Loss
The downside to having grown emotionally and being able to experience ALL your feelings, is loss of a meaningful attachment, whether it be to a human or an animal, is profoundly felt.
I'm still deeply missing and crying for Cleo more than 3 weeks later, and wondering if this daily sorrow will ever ease up.
Some say, rescue another dog. Give your love to another pup, and it helps ameliorate the pain~ but when you have a soul connection with an animal, they're as irreplaceable as a human to you~ and maybe more so.
When else in our life, have we experienced unconditional love and responsiveness? When else have we been able to trust fully, that we'll never be emotionally betrayed or neglected by someone?
I used to think, "man's best friend" was just a phrase, and could't relate to it as a cat person all these years. Now I know better. The love of a dog~ if you're lucky enough to bond with one, is possibly the greatest attachment you will ever know.
Cleo was present and attentive for me in ways my mom never could be, when I was little. She considered us "soul mates," and I can't help but agree. I mourn every day that she had a hard life before she came to me. Her first 6 years were pretty brutal, and it breaks my heart that such a loving, smart, sensitive, beautiful creature was EVER neglected and abused, because she deserved so very much more.
I am hoping that if she comes back for another round, she lands with a family or person who adores her, cares tenderly for her, and gets as I have, the opportunity to really bond with the big-hearted, darling girl that she is.
I am so sorry Sheri. I know for myself those loses of pets have been really difficult. In an odd way they seem to me to have been safer things to have feelings about than my real human personal stuff. Now that I am on the road to healing this seems even more true. My heart is with you. I have no advice to give, but will share that when I lost my pit bull rescue girl, Maggie, to cancer at the start of the pandemic, I thought I'd never put myself through it again. I now have another rescue pit. And she is as sweet as can be and I love her as much or more than Maggie. Perhaps my emotional capacity is re-growing or that I am now allowing myself to more fully feel, regardless I know what you are going through and you have my deepest sympathies.
Scott