Name Calling

Allin. Her name is Allin. Her brain chemistry is, at best, wonky, but she does have a name.

Allin.

She has a mother and a father who are both Bipolar. She has an uncle who thinks he is a psychiatry expert because he took one Psychology class in college back in the 70's. Her uncle has a partner who does a very good job at cutting hair so he is at work a good deal of the time. She also has a grandmother who is dotty but happy. She calls each of them by their familial title: Mother, Father, Uncle, Grandma. She calls her Uncle's partner by his first name: Heathrow, or Heath for short. This is all on her Father's side of the family.

Her mother has a sister, giving Allin an Aunt. Her Aunt had three overweight children, Gerald, Alder, and Vincent, from eldest to youngest. Alder was the only one who made himself "someone". He got into shape, joined the United States Marine Corps, got married, and had a child. He was away fighting in Afghanistan when Gerald died suddenly of an aneurysm in his heart. Alder broke his hand from punching a wall the moment he found out. He had told Allin months earlier that he knew someone was going to die in the family and he feared it would be their grandmother, but it was not. 

Alder went on, finished his tour of duty, and re-enlisted into the United States Army. Allin told him not to take that last tour. She said she knew something awful would happen while he was gone. 

Alder was blown to pieces by a landmine shortly thereafter. He was rushed to a military hospital in Germany where he was put back together. He then came State-side for almost nine months when he took a turn for the worse and suffered a massive brain hemorrage. He died the next day when the plug was pulled on his life support system but Allin always counted him dead the moment that the blood vessels burst in his brain. 

Vincent was all that his mother had left. He went through moments of quiet contemplation to moments of anger, hatred, and rage. Vincent was not much to look at, had no plans for the future, and continues even to this day, to leech off of the kindness of his mother, chain smoke pot, and grow fatter with each passing week. It does not take the opinion of a trained physician to understand that if he does not get mental help quickly, Vincent is not long for this world. Allin is pretty sure that is the way he wants it.

Allin, Gerald, Alder, and Vincent also had a grandmother who they called Nana. She helped to take care of the three boys when their father walked out on them. She rarely had time for Allin so they did not grow close until her later years. Nana passed away from Alzheimer's Disease but not after suffering the deaths of two of her three grandsons. Sometimes, Nana would ask how Alder was doing. Allin would answer that he was fine and had a lovely family when in reality the family he had started was rarely heard from; sometimes Alder's own mother was not invited to his daughter's birthday parties. 

That is Allin's family, although she has a family all her own now as well. She has a partner named James. All of James' family is in Tennessee but he has a mother, a father, a sister, and far too many relatives removed. Allin also has far too many pets. She keeps and breeds hedgehogs. Currently she has Sonic, who is going to become her newest stud, and Scout who has three children: Atticus, Eve, and Lilith, all by another father who is owned by another hedgehog lover. She will sell Scout's offspring and start over until Scout is too old and one of her daughter's takes over.
Allin also has a fish tank. It has housed many things and still does but the main attraction is her glum-faced Rockfish, Monstro. Monstro hides inside an old tree stump that is carved to look like the face of an old man and picks off fish if they swim too close and debris from fish food that floats down to him. She used to keep eels but they kept escaping and two eel funerals were enough for Allin.

One of her old fish tanks was lying around, unused, when Mother offered to fill it with a new fish. Instead of a new fish, they bought a small toad-like amphibian called a Pixie Frog. Allin named him Dr. Heywood Floyd. She liked to name her animals after famous people in both life and literature. Floyd has gotten so fat now that she has to feed him small mice but she feeds him a diet of mostly earthworms--- mice are a treat.

If that were not enough, she has a hamster named Hammer Time and a baby tortoise called Turtle. She was quite elated when she found a classifieds advertisement for Turtle: "4 week old desert tortoise-- $100". She gathered all of her cash and borrowed a bit and drove about forty-five minute out of the city and into the mountains to find the man who was selling the little thing. She dropped the cash in his hands, he handed her the tortoise (but not without first showing her around his expansive little zoo full of farm animals and exotics). She drove straight to her favourite store: Pet Kingdom. The guys in the reptile department hooked her up with a beautiful set up at a discount price. She brought Turtle home and her poor James was beside himself with frustration. He did not like having so many animals. 

The first pet that Allin ever brought home was a pitiful little Shih Tzu that she rescued from a home of entirely too many dogs. Her name was China, she was ten years old, and she was in perfect health for about four months. Twelve-thousand dollars of damages and several years later and she is a fourteen year old blind and deaf Shih Tzu who waddles around in a diaper and generally smells kind of bad. But, when nobody is looking, Allin picks her up, cuddles and coos over her, and gives her a big wet kiss on the top of her little head. Oh, and she changed "China" to "Chai" because she could not fathom calling the poor dog "China" for the rest of her natural little life. 

Chai was due for a surgery on April second so, on April first, Allin took her father to a farm-style pet sanctuary where they both fell in love with a little skinny Terrier/Chihuahua mix called Ribbon. They brought her home and James was pretty upset. They already had so many pets... Ribbon grew on him quickly though. Allin decided that, since he originally did not want her, James was to name the new pup, who was only six months old at the time. He named her Marceline, after a popular character on a popular children's cartoon. They called her Marci for short. She was destined to later train to become Allin's service and comfort animal. Marci learned how to join her mum in sleeping through long films like The Hobbit, how to sit in a grocery cart without falling through the bars, and how to fly without freaking out too terribly much more than Allin did. 

