Dead Horses and Depressed Dogs

One of two things was going to happen as I let my Internet browser pop up.  I was either going to google 'is my dog depressed' or I was going to write a blog.

I will google that query a bit later.  

In the meantime… 

I have been all over the world- my adventures are what initially inspired the creation of this blog page. It has surely become abundantly clear by now that I do love traveling.  I love that I have been all over the world.  I love that my passport expired with only one blank page left in it.  I love that there will come a point in time when I get to look back on my unholy mess of a life and think 'yeah… I did that.' 

And I have traveled with others- friends, parents, lovers.  I have traveled on my own.  I have moved across the world, across the country on my own.  I have driven tens of thousands of miles on my own; logged the same amount of flight distance on my own.  Been on trains, on boats, on my own.   

And it is never the big moments when I feel on my own.  It is never the big moments- staring at the aurora borealis under a foreign sky, seeing foreign mountains in their full glory, watching the sun set over and over in more perfect, more fiery and foreign and golden ways- when I feel lost for wanting someone near me.  It never is.  

It is, rather, the small moments.  It is shoving my carry-on into the overhead storage space, knowing that in x-many hours I will be touching ground and having to pull that thing out and start all over again. It is carrying a fifteen pound bag of dog food, while pulling along a fifty pound dog, up to an empty apartment- over and over and over again.  It is finally settling down for a second... only to feel the drip-drip of a leak in the ceiling of said empty apartment.  

A not-pink paw shot of DJ Jazzy Hen-Roots

It is countless gallons of gas pumped into a slowly-dying jeep.  It is the laughter and love that I feel every day, laughter and love that is even directed toward me, the luckiness I am constantly reminded of, the goodness of my life… on my own.  It is the plan- the stuttered, scared life plan that never comes to fruition because it's a bit sad, planning a life of one (two if you count the dog).  It is the fear that my dog is depressed… but no one to bounce that off of (excepting google).  

Those are the moments when 'on my own' is not on my own anymore, but alone with a hint of lonely.  Those are the moments of containment, of putting myself away for another day.   And don't get me wrong (this line I have used so so so many times- it is like beating the hell out of a long-dead horse), I love my life.  I own my life, all of my mistakes, all of my moments of grace.  

But once in a while, I'd like to share what I own.  

With someone other than a maybe-depressed dog who currently sports hot pink front paws- Henry-1, Hi-Lighter-0.