June 1st, 2017.

My dog was my world. My life, my whole reason for living at some points in my life. He saved me. He was the most pure and gentle soul I have ever had the honor of knowing. I know everyone thinks their dog is special, but Max truly was. Everyone who ever met him was touched. When he died, people who hated me, exes who cut me off, people I hadn't spoken to in years... they all reached out to me to express their condolences. Some were crying. A bunch of people came together and raised money to help pay for his cremation. Anyway, the point is- he was the kind of dog that people write books about.

I tried so hard to keep him with me. He was diabetic, so I'd wake up early in the morning to make sure he got his shots. I made him a sort of harness/rig to help with his hip dysplasia. In his last week, he went blind quite suddenly. So I spent hours and hours devising this scent-based system to help him navigate the house. I cut up pool noodles to put on furniture corners. But I was sitting on the floor, trying to see from his level where hazards could be, and Max stumbled in, lost control of his bladder, and then, in a disoriented haze, started licking it.

I knew that was it. We had to let him go. Everything else I could delude myself into thinking would work as long as he was still happy, but he lost his dignity and he was suffering. I pulled him away from the spot and just held him and cried.

I still can't get the spot out of the carpet.

On the day before that last day, I was letting him romp around the canyon with me one last time, but I wasn't watching closely enough. I was trying to let him feel free, and he stuck his face right into a cactus. It took me hours to get all the needles out of his nose with a pair of tweezers because I was sobbing so hard. It was supposed to be his perfect last day, and I ruined it.

The day of. My parents and I held him as he was euthanized. He went so fast. My dad got down on his knees in front of Max, so I moved out of the way. Then he fell forward, clutching Max's body, and sobbed. I'd never seen my father cry before. Not at his mother's death, his sister's death, his brother's death... but this wasn't just crying. It was shuddering. It wracked his whole body. That's when I lost it again.

At home. Wrapped in my blanket, curtains drawn, clutching his collar and sobbing into my bed. I get a text from an extremely abusive ex. And then another, and another. "If you hadn't quit your job, you could have paid for a surgery to save him." "You killed him." "He loved you, and you betrayed him." "Congratulations. You're in a special class of people- those who murdered their best friends. I hope you're proud of yourself."

And I agreed. I thought they were right. And it broke something in me.

Even now, if it's too quiet for too long, that repeats in my head over and over. You killed him. You betrayed him. You could have saved him. You killed him.

I have never been the same.

I probably shouldn't be sharing this, but I've been caught in the loop of thoughts really aggressively today, and maybe shouting it into the void will help. If nothing else, at least it's somewhere other than inside me.