She also owned an assortment of not terribly noteworthy Beta fish, which will probably be the trend for the next several years of her life. 

Having pets has brought Allin and her Father together. He likes to go with her to Pet Kingdom to buy more mice for Floyd, fish for Monstro, and general supplies for the other pets like aspen bedding for Hammer Time, Scout, and Sonic (Scout and Sonic live separately). He also aids in cleaning the cages by helping her to catch the animal in question-- by far, Hammer Time is the most difficult to catch-- and by holding a trash bag close to the cage so that she can shovel waste into it. 

She and her mother have also bonded over the animals. Her mother hates to see an animal suffer (none of them do) and insists on bathing Chai twice weekly. She also took over changing Chai's diaper when Allin and James had to move back into her parent's home for a six month time period while their own home was being demolished and then rebuilt. 

Most of Allin's treasured family is within arms reach: James, her pets, and her parents. The rest of her family is not as important because of the stigma of her mental health and the way that they treated her while she was still impressionable. The rest is because she doesn't like him-- Vincent, that is. 

The Girl Speaks

This is a letter from the subject of the blog. It is candid, not spell-checked, often stream-of-consciousness, and will probably not be the last that she writes. She asks that you be as candid as she is in any replies you might have to her thoughts.



I’m not just The Girl, I have a name. But I’m not going to tell you what it is. It’s short because my last name is really long. It’s old-fashioned because I was named after my great-grandmother.... great-aunt? I don’t remember. I was named after a great-something in the family and I think that, though I’m disabled mentally, I live up to that greatness.  I could have been named Opal, after my great-whoever but my name is not Opal. Sometimes I wish it was. I really like Opals.

Today I read through the latest entry in the blog. It made me feel really sad. It’s weird to take a step back and to see how I was feeling at the time that things happened. You know, things like punching my boyfriend in the face. That made me really really sad. I curled all up onto the couch and hid under the blankets for a while. I was also sick today so that might have had something to do with it all. My nose was running like crazy and my throat is still scratchy. That meant I couldn’t go to the gym and swim. I really love swimming but my boyfriend doesn’t so I go with my mom.

My mom is shaped like an apple. I tell her so sometimes but then she gets really upset with me or, worse, she sounds all disappointed and that sucks so much more than her getting mad at me. I think I was on my way to being shaped like an apple too. I got fat from one of my medications and it really sucked because I dieted and tried really hard and all I lost was thirty pounds. After that, I couldn’t lose any more. I really wanted to be skinny again but I don’t think it’s going to work out that way. I really hate how my body looks. I wish my boobs were smaller and that I looked athletic. That’s why I started going to the gym again. I love it. I can only do upper body work though. If I do any lower body work, I will get myself into big trouble.

The girl who is helping me write all of these blog entries says that I need to take it slow at the gym. I do because, when my heart rate goes up too high I get scared. Then I have a panic attack and I don’t like those at all. They really suck. They make you feel like you’re gonna die but they can’t kill you. It definitely doesn’t FEEL like they can’t kill you. I always take some Xanax with me just in case I have a panic attack. Then I just have to sit down, drink some cool water, chew up the Xanax, and then swig it all down. In five minutes, I’m mostly better.

The other day I didn’t get to go on a ride at Sea World because I had a panic attack. It was no fun. I was in my wheelchair and they sat me wherever I wanted. It was one of those special rides that mimics the movie on the screen. It’s just like Star Tours at Disneyland. It’s fun. I like it. But I didn’t get to go because I started panicking. My friend was with me and she helped me to leave the ride but I was embarrassed. It felt like being the last kid to be picked to play a team sport. I was never the last kid to be picked unless it was football. I could not catch a football to save my life so I would get picked last and it made me sad. It was like I was being ostracized for sucking at football. But capture the flag... I was so small and fast when I was a kid... I almost always got picked first. It was great.

But anyway, I’m glad that this blog is on the internet. It’s shameful to see the things that my mental illness has made me do but it’s more important to me to have it out there. There are probably a lot of people who can relate.

I promise that there will be stories with happy endings too. Not EVERYTHING sucks balls in my life. I swear. I’ll make the author write a happy story about me next time or something... I have a lot of stories... so many that they could fill a whole book. Maybe this will be made into a book. That would be so cool!

Anyways, thanks for reading. I may write more, I may not... it just depends on what is posted and what I think of it. I always get to read it AFTER it’s posted so that I don’t get to change details to make myself look better.

I’m going to go take a nap ‘cause my eyes are getting heavy. It could be the medications I’m on too... I take more meds than your grandma. I bet you $10.

---Me

Self-Inflicted Consequences

What kind of person could say “I punched my boyfriend” and truly mean it?

She could. She could not count the amount of times that she had punched, kicked, screamed, cried, scratched, and slapped her Partner.
What made it worse was the way he said “It’s fine” every time she would apologise.

It tore her up inside.

Thinking about it made her breath stop short in her nostrils, her blood pump faster, and her mind to go numb because there was nothing she could do about the past. Nothing.

Nothing.


She desperately wanted to make it better. She would do anything.

There were knives in the kitchen.

It was a set that had been passed down from her Abuela to her Mother-- who already had a much nicer set of the same brand--to her. She was happy to have them; they were an excellent brand that got the job done and got it done properly.

Her Partner drowned himself in video games. She wasn’t sure if she was initially the cause of such behavior or if it was just his modus operandi. In either case, it still stopped him from keeping her away from the knives.

