My Absence

This is going to be a kind of sad journal entry. I don’t usually write sad ones, but I feel like I should write this one, so I will.

I just finished watching a movie in which a man has to get his dog put to sleep because the dog is sick and can’t recover. When he does it, he puts a lot of effort forth in making sure the dog goes as nicely as possible. He hires a doctor over an actual vet just because he doesn’t like the vet’s cunty attitude. Then he buys the dog a nice steak and is right beside the dog as he gets euthanized. He even makes sure the dog is comfortably in his favorite bed at home as it happens. Afterwards he stays with the dog a while until he’s sure he’s finally gone to sleep for the last time, to see his best friend off into whatever happens after this life ends. Just for good measure he stays beside him until he’s sure all life has left the body, and to reflect on the amount of life he shared with the dog and all the good times they shared and whatnot. This is what I should have done.

Yeah, pretty sad and all that. Normally this would only get to me mildly, but this made me realize just how shitty I acted when my dog died a while back. It made me feel goddamn terrible and a truckload of guilt for how I handled things.

I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there for her at the end. I barely even paid attention to her. Even on the day she was put down it didn’t get to me, and it was all because of the other things happening at the time. I was too preoccupied feeling shitty about other things to act like a decent human being. Not that that excuses me for my mistake. It doesn’t. This movie made me realize how much of a prick I can really be. I don’t mean the normal kind of prick either, I mean pure prick. The kind of prick that makes you put your hands over your face and say “Oh man, what the fuck is wrong with me?” over and over again while pacing around, as I just finished doing. I have to make sure I never do anything like that again, and that I give the right amount of attention to each bad thing that happens. The problem was, was that I couldn’t feel any shittier than I already did at the time, and I made the mistake of not allowing myself to feel worse, hence, someone I love and that loves me back, dies possibly wondering where the fuck I am and screwing myself out of ever being able to get over said loved one’s death properly. Well, I deserve my end of it at least.

This realization just hit me like a ton of bricks with nails glued to them. Why the hell did it take this long? Am I really that awful? Apparently so.