When Am I?

Timothy O'Neill
Sep 7, 2018 · 6 min read

I always feel like this is the end, that I simply cannot go forward. But I have, and will continue to do so as long as my body is able. One foot in front of the other.

Whatever that means.

The calendar says I am 34.

I am not 34.

I am 16 going on 80. Be patient with me, please.

I have a chubby tabby cat whose name is Jerry. But my mind seems insistent that I know him as Ollie, a chubby tabby cat that lived with us years ago.

I’m arguing with my mind about his name. The cat lying on the keyboard is named Jerry. He is different from Ollie, he is his own special furry chunk of infinity.

Or is he just an excellent rendering of my wishful thinking and my need for companionship…and continuity?

I cannot abide plot holes when the story is engineered by a precise calculation of human logic and emotion.

You know the designers in fits and starts. They know you completely. On paper, at least.

I meet people who remind me of people I knew in the past. Or so I think. It’s as if I know these faces, that I had specific memories of them, but that the file that contained them has been destroyed.

Maybe I fell asleep as the world moved on, a modern day Rip Van Winkle, and I am drawing on half-hidden memories to manifest different characters?

Or I’m dreaming and the scattered, disorganized state of my subconscious is presenting to me the people I like the most, those with whom I had neutral association, and those who were outright villains.

What would it be like if I were to lose the sense and the perspective of separation?

Maybe my ravenous subconscious would choose to devour me, to keep me trapped inside the deepest layers of my mind.

Or I am inside of a complex A.I., which knows me better than I know myself. ‘You had a positive association with so and so, thus we decided to use so and so for this sequence. And now you want to be free. We’ll talk about it and get back to you.’

I’ll put that at the top of the list of fears.

The fear that I’m dead, that I am an experiment and that my entire of life has been watched, recorded, analyzed.

(For the sake of science, unimpeachable in its sacred truth)

The simulation hypothesis has always been a go-to.

Maybe that’s your truth, someone once told me, but it is not mine.

I like that. It nurses the transcendent mystery and focuses us on the here and now. And it is through those exchanges that you realize that infinity is a reality.

Without full mastery and total awareness I will continue to be at the mercy of forces. I wouldn’t be able to make any real progress.

But I try.

This is the world I’m in, this is a ‘me’ that I recognize…and life is worth living.

But when did you slip into my dream? All the doors were locked. I made sure I could function as a person with mental health issues without anyone noticing.

Lack of sleep and fear of the truth are causing me to be teary-eyed, and to experience a decrease in my cognitive functioning.

All I ask is that you don’t eat me.

Simple, sane request.

I wonder…

Would writing about dogs rip open old wounds, or put some lotion on the ones that are half-healed?

One wound turned septic a few years ago. The grief was so profound and so bitter that it turned into poison in my veins.

I have an interesting history with dogs. A lot of joy and gratitude, and a lot of heartbreak, frustration and protracted grief.

When I wrote about dogs, specifically my dogs, I wondered, was it worth it? And at that time I believed it was, unequivocally.

I do not agree with my past self any longer.

I’m sure there are others who would gladly take in a hundred dogs knowing that each one would likely perish before them and be put down at their command.

I don’t want to do it again. It’s has become a masochistic calling for me. It is partly because I don’t know how to keep healthy emotional boundaries. A dog is not my pet, he’s my friend, he’s my brother or my sister. Then my dog grows up with a sense of instability in the pack. He’s extra naughty around me, because I’m not a leader, I’m one of his buds.

Humoring, in moderation, can help. But putting my desire for non-judgmental companionship first can have a negative effect on my dog, which just breeds more guilt on my end and poor behavior on his.

My dog comes and lies down on the flooring in the living because he likes to be where the people are. But then I to move to another room. We’ll only be ten feet from each other and still, I feel the paralyzing guilt. And later on the resentment might kick in. Not resentment towards my dog, but towards my tendency to get emotionally hooked. And because of that hook I am never able to form a true, selfless bond.

Dogs often work for me as furry, slobbering second hearts. I could bear any pain, any embarrassment or insecurity as long as I knew I could share these feelings while cuddling up with my dog at the end of the day.

I wish I had done better by the dogs under my care. But truly, besides a few bouts of impatience, I gave to them all I had. All the love I had.

From a young age I was determined to be present for the end of each pet’s story. Our first cat, Max, was a beautiful black cat with a sharp mind and a quick temper. He liked peas. During his downward spiral, when he could barely move from the bathroom, I would lie down next to him on the linoleum floor and sing him songs as I fed him peas.

He almost blinded me once. He could be surly(one of his more endearing traits). But one time one of his scratches caught me in the eye. On my actual eyeball. I still have the scar to prove it.

I wasn’t angry.

Sometimes cats are just not in the petting mood.

I respect that.

Then we went through a seemingly non-stop parade of dogs. Many were on the older side. We got the ‘I really can’t take care of him/her right now. Would you be interested in taking him?’

That is a valid reason to part with a dog, as long as you have a half-way accurate idea of where he’s heading next.

And we gave all our animals, dogs, cats and Billy the fish, good lives. Or I would like to think so. One dog that we got from a rescue a couple years ago was in rough shape when he made an appearance in our lives. He was a nervous barker, he had a skin infection, he was malnourished. But we worked with him, and he gradually acclimated to his new environment. He began to trust us. He was fifteen when we got him. But he was a sturdy pup, and I truly believe we helped to give him the best year of his life.

And I was there when he was put to sleep. And I was there for all the others except one. Was there a morbid curiosity? Of course. Was I bearing witness? Yes, I believe so. But my primary motivation was to comfort. To stand in solidarity with all mortal things. And I wanted to make sure they knew I was there, making an imprint that perhaps could last beyond death.

I could tell you more tales, true but no less sentimental and off key for all that.

The circle of life. The burden of responsibility that is the cornerstone of the duty of one life to another.

But the fact remains that each death was traumatic. It was a loss of my heart, of a brother or sister who had to endure the great mystery and all its horror in perfect ignorance and solitude.

When am I? is an interesting question. Why? is also an interesting question. The first sounds like legitimate curiosity, the second feels like a pre-emptive denial of the truth.

My truth is love, or the logician’s approximation of a concept he cannot feel and can only imagine.

Love does not come naturally to me. I work on it.

And I believe that work pays off.