She wondered what she would do with it, as she gingerly unsheathed the smallest knife from the wooden block. She most wanted to cut her fingers off. She didn’t know why, exactly-- Maybe it was because she used her hands in her trade as an artist and she felt it would be a fitting punishment for someone who both used their hands to create and to destroy.

Tears were still running down her face from memories of what she had done to her Partner. Most recently she had punched him in the jaw.

She’d had a reason for doing it, but she just could not remember what that reason was. She did, however, know that it was not a valid reason.

What she did remember was that it all happened on the last official day that she and her Partner were visiting his family in Tennessee for the Christmas Holiday and that she’d had quite enough of people and parties and Christmas altogether. She did not celebrate Christmas the way others did. She mostly saw it as a time to shower gifts upon those that she loved and did not care if she got many gifts herself; she just wanted people to be happy. She saw it as more of an excuse to be extravagant in her giving and not as a Holiday at all. She loved to give. She felt like giving was a way of saying to her family and friends that it was all going to be okay now.

But even then, Christmas was not her Holiday. She was not Christian. That, in itself, is another story.
Instead, she celebrated Yule. Since her family-by-association in Tennessee was Christian, she was not free to do so and felt, even before leaving to go to see them, trapped.

In her mind, she was a caged animal and her Partner’s family consisted of onlookers, throwing stones and peanuts at her. She sat there, cornered, growing inwardly ever so much more angry at each passing comment about her: how they should have stayed at the family house instead of a hotel; about how her Service Dog was not a “real dog”; She especially felt self conscious at the dinner table since the whole family was skin and bones and she was buxom and, compared to them, overweight.

But the final straw did not hit her back (as she saw anger differently than she saw depression) until that final night. Something happened. She could not remember it, but something snapped within her. Someone said the wrong thing, made the wrong gesture, posted the wrong message on Facebook. Whatever it was, the Monster within her grew so hulkingly large that it burst up through the chasm she often banished it to and took over her motor functions in the split of a second.

If human eyes could glow, hers would have been white hot with hatred. She approached her Partner, the look in her eyes clear.

He was just not quick enough.

She punched him full-on in the jaw.
She uttered words dripping with fear and anger intertwined, like a poison that melted every eardrum that heard what she said.
She did not remember what she said.

Everyone left the room very quickly, but she did not notice; all she could see was red in her periphery. All she could see was an adversary standing in her way.

She went at him again.

This time, he was ready for it and blocked her punch. He ducked the next. She managed a slap somewhere in between and, as she tried to pull her hand away from her final gesture of seething hot hatred, he grabbed her hands and held her still.

She became the caged animal once more.

She screamed and yelled for him to let her go.
He would not.
She told him how awful he was; how much she hated him.
His face was stoic.
She crumpled onto the floor and began to cry, his hands still holding tight to her wrists lest she get a second wind and come after him again.
She did not.

A water main burst from her eyes as tears poured out and flooded her cheeks. The Monster was swept up in the raging river of tears and swept back into it’s abysmal existence at the bottom of the chasm where it would lay in wait for its next opportunity to crawl out and wreak havoc upon the world it knew-- the family the Girl loved.

She loved her family with all of her heart and abhorred the existence of the Monster. She wanted to kill it; to slay it in cold blood and shout victoriously:
“I have won! The Monster is slain! He will never return to hurt us!”
Then she would put its head on a pike for all to see. For all to gaze upon her victory. For all to benefit from her knowledge of how to destroy it and to destroy the Monsters that lived within themselves.
Her Manic Mind imagined world peace. Her Depressed Mind knew, without a doubt, that this would never ever happen.

As she cried unabashedly, her Partner’s grip on her wrists ceased and she curled up like a terrified hedgehog.

“... too much...” was all that escaped her lips between heaving sobs and unfettered wails.

Her Partner fetched the backpack that she always carried with her. It held her emergency supply of medicine and several first aid items. She called it her Stuck In An Elevator Emergency Pack. She was terrified of elevators and the idea of being stuck in one. She did not like to be trapped.

She did not like to be caged.

She realised where she was: at Mama’s House.
Mama was a large black woman who spoke with a very deep accent and was always in her pajamas. She was also always sick with something. Despite that, Mama did not seem to suffer from depression and not only did she cook but she had the cleanest house in the world. You could eat off of any surface in that house and KNOW that Mama had just cleaned it with bleach. The house always smelled faintly of bleach.

Mama was called Mama because everyone who called her biological son their friend became a child of hers. In her eyes, the Girl’s Partner was her sons brother. She was their sister. Mama had dozens of sons and daughters, all of whom were busy marrying each other and giving her grandchildren.

Mama’s word was also law, for the most part. One had to earn her trust before she could call you a son or daughter and that meant listening to what she said. If she said “don’t marry that skank” and you went off and married that “skank” and brought her over to Mama’s, there would be hell to pay. In her younger days, Mama had been known to cane her children with whatever she could find. However, for some reason, the Girl’s Partner had been spared the rod more times than his brothers could take. They would beat him up after Mama was out of sight. But if Mama  found out that her “favourite son” had been beaten by her other sons, she would cane the rest of them. Then she would hug her Favourite. It boiled his brothers’ blood but he was, through and through, her favourite. She even seemed to prefer him over her own biological son and would often yell at him to “leave my little cowboy alone!”.

Yes, her Partner was called Cowboy. He never took off his felt cowboy hat so the name stuck. He had grown up on a horse farm so it wasn’t as though the name was just backed up by the ceremonious wearing of the hat. He rarely ever took that hat off but when he did, he had beautiful rich brown hair that curled at the bottom when he let it grow past his ears. He often let it grow past his ears.


