Living on the edge…
NAPPED
My soul mate had one eye, one kidney, seizures, arthritis, high blood pressure, back problems, little to no hearing, the scar of a severe but healed abscess under his chin, and gingivitis. He got this way at a relatively young age and, for much of the life I had with him, I knew that I would be content when he passed. Although it sounds like my soul mate was a very wealthy and very, very decrepit sugar daddy, he was not. He was a small white dog with red hair around his eyes and in blotches on his back. He had hair on his long thin legs that flared behind him to look like wings.
I didn’t stand to inherit a great sum of money from him upon his death, but I was conscious that our last day was coming and I didn’t dread it. It wasn’t that his medical bills got burdensome; he kept very comprehensive medical insurance and put it to good use. It also wasn’t to spare him from suffering because he hardly suffered. In fact, he seemed to love his life in his unhealthy body very much. It also wasn’t that I became morbidly well prepared because I came so close to losing him a number of times. I began feeling this way long before this cat-dog lost a single of his nine lives. I miss him, but I’m content living on without him because I wanted to outlive him—a want I did not have when we first met.
Napoleon (Nap) came into my life when I was a junior in college. At the time, I was engaged, I had a 4.0 GPA, and I wanted to die. On many days, I woke up wishing deeply that I had not.
One evening, I put on some of the only clothes that fit my bloated body and followed people who loved me into the mall pet store. I tried not to touch anything because everything smelled of animal urine. Together, my fiancé, my sister, and I stopped in front of each dirty display window and, when we didn’t catch puppy eyes, we settled for a fluffy puppy butt, collectively “awww’ed,” and shuffled to the next window. The three of us came to a hard stop at a window that showcased a breed none of us recognized, a Japanese Chin. All others in the orderly line passed us and continued from Shih Tzu to Pomeranian to Chihuahua to Beagle to Maltese to Pekingese, culminating the parade at a beautiful blue-eyed baby husky who did not need to share his cage.
A pet store employee not-so-tenderly informed us that we could only play with the little weird dog in the poorly sectioned off “playroom” if we were seriously considering purchasing him. He was too delicate to play otherwise. My fiancé and sister pleaded with me to take the proposal seriously and agree that the little guy would likely have a home at the end of our play date. There I stood. Big bulbous brown eye to big bulbous brown eye (actually, we had two bulbous brown eyes each at the time). I wanted him.
I waited for him in that pen in scuffed sneakers with a broken shoelace, and a big blue coat that sometimes puffed feathers as I walked. I hadn’t brushed my hair.
A woman with a dog embroidered on her polo put the three-pound dog down on a tile in the stinky sanctum of bonding. We stopped being afraid of stepping on him when we realized he wasn’t going to move at all. He froze. He looked up at us with disgust that he was no longer at our eye level, like he was from his kennel. I never knew that someone without eyebrows could be so clearly expressive. I picked him up. His eyes and nose were drawn or pasted on exactly the same line. I felt nearly every firm bone in his front two paws as he pushed them against my palm and sat in my hand defiantly, sticking his chest out and dismissing me by turning his head slowly.
The woman continued her sales pitch, but I only caught a quick lie at a time—“employees’ favorite! . . . very special breed . . . low maintenance . . . quick paperwork . . . another family was extremely interested.” His tail curled in a perfect circle to rest on the middle of his back. He didn’t bark or growl, but he judged each of us hard. He had no interest in squeaky toys, and he sniffed treats placed on the ground but didn’t lick them unless we held them up to his pursed lips. This dog was born with the soul of a tired old man, without patience for nonsense and a tangible displeasure for silliness. He was self-important and arrogant, and he made me laugh.
Napoleon threw up on my sister as we pulled into our driveway. We were home.
Knowing now how pet stores like that one work, I understand that Nap didn’t get there in luxury accommodations after a walk in the park. But neither did I. It was a rough road for both of us. It didn’t matter to Napoleon, and so it need not matter here exactly how I got to how I was. I’ll report only that there were rescue tools, doctors and soon-to-be-doctors looking for signs of impact to the brain, pleas made in the dark.
