Walking on Empty–Wait, Have I Done This One Before??

The most consistent presence in my life these days has to be Ina Hall’s Queen Bitch.  Miss Katie goes to bed the same way every night, and wakes the same way every morning:  cuddly.  Whenever I enter the Hall, she wiggles and squirms.  When I sit on the couch, she double-pumps to hop on the couch and sit with me.  Whenever a cat walks by, her ears perk up.  When a bus or truck drives by, she lunges.  And whenever I cry, she just looks at me.  Looks at me, square in the face, and stares.

My Biscuit has always been a bit more sensitive to my emotional needs–largely to his detriment, and to the vast expansion of his neuroses–and attempts to comfort me when I cry.  He jumps upon me, snuggling close and often licking away the tears.  He whines, as his eyes crinkle in co-misery.  He stops me with his sadness.  How can I keep crying when it obviously hurts him so?

But Katie is an entirely different animal.  She takes after her aunt Shelly Belly in many respects.  She watches me make one questionable decision after another, and when it blows up and the tears begin to flow, she stares.  “You’re really doing this, aren’t you?”  Her sweet brown eyes hold no sympathy, and she makes no move to comfort me.  She won’t run away, not ever; she wouldn’t pass on the opportunity to tell me how silly I look.  As though she can sense when the tears have run dry, she won’t touch me until the heaving has ceased, until my breathing returns to normal, until I am ready to be rational.  And then she wants to cuddle.

No judgements, really.

Lately our days have been cool, yet bearable.  Katie and I have returned to our daily walks, finding small bits of time between rain showers.  The sky is grey and the wind is uncharacteristically harsh, but the Queen Bitch needs to walk.  And she knows that I need it, too.  We walk quickly and efficiently, stopping only to pee every 50 feet or so.  We shit on the yard of our mortal enemy, Great Pyrenees.  We bark at the old men who pass.  We sniff the children who run toward us.  We soak in the smells of the pizza shop, and we avoid the gatherings of funeral goers on Main Street.  We have returned to routine, to predictability.

The routine of my life has been a stabilizing one for the past couple of years; yet each return to it leaves me feeling more lonely than when I left it.  Breaking up with one man or another has almost become a part of the routine.  Katie’s unsympathetic stare grows more steely as she warns me to “buck up.”  People have come into and passed out of her life; she has survived it and built a new life, here with me.  She has no children, perhaps never has, and certainly never will.  She has learned to accept it.  She has become Queen Bitch by proving she can deal.  (She can also shit on the floor with little consequence, which must make her feel even more powerful.)  My Katie keeps trying to show me how it’s done, and I keep missing the lesson.

This morning when I woke–very late–she hesitated as she crawled toward me for a cuddle.  She stopped short.  She sensed the tears coming.  I was thinking of Tall Boy (and of every man I’ve loved, really) and was overcome with sadness.  I realized I was returning to my familiar routine, alone and with more lost than the last time, and I could not hold it back.  I cried, while Katie stared.

Gone, and someday forgotten.

For now, our walks are mechanical, done only out of necessity.  It is routine, and holds no joy.  There is no joy for me right now as I contemplate (again) a life without children and without real hugs.  There is The Hall, and there is Graples, and there is The Zoo; and there is me, the girl whose dog refuses to comfort her when she cries.  (“Seriously.  You’re still doing it.”)  Katie drags me about town as though the fresh air will do me good, making sure to stop and shit on the yard of her enemy to drive the point home.  She knows it always makes me smile, even with half a heart.

Katie’s presence in my life was a godsend, if there truly is a God.  Someone has to be the Queen Bitch, keeping us moving forward and participating in the life around us.  Most of the time, I am not strong enough.  I lack consistency and faith.  Sometimes, I lack the will to live and the courage to try again.  Katie keeps me walking, keeps me from wallowing, gives me a method and a measuring stick for letting new people into my life.  And with a firm, “NO MORE TEARS,” she gets me up out of bed and looking for some comfortable shoes.  Every good walk begins with some comfortable old shoes.  And every good walk ends with casting  them off.