Today was not a day that she wanted to be in Mama’s house. She thought Mama would understand but she did not. Instead of asking what was wrong, Mama yelled at her to stop crying:
“There no cryin’ ‘n this house! You stop yo’ cryin’ this ins’ant!”

She tried to choke back the tears but she just wailed even louder.

“You should be with her,” She overheard.
“I’m getting her medicine.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s in here somewhere... I don’t know which one it is.”
“Does she need water?”
“She has some.”

“Stop dat cryin’, girl! You stoppit righ’ now! I don’ allow cryin’ ‘n this house! Nevah evah.”

“Shut up, mom!” Her biological son left the room and went out into the living room to talk to his mother. She was always in the living room in the same place on the couch.     

The Girl felt betrayed as she choked down her pills. Out of everyone in the world, she thought Mama would understand someone who needed to cry. Mama had called on several occasions, crying her eyes out, to tell Cowboy that she was dying and that the next surgery might kill her. She was not being dramatic-- many of the surgeries she went through were very iffy indeed. But somehow she lived through them. It was always a miracle of science that she did and, in the faraway future, books will be written about Mama and her staunch ability to beat out all odds and live longer than anyone could ever imagine.

She pictured Mama as the first woman to reach one-hundred and fifty years and shivered just a little.



After taking the pills she was given and calming down, Mama demanded to talk to her. She had demanded earlier but had met with another “shut up, mom!” from her biological son.      

A half hour later, as the pills had begun to work but had not quite put her to sleep yet, the Girl decided to venture into the restroom, which passed within close proximity of Mama’s couch. She had no choice: it was use the restroom or pee in her pants. She chose to use the restroom.

As she walked as quietly as she could by the couch, Mama turned her head in an unnatural position, not unlike how an owl turns theirs, and said, rather harshly, “Talk to me when you get out of there, Girl.”

“No.”
She closed the door behind her and wept bitterly into a wad of toilet paper. She sat in there until she was sure that Mama was talking to someone else. She attempted to quietly escape.

It was a futile attempt:
“You c’mere, chil’.”

She tried to be polite:
“I can’t talk right now, Mama, I’m sorry.”

“Th’ hell you mean you cain’ talk righ’ now? Come ovah hee-yuh.”

“I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

Mama ignored her:
“You know, one’a yo’ sistah’s was like you. She cry an’ cry an’ she end up in a mental house where they ain’ evah gon’ let her out. Do you wan’ be like huh? No you don’ so you quit yo’ cryin’ an’ you--”

She interrupted Mama with her hands up, showing that she held no malice against her.
“I can’t do this, Mama, I can’t--”

“You gonna en’ up jus’ like huh--”

“--can’t do this. I’m sorry. I have to go now--”

“Now you listen hee-yuh, girl--”

“I’m sorry, Mama, I really am. You have to stop.” Each word came out of her mouth without any emotion at all. She felt as fragile as a mug made of China that she had once thrown against and broken on the wall. There was still a dent in the pantry door.
She also felt as stubborn as a palm tree in a hurricane. She bent with the hurricane force winds of Mama’s poisonous words but she would not break.

She refused to break.

The meds she had been given were starting to kick in and kick in hard. Her vision began to blur. She was sure that Mama was still talking but it didn’t matter now. She stumbled into Mama’s son’s room, which had a mattress on the floor. She collapsed in a heap of clothing and exhaustion onto the side closest to the wall. She liked being next to the wall; it made her feel safe. A wall to lean against but not to be surrounded by.

Don’t let me be surrounded, she thought as sleep began to overtake her.

Mama was still trying to get her to come back. To talk. But Mama did not know what Bipolar Disorder was like-- all she knew was her sickness and all she knew was that laying down was not an option. Standing her ground was her way of fighting. Allowing herself to fall into sleep was the Girl’s way of combating her own illness. There were no similarities at all, so it seemed.

Mama’s voice was drowned out by a game that Cowboy and Mama’s son had started playing. Cowboy, her Partner, the one she had punched, put a jacket over her to keep her warm while she drifted off to sleep.

Much later that night, the two of them left Mama’s house. For the first time since she’d known him, her Partner did not shed a tear when he left Mama. She could tell he was, if not angry with her, at least not happy with what had gone on. That made her feel a bit better.

She was only awake long enough to put on her PJ’s and slip into the bed that was in his old room at his parent’s house. It had a lot of springs in it and was difficult to get into.

She grabbed onto her Partner tightly before she drifted off to sleep again.

“I sorry...love you... thank you...” she managed before falling into a deep, drugged sleep.

She did not feel it when he leaned over and planted a soft kiss on her cheek.



She was back in her home, in the present, still fingering the knife. She pressed it against her skin until it drew blood.

It did not hurt.

She drew a line across the top of her arm. Then she drew another.

“Fascinating,”  she whispered to nobody in particular.

She carved hatch marks across her skin until blood started to flow out of the papercut-sized wounds. She wanted more blood; more sacrifice for her deeds. She couldn’t say why.

She criss-crossed the blade into her skin until she felt somewhat satisfied with the amount of damage she had done. She did not bother cleaning the blade and set it down on a nearby table.

Automatically, she held onto her bleeding arm and walked into the kitchen, where she ran cold water over it. The water turned pink as it hit the white porcelain sink basin.
She had bandages just for this kind of thing. She patted her arm dry, applied some triple-antibiotic to the affected area, and covered it with gauze, which she held in place with white bandages.

