My Butterfly is a Beagle

I am reaching a place in life where I feel confident that I am not being unjustly kind to myself by saying that I have finally “grown up.“  My life has been orderly, moral, and secure for more than a few years, now, and I have taken great pride in raising my daughter and being my husband’s wife in a way that is healthy and worthy and, for the most part, correct.  But something was always a bit off.  Something was preventing me from enjoying all these hard-earned benefits of a respectable adulthood.  I was unhappy.  I was fretful and anxious.  I was depressed.  

I know, now, that I inherited a lot of these tendencies from genetics and my childhood experience.  My mother and my maternal grandmother both had anxiety and bouts of depression that manifested just like mine do.   My five year-old daughter is already showing early signs of inappropriate anxiety.  Whether this anxiety is a product of genetics or learned behavior (I suspect a combination of both), I know that a large part of the responsibility for her discomfort falls squarely onto my own shoulders.  She has seen her mother respond to stress poorly for most of her short life, and I know that it is up to me to do whatever I can to help her go another way.  I figured a good start would be to live a good example for her.  I resolved to use my breathing exercises whenever I needed to calm down instead of storming through the house in a manic twitter to scrub at imaginary dust with a toothbrush.  I resolved to keep a good sleep schedule instead of surrendering to the whirl of negative and panic-ridden self talk that leaves me prone to insomnia.  I resolved to exercise my slightly-larger-than-before body to release all my anxious energy instead of ignoring my family by escaping into books or immersive video games.  I resolved to show my daughter that mommy can handle anxiety in a rational and caring way…that having a “nervous personality” doesn’t entitle anyone to behave badly.

Resolutions, however, are not necessarily followed by actions.

When my daughter was four, she announced that she wanted a dog.  My husband and I agreed that this was a reasonable request since we had both grown up with childhood pets…and so shortly after the following Christmas,  we met and adopted the most beautiful beagle the world has ever seen.  We named her Kioko, which is a Japanese name that means, “greets the world with happiness.”

She DID greet the world with happiness.  She also greeted it with a lot of poop.

Though we purchased the dog for our daughter, we knew from the get-go that Kioko would be my dog.  I’m at home with her all day.  I’m the one to train her and teach her and take care of her.  

Kioko eats things she’s not supposed to and knocks things over and drinks from the toilet.  And…you know…she poops.  I spent the first month with Kioko in a whirling storm of anxiety.  I couldn’t have her out of my sight for fear she was getting in the trash or pooping on a rug or disrupting the perfect order of my home…which would naturally make the perfect order of my life shatter…and the world would collapse…and life would all be over.

I was terrified.  All the time.

About the time I decided that the dog had no place in our home and that I would never be calm again until this volatile and unpredictable force of energy was removed from my life, I saw my little girl curled up peacefully on her bed with Kioko in her arms.  They were both deeply asleep.  The room was in shambles.  The dog had chewed one of our daughter’s toys beyond recognition and strewn the rest of them all over the place.  Dirty clothing was spread all over the floor in a fan pattern away from the dumped-over hamper.  The room was chaos…but they were so peaceful together.  That was an epiphany because I am not the kind of person who can stand in the middle of chaos without panicking.  I can’t do it.  But there I was…calm and smiling--GLOWING, even--at the sight of this room full of debris and disorder….and peace.

After that, I allowed Kioko to be a dog.

I got up in the morning when she needed to go outside to potty.  I let her throw toys around in the living room…and I left them there until it was time to pick up in the afternoon.  I took her for long walks every day without winding myself up in knots over her refusal to heel and her tendency to ignore my commands while she sniffed at things.  She was stopping to smell the roses, after all, and that was something I desperately needed to learn how to do, myself.  Because I had gotten up early and gotten exercise every day, it became a simple matter to go to bed and find rest at a decent hour.  The more rested I became as weeks passed, the more pliable my temper became.  I didn’t freak out nearly as easily, and I was able to stop my irrational feelings of anxiety before they became a full-blown tantrum.  Because I was calmer, Kioko craved my company.  She stuck to me like glue and made me feel so flattered and warm.  It’s not a substitute for or a slight on the love from my human family members…it’s just a different kind of affection.  Allowing myself to relate to this little animal has helped me find peace inside my todays in a way that nothing else ever did before.

A year has passed.

Today, as I was listening to the Dr. Laura show on the radio, I saw Kioko sleeping, as she does every morning, in the patch of sunlight that streams through our living room door in the morning hours.   She was sprawled on her back with her legs in the air…grunting and snoring in a peaceful bliss on the floor.  My living room is not perfectly clean anymore.  There are vestiges of my daughter’s early-morning coloring session on the coffee table.  There are two dog toys on the floor.  My husband’s coffee cup and some crumpled sheets of note paper are haphazard on his desk.  There is dust on my television screen.  In that moment, I didn’t care.  I hope you understand how BIG it is that I can say that so honestly.

I got down on the floor next to my beagle and scratched her belly.  I laid down in the sunshine patch with her to see what was so darned wonderful about napping in that place.  The warmth and the sunlight felt so good on my face.  I curled up next to this miraculous little dog who taught me how to be peaceful…and laid next to her for an hour until the radio program was over.  Several months back, Dr. Laura had a caller to her show who wanted advice about how to stop being anxious, depressed, and disconnected in her life.  Dr. Laura told this caller to close her eyes, clear her head of all other thoughts, and imagine a beautiful butterfly lighted on a flower.  This exercise was meant to help the caller come out of her head and enter “the moment.”  I had heard of a similar exercise from one of my therapists years ago…about getting grounded and clearing your head of everything but one, particular image so that you stay in the moment instead of wallowing in the negative depths of your mind.  It works well, actually.

Because I was listening to Dr. Laura’s show, that call was brought back to my mind as I snuggled on the floor with Kioko.  I decided that I didn’t want to use a butterfly for my imagery.  My butterfly is going to be a blissed-out beagle lying in a patch of sunlight on the floor.  I practiced…and I can see the image clearly when I close my eyes and clear the other thoughts.  Whenever I am sad or anxious, I can do this to re-center.  I think it’s going to work very well.

I have to go pick up  my daughter from kindergarten soon.  I will clean up my living room so that my husband has order when he gets home from work.  I will help my little girl do her homework.  I will make dinner for the family and work on some laundry in the evening.  I will do all these things without worrying if they are perfect.  I will do all these things with gratitude for the family they evidence.  I will do all of these things with a beagle trailing around behind me…reminding me that happiness is an active and premeditated choice…and that I probably ought to take her outside so she can poop.