Operation Achieve Anything: Day Two-Hundred-Seventy-Eight, Dateline 10-5-2018
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“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.”
Good morning crickets. Welcome to day number two-hundred-seventy-eight of Operation Achieve Anything. This is going to be a tough one since this will be the last weekend that I spend with my sick little dog. What makes things extra hard is that she seems to have inherited my families sense of denial. Even though she’s barely eating and refuses to lay down since I think it hurts the growth on her belly, she still greets me each morning when I wake with panting face that makes a dog look like their smiling and a wagging tail.
Once that initial interaction is over, I then have to give her some meds that make her a bit out of it, but even then she just won’t lay down until she finally crashes into a slumber. On top of that, the growth on her belly, that started to expand just a little over a month ago has gotten so big that it now takes up over half of the hairless part of her belly when it used to affect just one of her nipples. This is what keeps her from getting comfortable and panting heavily even when, otherwise, she seems completely calm.
Part of me hopes that she’ll just peacefully die in her sleep before Monday comes because even though the results will be the same, as an Atheist who believes this is their only life, I plan to go out through natural causes, even if that natural cause turns out to be me overdosing on drugs. Even during the times that I shared how I was suicidal, it’s always been a soft approach of extreme neglect or pushing the limits of a high with not a single effort to actively induce an “accident.” I guess this is just more evidence of how desperate I am to live by my own terms.
Unfortunately, in this case, I’m not in control of the terms, and since it’s a dog in question, I can’t ever know how she would prefer to spend her final days. I think that’s my true hang-up because, aside from that tail waging moment in the morning, her apparent discomfort often makes me want to cry. At the same time, I’ve yet to hear her whimper or whine, but then again, she’s always been a pretty quiet dog. I do know it’s the right time to do this, I just wish I had to power and resources to do a little more.
Thankfully, the people that provide the service are not available until Monday. This means that I can rush through my days to finish up all my work and spend as much time with her on the couch while I work myself into the same sedated state with booze and medical pot. Kind of like a Finnegans Wake for my little dog. I guess this plays into yesterday’s assignment where I was supposed to explore courage and list a few examples of things that I don’t want to do that I then did anyway. In this case, I don’t think I’m being courageous at all, I’m more just giving up, but hopefully, this will lead to way less pain for this poor little thing.
I don’t know if this would be considered me fulfilling yesterday’s assignment since I didn’t really highlight courage in a traditional way being that it’s the dog that’s being sent off into the realm of the unknown and I just worked up enough reasoning to accept this as her fate. Because of this, I do think I at least addressed the task at hand. Today’s assignment might be a bit more fitting as the Achieve Anything… book wants me to explore my ability to accept change.
I actually have a lot to say on this topic being that I’ve never been able to grasp the concept of permanence and often feel trapped during any of my efforts to seek stability. Of course, I’ll delve much deeper than this when I check in with tomorrow’s update. Until then, it’s now time for me to sign off by saying, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.
Talk to you soon.
Sincerely,
The Wicker Breaker
P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.