She looked at her arm and realised that she wasn’t going to be hiding this from anyone unless she wore a long sleeved shirt. She found one that she didn’t care too much for and put it on. If it got dirty, it wouldn’t matter.

Her Partner was still playing video games and was none the wiser. He would find out eventually, of course, but for now she just revelled in the fact that he didn’t know.

Her arm began to hurt. She finally realised what she had done, grabbed her bandaged arm, buried herself under some blankets, and wept quietly.   

A Very Expensive Latte

It was clear that her lonely days were getting to her; everyone could see that.

She would sit at home and while away the hours reading and responding to Facebook posts. She didn’t have much interest in playing video games after she swore off a certain popular Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game that shall remain unnamed. Most of her online friends were still playing that particular game so they did not have much to talk about anymore.

She did like to paint and draw and would spend hours creating pieces that would just end up hidden beneath the bed in her portfolio, which was so overcrowded that she had taken thirty or so of her works and just stuffed them into a sleeve in the back of the black leather binder.  

At one point, while researching a new diagnosis of hers, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome-- a misnomer if ever there was one-- she ran across a project that allowed her to contribute some of her paintings to a book that was created by and for sufferers of the disease. It was meant to be a beacon of hope. She did her best to make her contributions just that. But the project, at least her part of it, only lasted two weeks and she was back to mediocrity and waiting for her Partner to get home so that she could have some human interaction that did not involve her parents.

One evening, she received a call from one of her more elusive friends from highschool who, like many of the friends she had made before age fifteen, had been swallowed up by the corporate world of nines and fives and was very difficult to reach.

Her friend was beside herself with glee:
“I was driving home and I saw the cutest little dog in the window of the groomer’s near my house! The lady said that she was giving her away to a good home! I want to get her but I already have Lola and, when I offered her to my mom, she started screaming at me. You have to go get her!”

“How much is she?”

“Ugh! I just said she was giving her away. She’s free!”

“I’ll go take a look tomorrow then.”

“You’re going to love her. She’s so quiet and so cute!”

That night, she asked her mother if she wouldn’t mind taking her to the groomer near her Excitable Friend’s house. Her mother was wary of the idea of her owning a dog but was simultaneously open to it because of how introverted her daughter had become. She agreed to it.

The next day, they drove twenty minutes north-east to the grooming shop and parked.

The Girl was wary. Her Excitable Friend was often full of many ideas that were terribly impulsive. She hoped that this would not be one of them.

It was.

With her new dog in her arms and promises to take exceptionally good care of the little thing, who turned out to be a pure bred Shih Tzu of an unknown age, she found herself leaving the groomer’s shop with a new companion and a new responsibility.

She also found herself in need of an explanation for her Partner when he returned home from work that night. She had left him out of the decision process completely. Hell, she had nearly left herself out of the decision process; she just needed to see that cute little off-kilter gait that the dog exhibited to fall head over heals in love and everyone knows that love is as capricious an emotion as they come.

On the drive home she sent a text to her Excitable Friend:
“Got dog. Going to show her to her new home. She is quiet and sweet. Thank you for finding her!”

The collar around her neck was as ratty as they come. It was a faded teal and looked as though it had been around her neck for the better part of her life. The tag said “China”. Being that she was black and white and looked like the Good China that one only brings out for the most important of guests or most sacred of occasions, the name fit. But, well, it seemed so... Old.

Before leaving the shop, the Groomer informed the Girl that the previous owner had to give her up because of financial strain: the pills China took were entirely too expensive for a little old woman on nothing but Social Security. Having no income herself, she could understand this and her mother agreed to pay the monthly medical expenses for China.

But China was such an old-fashioned name for a supposedly five year old dog. She set about immediately researching new names that sounded like China but were not, well, “China”.

Chee Chee? No.
Myna? No.
Luna? Good, but she already knew someone by that name.
Mila? No.
Butch? Hah, no.
Fluffy? Nope.
Hailey? No.
Cerberus? Not even close.
Chie? Cute but no.

“Well, Chai, I guess I’ll have to get some more opinions on names,” She sat next to her sleeping companion on the couch and started stroking her back.
She stopped.
She realised what she had just said:
“Chai. Chai! C-H-A-I! I can call you Chai! It’s my favourite kind of hot drink! Oh frabjous day! I’ve found you a name that fits! Chai! You’re going to be so happy here, Chai. I’m going to take the best care of you.” She swooped her up into her arms and gave her a long, nuzzling hug. That was when she realised that Chai needed a bath. Before doing so, she phoned the Veterinary Hospital that her mother’s dog went to and made an appointment; it is not wise to bathe an animal without knowing if it needs special care or not.

“Special Care” was an understatement for little Chai.

That night, her Partner came home at the same time he always did. She was so nervous that she had to pop an extra Xanax to make sure that she did not come unglued and start sobbing apologies before he’d even had a chance to see the dog.

He dragged himself in the door, looking a little worse for wear and extremely tired.

“Rough day?” She asked.

“Mmm,” He replied lifelessly.

“I have a surprise for you... It’s, um, it’s on the, uh, couch.” Despite his dogged demeanour, she could barely contain her excitement.

“Mmm?” He perked up ever so slightly.
She lead him into the Common Room where Chai was curled up on top of the couch, a soft whine emanating from her very soul.

