On Sunday we brought home a new puppy into our family.
Today, 3 days later, we are driving her to a new family.
When we were looking for a puppy we rang some rescue centres who said they wouldn’t release puppies to families with young children because they get returned too often. How odd, I thought. Why don’t they ask us some questions about our intentions, they’ll see we’ve thought about this, that we’re serious and committed.
Now I am that family. The one that thought I could do this and then released with increasing horror and panic that I really couldn’t.
I do this, I realise. I say yes because people I love really want something. I think how much it means to them and I think, ‘I’m sure I’ll cope, I’m sure I’ll manage’. I did if for our wedding, the people I loved wanted a big fancy wedding and I wanted a few people on the beach. But it seemed so important to everyone else, so I said ‘sure I can do this’. I did and I got really sick. I realise how much I do this in my own personality, I am more ‘acceptable’, more self deprecating because the truth of me doesn’t seem to suit the people that I love.
And on Sunday we got this puppy and I really thought I could cope even though, from the very moment I set eyes on her, my heart started to tighten into that familiar feeling of anxiety. But my daughter looked up at me ‘I love her mummy’ and my husband looked longingly at the puppy. ‘I can do this’ I thought.
I’m not sure how I can express my next two days apart from this total sense of invasion and overload. My house, my home was no longer my sanctuary, I couldn’t breathe if I thought for a second about the next 10+ years of my life. My husband asked ‘what did you expect?’
I guess I thought I would love her enough, just like my own children, that the practicalities of her existence would be an act of service. But I didn’t love her, I resented her. My world that had slowly started to expand again after the birth of my children had shrunk overnight to minuscule proportions.
So I broke their hearts. My husband, my daughter and my son. I raised their hopes to the highest level and then I took it all away.
Whilst I know I did the right thing in the long term, that my husbands travels meant I would be the one that had to be fully committed, I cannot but feel ashamed that I pushed away my intuition, my gut feelings yet again to ‘do the right thing’ and of course it turned out wrong.