Welcome to Pink Dog Days

Welcome to Pink Dog Days

Pink Dog Days is my first attempt at a website or blog. It was born out of a journal I started in 2019. It was a lonely time in my life despite Stacey and Brian living with me. I say living, but in reality, they just used me for a home base while they nursed their own mental illnesses and chased their next highs. It was a half-assed situation with me trying to take care of everything while neglecting myself. It was Covid and alcoholism and depression, and anxiety, and I couldn’t talk to either of them or count on them for anything except showing up for dinner. I never felt so alone and frustrated in my life. Then I got cancer, and in the middle of treatment, Brian betrays and abandons me with no warning or goodbye. During all of this, my brother Stacey dies from complications of his lifetime of alcoholism, preceded by Colin and followed by Peter.

This blog was a way for me to sort it all out, and yes, vent. I had lived in total chaos, complete with a serious life-threatening illness, taking care of two grown men with severe mental illnesses, and I am now totally alone, sitting in the wreckage of my life, so lost and confused I hardly knew my own name. To say that I was traumatized would be an understatement, and not even close to what I experienced.  It was a way for me to prove to myself that it all really happened.  It was so bizarre and surreal that it was hard to believe. Did I really have cancer? Did Brian really get married to someone else while I was suffering and struggling through chemo?  Did we just go through a global pandemic, and did Colin,  Stacey, and Peter really die? I was so sick it was hard to know what was real and what was not. And the people in my life, as well-meaning as they all were, only made things worse by telling me I was lucky to be rid of Brian.

I needed therapy and time. Therapy was difficult because it was COVID, but time was all I had. I needed to talk to people who understood what I was going through. And unless you’ve been in a relationship with a person who has narcissistic personality disorder, you cannot possibly know what it is like and how it affects the people they get involved with. This, coupled with my breast cancer diagnosis, left me in a state of panic and depression. My circumstances had me by the throat for quite a while until one day I came to my senses a little and went into clinical psychology mode, got educated, and found the support groups that got me through to this day. As I read other people’s stories and accounts, it validated my own experiences and helped me to process everything. And it was so helpful that I wanted to pay it forward.

So, Pink Dog Days started out as a place to share the devastation of these things, and has since become a place of healing, information sharing, love, and support. Once I had processed the complexity of it all, I became inspired and finally launched PDD.  I thought that if I could support one person, make one new friend, or bring someone comfort in their time of need, that would help heal me. If I could help one woman get through her treatments without being afraid, that is what I was supposed to do. I had a purpose, and having a purpose beyond your own needs is sacred. I had experienced the worst evil in my life through my illness and my relationship, and it was important to me that I found decency again, to then hopefully pass it on.

But time has softened the urgency a bit, and my perspective has shifted. I no longer feel the need to tell all, or to seek closure or justification. It took a long time and lots of self-reflection, but it was worth it. My friend always said that silence is the loudest thing anyone will ever hear, time heals all wounds, and time wounds all heels. Time, in fact, is the greatest healer. This is true, but sometimes telling your story is the best way to move forward, as it was for me. And sometimes you just have to be patient to tell it right. I was not patient, not by a long shot, but I have learned patience, and it has calmed my soul and lent greater honesty to my story.

I am just a woman who has lived and seen, as my brother likes to say, some shit. I once lived a life with friends, family, horses, dogs, interests, and dreams, and what should have been a time for settling in turned into the worst time of my life. It was all gone, everything I knew before. The traumatic events, leaving the farm, the cancer, the betrayal, and losing my brothers took me in directions I had no idea how to navigate. It also urged me to examine myself and my life in a different way. Instead of seeing it as a loss, I now feel grateful for what I have accomplished on my own so far and for the opportunities this upheaval has brought my way. I am the same, but not the same; I still have the same amount of love to give, albeit more selective about who I give it to.

I am the same person I was before cancer or knowing my ex. I am the same person I was when I lived on the farm. I have the same values and morals and have cultivated a few more. I’m a bit wiser and definitely more self-assured. I still love horses and dogs, and I would love my boyfriend or husband if I had one. I love flowers, music, nature, and yoga. I love my friends and family, and I have a strong sense of justice, which is why I feel things so deeply; I am an empath. I feel things the same way as I always have, with intensity, but a softer, more reflective intensity. I am a woman who still has relevance and longs to pay all the good in my life forward. I want to share everything I have learned, and I want to learn from anyone who wants to share. Supporting one another is a dream of mine. That and saving horses and dogs. I just went a little spacey, but just think of the possibilities.