I Need This Dog… Now!

A couple days ago, I had a really bad day.  I hadn’t slept well the night before, which is not unusual for me.  So I was tired and that always makes everything seem worse.

I was feeling overwhelmed by all the stuff I had to do and feeling guilty about all the stuff I hadn’t managed to get done.  And I felt depressed, like things were never going to get better.  Honestly, I’m not sure they are.  I try to at least hold on to a little bit of hope that it might get better, because otherwise, what would be the point in going on?  But I have struggled so much with this deep depression for so long.  Sometimes it seems to me that it’s not very logical to think it’s going to just go away some day.

So I got upset and I started crying.  I think Mike doesn’t know what to do when I’m like this, and I also think he is tired of dealing with it.  I don’t blame him.  I’m tired of dealing with it, too!  I would walk away from myself if I could when I’m like this.

I was lying on the couch, crying and crying, and he was sitting on the end of the couch, pretty much ignoring me.  Which hurts my feelings.  He doesn’t know what to say or how to help, and I don’t really know what I want him to say or do to help.  But I want him to do something.  I feel so alone.

If I had my service dog, the dog would have gotten my medication and brought it to me.  It occurred to me as I was lying there crying uncontrollably that I should take my medication.  But it required too much energy to get up and get it.  I didn’t want to ask Mike to get it for me because… well, I don’t really know why.   

Because I didn’t want to bother him, I guess.  Because I felt like I should be able to get it myself.  And because he knows I have medication that helps when I am like that and he could have gotten it for me without me asking him if he wanted to, but he didn’t, so I assumed that meant he didn’t want to.  But my service dog would want to.

And the dog would have stayed with me.  When Mike got up and left the room, the dog would have stayed.  The dog would have wanted to stay.  I wouldn’t have been alone.

I don’t mean for this post to be all about how Mike didn’t help me when I needed help.  He helps me plenty.  And I didn’t tell him what I wanted  him to do to help me, and I could have asked him to bring me my medication, and I chose not to.  So I bear some of the responsibility for what happened.  None of that is my point, though.

My point is that I need this service dog.  The day went on to get worse and worse, my emotions and then my behavior towards myself spiraling out of control.  If I’d had my service dog, and he had brought me my medication when the crying first started, it might have stopped the whole cascade of events.  It’s like an avalanche, or something.  I pick up steam as I go along.  Things get worse and worse and it’s hard to break out of it.  But the service dog… the service dog could break that loop.  And I don’t know of anything else that can.

I am going on vacation in a couple weeks.  When I get back, I am having the radiofrequency neurotomy for my lower back.  The procedure has to be done one side at a time, so it will take two appointments over two weeks to complete it.  And then I have to do physical therapy, I think for six weeks.  It would not be good to get a dog until all that is over, even if I could find a dog that fast, which I don’t think I could.  But after that, right after that, I want my dog.