I woke up this morning feeling very reflective. It started right when I woke up. Most people wake up in the morning and check their phones or get up and brush their teeth or whatever to start their day. Maybe before any of that they just lay there and stretch that big comfy stretch when you first wake up in the morning. My routine, as it’s been every single morning for almost 4 years now, starts with making sure my dogs are alive. It’s the first thing I do. I regain consciousness and immediately feel my dogs laying next to me and I pause, holding my breath, as I check to feel that they’re warm and alive. And then I feel that they’re breathing. Okay, everything is okay. The world is okay once I feel that. It’s become such a part of my routine that I don’t really see it as a problem or anything these days. It’s just what it is. Every single morning, the very first thing I do is check to make sure my dogs are alive. Four years of intensive therapy and I’ve worked through a lot, but this is just an inherent part of me now. Checking to make sure my dogs are alive.
So this morning I woke up and after my daily routine of checking to make sure my dogs are alive, I felt very reflective. I reflected on this reality that every single day I check to make sure my dogs are alive. And do you know what I’m most afraid of? After everything, all that I’ve been through, my greatest fear, is fear. And I don’t know how or if you can ever really heal that, no matter how much therapy you go through. Fear is a natural part of life. I’ve just become all too familiar and aware of it.
You see, as I was reflecting this morning, I realized that my greatest fear in checking to make sure my dogs are alive, the fear of loss and of them not being alive, well, I’m terrified of going through that grief again. That profound hurt that you can’t really put into words. It tears your life apart. Everything you knew in the world changes. Becomes darker. Life goes on but a piece of you has gone missing. It dies with the loss. With the grief. And I’m truly terrified of experiencing that again.
I survived abuse. I’ve survived a lot more as a result of that. And I’ve done the work in therapy to heal. And I think what I reflected on this morning is that there’s not much you can do about fear, other than developing tools to respond better to it. Take my dogs’ health and well-being for example. 3 of my 4 pets have heart conditions – go figure. They’re very, very mild but they’re there and something I’m so aware of. So the other night, Rosie developed a bit of a cough. She was coughing with every breath for about 10 minutes before we decided to bring her to the ER. Why? Because with her heart condition, the vet said if she develops a cough, that it could be a sign of heart failure. I wasn’t overly concerned but I knew that this is just what it is, you respond to the situation. So we brought her in, and *shocker* she’s totally fine. The vet said she probably had a tickle in her throat and all her vitals were great. Which I was totally expecting! But nonetheless I brought her in to get checked because that’s what you do. You respond as well as you can.
So anyway, that’s what I was reflecting on this morning. The worst part of all of the trauma and abuse I endured was really, truly the fear. The paralyzing, send my body into physical shock, fear. And I have the tools to respond to it, but it’s all still a way to respond. Fear is a part of life, I get that. But to have experienced the gravity of fear. Man, that’s a lot. And it’s left an impact on me that has permanently affected me.
Sarah's Story 