livejournal.com]

Sorry, sweetie. Losing a pet is like losing a child if you don't have any (children, that is). I've 'gone through' several cats and it doesn't get any easier. I'm grateful that it was peaceful for you, as I know what the other sort is like.

Hope you feel better soon and hold fast to the Rod of Lamictal.

Yarha, Sympathetic

[angelene.livejournal.com]

This is one of those posts of yours that I relate with so much that I hit the 'reply' link immediately after reading and then... I realize that whatever of the billion of things I would like to type would be more about and for me than for you, and that would be... unfair.

So. Just know that I nodded a lot and I feel you completely and am sending you (totalstranger)*hugs* even tighter/warmer than before.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about it--a lot of people have left comments like that, and they were all very sweet. I've come to accept, and appreciate, even, that people tend to use entries like this as a jumping-off point to say something about their own experiences. : )