I’m not really here.
Oh, I know it seems like I am a real live human being like any other, but trust me on this. it’s all a cunning illusion.
I’m not really here. I am not really typing these words. The words, too, are an illusion.
They make it seem like a genuine human must have existed in order to type these words, but I am telling you, I am not.
Like a doll, I have the appearance of life and vitality, but I’m empty inside, and the fact that when you pull my string, my mouth moves and words come out means nothing.
I am nothing but a thin shell wrapped around a gaping, screaming, gnawing void. Just another shiny balloon abob in the breeze, terrified of losing its sting and ending up floating off into the sky to be lost forever. A pale puppet stuck in the back of a magician’s closet, helpless to affect its fate at all.
All it can do is wait, and hope, and be sad.
He might never come back. Odds are, he will never use me again. Why would he? What use am I? I’m just an ugliness wrapped around nothing.
He’s probably forgotten all about me by now.
I am that sad old dog that is always tied up in the back yard of that one house in your neighborhood with the weird red roof.
Rain or shine, day or night, I am there. There’s no doghouse to take shelter in, no dog toys for you to play with, not a single sign that anyone cares about you.
You don’t even have a proper collar. Someone just tied a rope around your neck. The only objects in your yard are an enormous bowl of food and an enormous bowl of water – enormous so they don’t have to feed you very often, of course.
And sure, the food’s full of ants and roaches and the water is full of dead ants and dead roaches, but nobody cares.
You used to get excited when they came out to feed you. Finally, company! But then you realized that they hate you, though you have no idea why.
You wasted a lot of time trying to figure out how to be a good enough dog to get even one more second of attention from them, but they just wanted to be done with you as soon as possible and anything you did to slow them down just made them mad.
You’re pretty sure the oldest boy would kill you if he thought he could get away with it.
And you’d be fine with that. Then your long lonely life would finally end and at least someone would be touching you when it ended.
Mostly, you just lay there. Despair is too kind a word for it. Mostly you stare at nothing, not moving. not reacting to anything, doing your best to live as little as possible because that’s the only way to minimize the pain.
You used to bark at things. Cars, people, birds, cats. Especially cats. It was something to do and it made you feel less lonely because at least you were interacting with people.
Some people got mad and some people got scared and some people got both.
But at least someone knew you were here.
Most people just ignored you. What’s another barking dog in a suburban neighborhood? Sometimes they would laugh at you as you barking and growled and lunged.
You liked those moments. Those people were the only happy people you ever saw.
You’d bark at other dogs, too. They brought up such complicated feelings. Anger that they got to walk with their masters, fear that they would try to take your territory, longing to escape so you play with them, and a desperate desire to communicate something to them. You didn’t know what that something was, but you tried to send the message anyway, hoping someone would hear.
All these emotions would come to a boil in your head and you would end up barking and howling and biting at the dirt like a crazy bad dog who has lost his mind.
And maybe you had. It didn’t matter. Nothing did.
It had been a long time since you barked at anything or anyone. You didn’t have the energy any more. Now you just lay there and waited to die.
Sometimes, despite how hard you tried not to, you remembered your puppy days. Back when you lived inside of the house and got taken for walks and got brushed and petted and loved on and everyone was always happy to see you.
But then you got bigger and people started getting mad at you all the time and you tried very hard not to make them upset but something always happened and that’s when they started putting you in the back yard.
After a while, they stopped taking you back in. And that’s where you’ve been since.
When you were younger, you liked these memories. But that was back when you thought those times were coming back.
Now they hurt so bad it makes you whimper in your sleep.
You don’t know for certain that you’ll die. Death is a difficult concept for dogs. But you have been getting weaker for a long time now, and surely that can’t last forever.
And sometimes you dream that when Death comes for you, he will pat you on the head and take the rope off you next and say “C’mon, boy. It’s time to go.”
And then he’ll take you on a walk to a place full of nice green grass and warm, sunny days, and lots of people who will love you and pet you and tell you that you’re a very good dog. A very good dog indeed.
And maybe you will even get to be a puppy again, and run around barking and chasing things and being silly and excitable and having fun.
And whatever you did to make your people stop loving you will be forgiven and forgotten, and maybe, just maybe, they will finally let you come Inside again.
Yes, surely that is was will happen. You’d been such a good dog for so long. Surely that’s the only thing that can happen.
All you have to do is lie still and wait.
Surely any minute now, you will finally die.
Um, real sorry about that, folks. If it makes you feel any better, I was crying my eyes out when I wrote that last part. The “doggy heaven” part.
Just know that there are real dogs just like the one I described in back yards, basements, and garages all over the world. If you see something, say something. Call your local SPCA and report it.Call the cops and animal control too.
If that fails, offer to take the dog off their hands. Pay for it, if you have to.
The important thing is to rescue the dog(s) and find them a new forever home with kind, loving people who will take care of them.
Again, sorry I had to write this.
But sometimes, the bad stuff just has to come out.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.