Saturday Stories #4 Someone who has a change of heart
Written at Berkeley Creative Wellness Center, December 21, 2015
Note: These fiction stories are unedited, unfiltered, and written in 15-25 minutes. Please be aware that they may contain intense material related to emotional healing, trauma recovery, and redirected fears. Please see my article “Coming Soon: Saturday Stories” for more information.
She hated Christmas and holidays, when everyone was cheery and bright. She didn’t want to give presents or go to parties and she didn’t care if she received them either, not that anyone gave her anything anyway. No one cared about her. It’s all just rubbish. She hated music and light and turkey and snow. She wished she could just escape it all and crawl in a hole and die. What was the point anyway?
Then one day when she was walking down the street, cursing at the Christmas shoppers and all their jolly smiles, she saw a dog. It was a beautiful black lab, skinny as a bone, and shivering. The dog walked up to her wagging her tail. She went to lick her mittened hand. She took off her mitten and let her licked. Her tongue was warm and dry. She wandered when the dog had last had water. Out of all the people the dog had chosen to come up to her. Why she wondered as she scratched behind the dog’s ears. It wore no collar. She would take it to the animal shelter, but it was getting dark and they were closed. So, she held the dog by the scruff of her neck and led her home.
The first thing she did was get her some water. The dog lapped it up eagerly. She looked at the poor creature who had possibly had a worse life than she had, if that was possible. And then a strange thing happened, she felt compassion for the dog. She looked around the house for something to feed her and made some rice and eggs. How had this pitiful creature still kept its love for people? She wondered. People had hurt her so bad that she had no compassion for them, but a dog, a poor innocent dog that loved her. She gave the dog eggs and rice. She ate quickly as if she thought the food might be taken away. Then as her heart warmed toward the dog she thought maybe she would keep her. She didn’t know how she would manage this on her meager income, but for the first time in a long time she felt love, both from the dog and from herself to the dog.
Today’s Insights
This story reminds me of when I first got my dog Suzen. I was living with some people who had adopted her and she ran up to me, super excited. She actually scared me because I wasn’t expecting her. She chose me and started sleeping in my room and I started walking her and taking her to parks.
Later the people who had her offered to give her to me, because it was clear that she was my dog. At the time I was very depressed and using alcohol and unstable. I was on disability while trying to finish the last semester of my master’s degree. I had no idea how I could afford to take care of myself, let alone a dog. I thought on it for a couple of days and on Valentine’s Day 2007 Suzen became my dog.
Her name was Sue, but I thought she needed a little Zen because she was so hyper. She was the first real attachment that I felt. She passed on February 8, 2020, a ripe old age of 105 in her breed’s dog years. She will always be my first love and the one who saved me from crippling depression and helped me learn to love her, then myself, then others. When I first got her I hardly talked, yet she was so friendly, she forced me into conversation. She later became my service dog and helped me stay grounded and avoid migraines.