When I stopped feeling pain in my body, the numbness took over. I took the maximum allowable number of school credits and tightly scheduled every second of my day. I kept a dizzying forced rotation of work and play. Within a year, I started to allow myself naps during my many-hour reading sessions, at first between subjects, and then in between chapters. I began avoiding old and new friends, opting instead to sleep. “I’m so tired,” I would say, and anyone who heard me would agree that my pace was catching up with me.
But it wasn’t my pace. It was something else catching up with me. I wasn’t tired; I was traumatized. Eventually, I slept 20 hours a day, waking only to eat excessive amounts of unhealthy foods and cry. I gained forty pounds. I was failing all of my classes. Even people who said “I love you” at the end of our calls weren’t calling me any more because I wouldn’t answer. Tumbling to rock bottom was excruciating because it felt like I was perpetually plummeting at full speed, face first, and waiting to die on impact. It was difficult to breathe, and impossible to keep my eyes open. The more diligently I tried to get my life in order, the more obsessively I thought about the past. Over and over, I relived the way I should have died and the things that made me wish I had. More and more often, I was not even safe in my sleep.
By the time I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, my anxiety had turned me into a barely functioning toddler. I had no attention span to read or talk for any length of time, I was irrationally irritable and selfish, and I stuffed my mouth full of whatever junk food was in front of me. When I told my parents that I was withdrawing from the semester to focus on recovering, they insisted Jesus would help. We went on a family retreat with our church, but only after I had a tantrum in the front yard and ran down the street crazily screaming that I changed my mind about going as they packed up the car.
My mother only let us in the door with Napoleon because my fiancé and sister convinced her that he would help me. They reasoned that Nap would get me up, out of the house, walking. I would have to wake up to feed and clean him. If he had been a wildebeest, my mother would have let him.
Napoleon’s homecoming was an introduction to his obsessions—peanuts and grass. My sister and I gave him his first bath. On our first walk, I accidentally tugged his leash too hard and he choked. We fixed that with an emergency trip to Target, where we picked up a tiny harness, the puppy equivalent of nerd glasses. I didn’t nap for hours because the great Nap kept me awake. That evening, Napoleon re-introduced smiling, awake me to my family while we ate dinner together and watched him exist.
In our early days, Napoleon made it very clear that he would not be left in his crate for longer than he desired, he would pee or shit wherever he thought it wouldn’t be found and he’d get away with it, and he would only be pet upon his request. He made these things known by (1) figuring out how to unlock the door to his crate, (2) shitting in places like a shoe—in a shoe, and (3) unambiguously initiating or rejecting affection-giving. I stayed awake long enough to learn and adore these things.
As our first year passed, I stayed awake long enough to learn lots of other things. If I watched television or talked on the phone too loudly, Napoleon would drag his bed to find peace and quiet elsewhere. Up to two thirds of his white fur would turn electric blue for a week, if he got too friendly with the navy blue feather duster. He liked carrots and sweet potatoes. He was allergic to bone marrow treats. He looked like a gremlin when his hair was groomed too short. He liked to walk on the sunny side of the street.
I can’t credit Napoleon alone because therapy and other support certainly played a role in my recovery, but he deserves a good deal of the credit. At first, I cared for him mechanically. I loved his company, and he distracted me from the invasive, painful mind loops, but I was still numb.
But after awhile, on our walks, I started to feel the warmth of the sun again. Then, the numbness dissipated sometimes even when I was alone. I started to feel lots of things. The spray of a running hot shower just before I stepped all the way in. The satisfaction of eating one last bite of something delicious. Hope.
It took a while, but just getting up and taking my dog for a walk became no cause for celebration. I graduated law school, found the best Cuban food in town, laughed with old, new, and even newer new friends, and accepted many warm hugs.
I’ve been able to stay awake and am awake now because I traded many long and restless naps for just about sixteen years of one lazy Nap. I miss watching Napoleon sun himself in the windowsill he cleared of debris (small potted plants), and feeling a comforting warmth too. I try to remember the details of moments I had with him because I’ve reached the days when these memories flow from a happy, thankful heart. A beating heart, a full one. Napoleon is gone now, but I am here.