“What is...? Where...? Now listen here...” He looked down at her and she looked back, her deep brown eyes wide circles beneath her bangs. They had a clouded, faraway look to them but it was obvious that she was looking at him with great intensity.

He sighed and picked her up.
“Come on,” He ushered the girl out of the room, “Let’s go get her some fries.”

Without another word, they piled into the car, her Partner at the helm and Chai in her lap. They drove to Wendy’s, her Partner’s favourite fast food establishment. Since she really had not eaten much fast food before meeting him, it quickly became hers as well. She ordered a salad, he ordered a chicken sandwich combination, and Chai was designated an order of small fries. That night, they discovered her favourite food from the human world.



There was no objection to the name Chai from anyone. It was quick and easy to say and she seemed to take to it very quickly.
It also became very quickly known as to the real reason Chai’s previous owner had given her up: she was rife with physical maladies that, once they began, never seemed to stop.
First, and continually until the day she will take her last breath, she became stricken with what they ended up calling The Smelly Disease.
Being a purebred animal, she was liable to have health issues but it was not foreseen that she would have such expensive ones.
After anti-biotics and weekly baths kept The Smelly Disease at bay, she developed high levels of liver enzymes, and odd readings regarding her cortisol levels. She turned out to have Cushing’s Disease. Right about the same time, The Smelly Disease returned with a vengeance:
Chai had to have all of her hair shaved off, was placed in a medicated bath, given medication to help with this semi-new problem, and sent home.

For a while, Chai was a new dog. She was happy, ran around the house barking, played like a normal ten year old dog (it turned out that her medical papers went back ten years, not five), and even became a Service Animal for the Girl.

She took Chai everywhere. For two years, Chai was glued to the Girl’s hip. She brought her back to visit family in Tennessee twice: once for an extremely hot, muggy, and miserable wedding (to the Girl, every wedding was a miserable affair since she had been married once... a story for another time) and another time for a cold, snowy, and rather raucous New Year’s celebration that ended with a New Year’s kiss, both she and a nameless middle-aged woman grinding on her Partner, and her first cigarette of the New Year. She rather liked the whole affair, honestly.

After the second trip, Chai was retired from flying because of her declining health-- she overheated on the airplane and nearly passed out-- but continued to be a dedicated Service Animal for another six months. She was retired altogether after large lumps were found in her breasts and she had to have three of them taken out completely. Soon after, she developed debilitating pain in what seemed like her back. A two-thousand dollar MRI and four day hospital stay later told the family that Chai had bulging discs in her neck. There was nothing that could be done because of her age and history of liver issues. In short, she might go under for the surgery and not come back up. She was given very strong pain medications and confined to a crate for nearly a month so that she could get better.

Chai now lives the life of a very old cat. She sleeps twenty-two hours a day, poops and pees wherever she feels like it, though everyone likes to think that she tries to go on her designated piddle-pad, eats as much as she wants, is brushed daily, and is bathed weekly. She gets to romp around the neighbourhood as long as there is enough light out for her “Mom” to see her and she can sleep any place she wants to, as long as she is watched closely for incontinence.

Chai is succeeded in her duties by the Young Dog, who is many years her junior, full of endless energy, and is quick to learn.

Chai is mostly blind and almost entirely deaf so she is never expected to do tricks for her treats anymore. The most common command she gets is “Exist... Good ‘Exist’!”.

Every time Chai went in to the hospital or was just plain ill, the Monster within would leave the girl alone. It was almost as if it knew better than to try and rear its ugly head while she was stricken with grief.

The Monster would just lay dormant, in a sort of hibernation state, waiting for the right time to ascend the walls of its prison and strike out at those the Girl cared about. But the Monster did not like mental hospitals and, every time it came up from the depths and lashed out at those who showed nothing but love and support towards the Girl during difficult times such as the ones with Chai, they would be thrown into the hospital for a week and neither of them wanted that.

Of course, the Girl never wanted the Monster or anything that had to do with it to begin with.

Chai may have been an old, slow, smelly service dog, but she kept the Monster at bay and that was all she really needed to do to be a successful Service Animal.  

Awake to Sleep

She woke up at 7:45 that morning.

Waking up was usually a calming moment for her. She would open her eyes, steadily letting the dim light of the early morning flood in between her eyelids, not unlike the way the light pours in through the slats of vertical wooden shutters.
Then she would steadily become aware of where she was: on her couch; in a hotel some place far away; in the upstairs attic-style room of a farmhouse in Tennessee; in her mother’s recliner; on an airplane destined for either a hotel or the attic room. Or was she, more commonly, just sleeping on the couch, across from her Partner, who often fell asleep in the theatre-style seat recliner that was kitty-corner to her? And, even more commonly, she would find herself awake in bed, half of the blankets missing from on top of her because her Partner had decided to roll over at some point in the night, taking them with him.

This morning she woke up with most of the blankets kicked off of her at some point during the night, her mouth as dry as cotton, and words rasping out of it as she became aware less quickly than usual:
“No...no... D-don’t go! I can’t find my medicine. I can’t find you if you go! Wait! Stop!”

She writhed in what was left of the blankets and tried to sit up. She could not. She wriggled around until she could see where she was-- her Partner was asleep on the theatre seat recliner, the Young Dog was asleep on top of him, and the Old Dog was snoring on the floor in the crook of the couch, which was shaped like an “L”.

A low wail escaped Her lips. She knew where she was in the real world but the dream she had been in had felt so real.

