Anchors

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” – Joan Didion

I’ve been thinking about that sentence a lot this week. My constant shadow of a dog was suddenly gone and I found myself more than lost. I was always aware of him, I needed to know where he was and what he was doing at all times to keep him healthy. He was special needs and high maintenance and he seemed to become an extension of myself. One second I was laying next to him and the next literal second he was gone. I found myself without a story. WHERE did he go? This realization that I didn’t know where my dog was and if he was being taken care of is unsettling. Bill & Adam helped with their stories of what they think but I still don’t know.

Everything is a story when you think about it. Religions are stories to comfort us and to guide us through life. We tell our kids stories to get them to be good, we tell ourselves stories so we can get up and keep going another day. The stories give us strength to pull ourselves off the shower floor after our hearts have been broken. They give us hope of seeing our dead again, well and happy, when the thought of black nothingness as an alternative is too painful to bear. The stories become our truths, and truths are no more than perceptions and perceptions are different for every being on earth.

This is why the sky was painted blue, so that we may not really see what is behind it.

I search for the meanings and the lessons in everything. I am always writing my story of this life trying to place it all together and figure out what the fuck I am supposed to be getting out of it. The stories change and evolve based on how we have changed and evolved. When we lose someone we love, someone who we thought of as a constant, the pain tells us a story. The pain says nothing stays the same so it’s best not to grab on too tight to anything because before you know it that anchor is just dust.

I hope the pain is just a sad mean hag because if our anchors taught us something, or helped us experience or learn something then they are alive. Those anchors move on in who we are just like many have been passed to us through others without us ever knowing. We are one.

But hell, what do I know? That’s just a story I tell myself.

For my best buddy. Nick 8/12/2005 – 12/6/2017 My shadow, my anchor.