I found out on my lunch break on Thursday that my parents had had to put our family dog down. We got Buffy when I was 13 years old. I remember, I'd been at my friend's house and when my parents came to pick me up there was a tiny, adorable puppy jumping all over the backseat. I've never been one for gushing about adorableness, hand holding, flower picking, or slow-motion field running, but she was so small and beautiful I instantly started crying. She didn't have a name at the time, and on the car ride home my parents decided to name her Buffy after my tween idol- the Vampire Slayer.
Buffy had been there for half of my life. All though the messy teenage years. So this year, at 13 years old, she was quite the old lady. She'd been having fits for a while but the vet had initially told us it wasn't a big deal and that lots of older dogs have them(I hate this vet). The fits gradually became worse and worse and despite various medications nothing seemed to stop them. On Thursday she couldn't breathe and a different vet told my parents that if she were her dog she'd let her go. I don't know how I feel about putting dogs to sleep. I guess it's the most humane thing but if it's so okay to put dogs down then why is the morality of euthanasia such a hotly debated topic? I can't help but wonder if I'd been there whether I would have begged my parents not to let the vet put her down or whether I would have been able to make that hard decision with them. I'll never know now and I'll never get to say goodbye.
My melancholy, over-thinking, switch has been flipped. Living overseas can be empowering, taking charge of your life and doing something different; the other side of it is when you think about how helpless you are to control things back home. Now I worry about my parents, I worry about their health and I panic about all of the terrible things that could happen to them. I worry about the terrible things that could happen to me and the effect that would have on my parents. Are my students right, is it selfish of an only child to move so far away? Round and round my head these thoughts go and there's nobody here to tell me to snap the hell out of it. I will snap myself out of it, I might just wallow for a bit first.
Aww so sorry to hear about Buffy. I am the opposite of a nomad, to be perfectly honest, but I do know that if something happened to someone I love who was in another country following their dreams, I would be glad they didn't hold themselves back. Also, I think that if I was away and something happened to my loved ones at home, I would of course feel the gut wrenching pain of not being there, but I would later settle down and realise they would have wanted me to do what I loved.
ReplyDeleteHope you feel better about it all soon xoxo