The Young Dog, hearing Her moan, jumped off of her partner and climbed on top of her.
She moaned again, recalling the dream:

It had been something about a sinking ship. She had a lot of disaster oriented dreams, all of which ended in either her death or her loss of control over the situation-- This one had ended in her loss of control.

Her Partner was in the dream, although he was not nearly as handsome as he was in the Real World; she was sure of that even as she dreamt.
The boat they were on was presently sinking at a curiously slow rate, as though time had come to a crawl outside the boat while chaos was rife within. Passengers, many of them supposed colleagues and friends of hers, clamoured to get out of the sinking freighter, which was about the size of an aircraft carrier and held many thousands of people. The ones she cared most about were holed up in a bunk area that was reserved for the workers of the ship; specifically, the food preparation and service workers. During her service on the freighter, she had been a clerk at a fast-food restaurant and, barring the friends she had goaded on to join her in this “endeavour”, she had acquired many new friends who were quickly turning out to be the kind that only cared for fair weather. She had gotten her foot stuck beneath one of the bunks as the water was rising and, each time she called for help, they would yell as they ran, trudged, slogged, and finally swam through the brackish water that was filling up the room: “You’re strong; much stronger than me! You can get up! I need to save my stuff!”
It was true; she was strong, but she could not unravel the thick blankets that had wrapped themselves around her leg and her legs were the weakest part of her body, yet another parallel to her situation in Real Life.

Then her Partner came along.

His hair was thicker, his body more muscular, though he was still incredibly lean, and his striking hazel eyes met hers as she said: “Help me.”
Her voice was a soft plea.
He looked at her, his face full of guilt and shame as he replied, “I cannot.”
He was not handsome at all.

The water was up to her neck. It only reached his waist because of the tilt of the freighter as it sank. He slogged on through the cold brackish water, leaving her behind.

She screamed at him to come back. She cried that he was her only hope. Then she dove beneath the dark, deepening water and began to unwrap her legs from the noose that the blankets had created.           
It was nearly impossible but, as she came up for air, she found that a multi-tool had been lying on the previously top bunk, which was now next to her head. She grabbed it, took a final breath, and dove down.

She switched open the multi-tool and pulled out the serrated knife that was often used as a seat belt cutter by paramedics. She easily sawed through her heavy cloth shackles and, with her saviour secure in her mouth, she swam out of the room as everything was swallowed up by the wet deathly dark.

As she emerged from the doomed freighter, her partner was in sight, standing on a strangely convenient island that had a modest seaside mansion atop of it. She could barely make out his form but she knew it was him by the way he carried himself. An accomplished swimmer, she did the breast stroke until she reached the shallow water around the island’s beach. She walked unsteadily from there. Hundreds of others had followed her lead, though they were all carrying large amounts of personal effects; some of them not even water proof-- laptops, cell phones, portable pad-style computers. One couple was struggling to stay afloat while they dragged a fairly large flat-screened television between them. She yelled at everyone to leave their possessions behind: they could be replaced. Not a single one paid her any mind. Some began to sink, drowning with their treasures. She did not help them.

One passenger was struggling to stay afloat while the only possession he had with him was a white, waterlogged, and very angry cat. The left side of his face was covered in scratches and he was one-third of the way to reaching the island. She optioned to dive into the water and help him. She put the cat atop her head, which was covered with a baseball cap that she’d found on the beach. She then began to tread water as the cat’s owner pushed the two of them along to the safety of the island. Though he thanked her quickly, he was not short of gratitude-- it showed in his eyes. He removed a sweatshirt that he’d had tied about his waist (she wondered how he could have swam so well with such a bulky thing dragging along with him), wrapped up the still nettled little cat, and ran off to find his kin.

Her Partner was nowhere in sight.
She shuffled through the ranks of the refugees twice before she realised that he must have caught a boat to the mainland.
She hurried to the docks as quickly as her weakened legs would allow. Sure enough, he had boarded a small speed boat that was just about filled to capacity. She would not make it in time to join him. Again she cried out:
“Help me! Wait! Don’t go!”

She fell onto her stomach in the sand and tears rolled down her cheeks:
“No...no... D-don’t go! I can’t find my medicine. I can’t find you if you go! Wait! Stop!”

She woke up, tangled in her blankets, half of them gone, and still moaning. She re-oriented herself and stopped moaning when she realised that she was at home and quite safe, her Partner sleeping just a few feet away.

She picked up her mobile phone to check the time: It was 7:45 am. Damn... It would be three more hours before she was to go to lunch with a friend of the family and, since her Partner was very fast asleep, she did not want to wake him by getting up and doing busy work around the house.

She sighed. It was so inconvenient when he fell asleep on the couch-- it really limited the things that she could do. She did realise that she was terribly cold, though, and turned the thermostat up to seventy-something. When she stood up, the Young Dog that had laid on top of her dropped from onto the couch.

The Young Dog looked up at her with doe-like brown eyes as if to say “Are we done sleeping? Can I have a treat? I saved you from the bad noises! I can have a treat?”

She knew the look well. She motioned for the young dog to follow her into the foyer, through the dining room, through the kitchen, and into “The Hall of Doing Stuff”-- a mud room that led out into the upward-sloping backyard.
She opened the back door.

The Young Dog burst out from between her legs in a single flying leap, her legs moving so fast as she tore around the yard that they blurred together. The grass was icy so she did not stop running until she did her business and then started right up again as though she had never stopped. The Girl’s mother had said that the Young Dog looked like a prancing gazelle. She had to disagree: the little tan chihuahua-terrier mix definitely identified more with a Dik-Dik in both stature and top speed.

