Gigi, my six-year-old Australian Silky Terrier, knows when I’m impossibly sad. Outside, I can hear Reshayin (my regular crow visitor) asking for me to put out some peanuts, but we can’t move. My limbs are heavy, and I don’t know where to put this numbness.
I’ve bonded with Reshayin every day for almost three months now. He was skeptical of me at first, but now he never flies away or scoots to the edge of the deck when I come outside, even with Gigi’s jealous barks. Reshayin imitates her, as if to say, “You can share,” teasingly. He calls for me. Sometimes he sits in a teardrop shape, patiently. He will wait until I arrange the shell peanuts just so, then he hops closer, and with his elegant black beak he picks up at least three (often trying for four) and flies off with them. He returns until they are all gone, but he always savors the last peanut.
Have you ever had a dream that gave you an unexpected answer to something you were hoping for? It’s a truly fucked up mind experience. It feels a little bit like self-betrayal. How dare my brain tell me a story that could never happen.
I open my eyes to be met with Gigi’s much sleepier brown ones, staring directly into my soul. That was my wish: for a dog that saw me. We are kind of holding each other in the silliest of ways, our hair equally messy, smooshed against pillows and the heavy blanket I pull over our faces on repeat. Inside this lazy fort, we are safe. And it’ll only be one day of this, I say. Just one day.
Except I know what this particular sadness is. It seeps in my bones and only leaves when I become an actress. On walks, I notice it more. It travels like a star pattern I’ve defined over the years, from my chest to my shoulders to my biceps and forearms.
Early the next day, I lay on a heated table, and a woman stamps needles into the numbed skin of my face and neck. After that, a cold peel, which feels far worse. She hands me some kind of air hose and says when it gets bad I can cool it, but I don’t. At the end, she covers my face with an LED mask and sets a timer but forgets to tell me how long I’ll be there. I lay in silence, the smell of coagulated skin stuck in my nostrils. I count my inhales and exhales in this forced meditative state. I open my eyes and look through protective eyewear to see a kaleidoscope of light: red and yellow and black dots and I am content.
When I return home, both Gigi and Reshayin are waiting for me. I pet her while we admire him, and she is unusually quiet. Reshayin’s beak is slightly parted as he paces politely, almost like his wings are in pockets. My skin is still numb and I’m happy to let the star pattern live in my face for a little bit.
Thoughts?