Cold air had been rushing in since she’d opened the door for the Young Dog but the excited little romper was not answering her summons. She yelled for her once more in a very stern, motherly tone, which got the dog’s attention and sent her hurtling down the Garden Slope, back between her legs, through the Hall and finally screeching to a stop in the kitchen where the little dog did a one-hundred and eighty degree airborne jump.
The doe-eyed look was back, clearly stating “Cookies now”.

“Yes yes-- Cookies now, Dog.” While the Young Dog had been tearing around the Garden Slope, She had slipped away and grabbed two little dog biscuits for her.

Seeing the cookies, the Young Dog instantaneously sat, her tail wagging behind her.

The Girl laid her hand out flat, parallel to the floor, and gave the Young Dog a look as if to say “you know what I want out of you, missy”.
The little dog dropped onto her stomach, eyes still matching the Girl’s: “Cookies. Now?”

She tentatively placed one cookie in the Young Dog’s mouth, who began to awkwardly chew. She placed the second in front of the dog’s paws and left her to decide its fate.


Her phone rang. Lovely.

She answered it; her mother’s chipper voice came piping out of the earpiece.
“Oh yeah. Good morning, mum,” She flopped back onto the couch as though her Partner was not even there. She jumped back up as soon as she’d sat down and found a quiet corner in The Hall of Doing Stuff instead.

“I’ll be ready to go whenever you all are.” Pause. “Uh huh.” Pause. “Yeah.” Pause. “Ten-thirty, then.” Another final pause as her mother wrapped up the details. “Yeah, alright, see you then. Love you bye.” She pressed the picture of the red telephone on her cell and ended the call. She wandered out of the Hall of Doing Stuff-- Named by a stoner friend of hers who had announced that one could do just about anything in that little mud room because it somehow managed to hold a sizeable pantry, refrigerator, trash and recycle bins, washer, dryer, dishwasher, and a curmudgeonly little hedgehog, by the name of Scout Finch, who would only come out to play when she damn well felt like it.

She got dressed slowly. She had an hour to spare before her family would be leaving for lunch. She pulled on a T-shirt over a bra that she had been wearing continuously for nearly two days. To compensate for any unpleasant smell, she rolled on some anti-perspirant and sprayed herself with a clean smelling Wal-Mart version of Playboy Brand body spray. She pulled on some skinny fit jeans which were starting to fall off of her hips. She had no complains with that and, instead of trying to fuss with a belt all day, she snapped a pair of black suspenders onto them and pulled them on over her shirt.

With fifty-five minutes still left, she grabbed a fat-free yogurt cup and took her handful of colourful medications for the morning. If she was going to be out, she did not want to be popping pills in public. It was not that she felt self conscious about it, it was just that she was afraid she may lose one in her haste to swallow them all and not get the full benefit of her prescriptions, all of which she, as she had said many times, needed “to live”.

She tossed her yogurt into the trash can in The Hall of Doing Stuff. She then moseyed through the kitchen, the dining room, and stopped at the front door in the foyer, dropping her forehead onto one of its cool glass panes. The mostly-glass antique door faced the street and she could see cars coming and going, families getting their children ready for school, dogs walking up and down the sidewalk. She could also see her mother outside in the yard of the sunny yellow house across the street-- her mother and father’s house.    

She had been told by some that depression hits like a ton of bricks. Still others said that it was like the last straw piled on to the back of a camel, breaking it and rendering it as good as dead. To her, depression did not approach her in either fashion; it came on like a heavy cloud of sleepiness. It made her body feel heavy, filled her mind with a thick, acrid London fog, and took every bit of care for anything at all out of her being.

She blankly stared out the window for what seemed like an eternity. She checked her watch: it might as well have been an eternity as it was time to go.

She zipped up her hoodie, grabbed a hat, popped on her shoes, and, not bothering to tie them, hurried down the twelve steps that it took to reach the sidewalk, looked three times before she ambled across the street, walked up the four stairs that lead to her parents home, and knocked on the front door.

She let herself in,

Moments later, she let herself out. Nobody was ready, their time of departure had changed from 10:30 to 11:00, and mother insisted that their friend was always early, though she was nowhere in sight.
She excused herself and opened the front door, descended the four steps, looked once before she crossed the street, and ambled unsteadily up the twelve stairs to her front door. She was greeted with a blast of warm air when she entered the house. She lowered the thermostat a little, noticed that her Partner had moved himself into the bedroom, and sat down on the couch.

Tears rolled down her cheeks. She couldn’t tell anyone why; they just did that on their own. She cradled her head in her hands for a few minutes before she picked up her cell phone and sent a text to her mother:

“Not feeling well. Bring back tortillas and beans for me plz?”

Her mother replied more quickly than usual:
“Hope u feel better. Ok.”

She laid down on the couch and thought about the dream she’d had. She thought about what it might have meant, though she did not believe in such things.
She thought about lighting a candle above the statue of her Goddess, a statue she had sculpted herself. She did not move.
She thought about death and how it offered the chance to take her away from all of this pain. She was afraid to die.
She thought about how she had no idea where the pain was coming from in the first place. The prospect of never getting better made the idea of death less terrifying.
She still did not move.

She wanted it all to end but the depression was winning to the point that all she could do was pull a blanket around her, grab a few Xanax from the backpack she always took with her when she went out, and go to sleep.

She laid her head down on the pillow, sinking into the soft couch cushions. She prayed not to dream.

She did not dream.