Puppy for President!

                                                                                                                                                                

 

 

 

 

My name is Leslie. And I sleep with a stuffed animal.

THERE! I said it!

Ahh, SOOO freeing.

Nah, I really don't care. It's all good.

So I've had my "Puppy" since I was 3 years old. He was a replacement for the one that I left on the back of my Mom's car before she drove off to run her errands for the day. That was a devastating day in the life of little Leslie. I still remember it clearly. Basically, I left it on the back of my mom's car, and, uh, she drove off. Yeah. Pretty deep story.

But alas, I had my replacement puppy, and all was good.

He is my velveteen rabbit. And yes, he has come ALIVE.

For the last 31 years he has gone everywhere with me. Sleepovers, vacations, my many moves, hurricane evacuations. I even hid him during boot camp.

I CANNOT live without my Puppy. I would NOT know how.

If you look at him, you can see my dependence on him written all over his poor little body.
First off, it looks like he has the mange.

Then his pitiful eyes. A dog chewed one eye off when I was little, then another dog got his other one later in life. I cut some new eyes out of felt, then used a glue gun to glue on some of those googly ones.  It freaked me out because he kept staring at me.
So I ripped them off and now he is left with shiny glue dots.
This makes him looked possessed.

His left arm is much skinnier than his right because I like to smell it. Which means my brain is full of stuffing now.

His nose is crooked because I have sewn it back on so many times.

If you hold him up the light you can see straight through his abdomen to the other side of the room. That stuffing is probably also in my brain.


So why the dependence on him? No clue. But any theories are appreciated.
And "I have issues" is too vague. Because we already know this.

So where am I going with this?
I don't know yet.
Be patient.

The other day, I LOST PUPPY! And I thought I was going to have a mental break-down!

Brian was asleep and I frantically woke him up shaking him. "Wake up! I can't find Puppy!"
He looked over at me with his CPAP attached to his face, and said something in his Darth Vader voice. I just about ripped the mask off of his face in fear that I had lost puppy FOREVER!
"Help me look for him! Oh my God, I think I left him at the hotel!"

Brian slowly, I repeat, SLOWLY, gets up, pulling back the sheets, making an effort to care.
This is a routine when I can't find him at night, because I can't sleep well without my puppy.
But what Brian didn't understand was that I had REALLY lost him this time!

I was pulling my suitcase apart, pulling the room apart, like I was fiending.
I was shaking... heart pounding. I felt like I had left my own child at the hotel room.
I had abandoned my puppy.
I started to cry.

Brian fell back asleep at this point.

But I realized, I am ADDICTED to my stuffed animal.
It is a healthy addiction compared to other choices I have made, but no doubt, I don't feel like I could live without the dumb dog.


Ah, I knew this would go somewhere...

ADDICTION.

Yes, now I'm gonna get deeper. Because I know people who suffer from this horrible disease. Plus I watch intervention like it is attached to my face.

Whether it be drugs, alcohol, food, exercise, gambling, pornography, sex, acceptance from others...
It what some people feel they NEED to survive from day to day.
It helps them to cope with the situations in there lives without actually digging deeper to find the source of the pain, and then eliminating it.

Finding that pain is not an easy thing to do though. It requires re-living what hurt you in the first place.
Although for some people, I think it is just a chemical imbalance, and self medicating is the only thing that helps them "feel normal".

Life is full of bullshit. But the truth is, the way we react to the bullshit, lies within ourselves.

We can't spend life blaming others for why we are the way we are. Even if we do sniff stuffing.

We have a choice to whether or not we take unhealthy situations in our lives and let them make us more unhealthy, OR if we use them to grow from.

I think, no, I KNOW, we are meant to go though rough times. If we didn't, we wouldn't have a story. And our story is what makes us OWN ourselves. It is what sets up apart from others. Makes us UNIQUE.
Even the bad stuff.

Actually, I think the bad stuff is better than the good, as far as growth.

This is a quote from a book I'm reading...

"It is said that a person that has nothing left to lose becomes the most powerful person on earth. It is only through dying that we can truly live."

Sometimes you have to reach the bottom to end up being the best you can be in the long run.
It shows that people do love you enough to throw you a rope, and it shows that you are worth it to yourself to get better.

And in my uniqueness, I was able to go from having no idea where talking about my Puppy would take me, to talking about addiction.
Why? I don't know. I think the big man in the sky takes me to those places.
Obviously someone needed to hear it.

I am effin crazy, right?!... Don't answer that.
But hell, I love me.
And couldn't have said that a year ago.

Oh, and I found my Puppy. He was tucked away in the little pocket of my suitcase. Looking up at me with those possessive eyes of his. One little tear coming down. Because he knows I care.

My brain my be full of stuffing, but I do care. I love people (unless they really annoy me).
But I needed someone to hear this.
Whoever you are.

Because I have been there.
And you can't love others until you love yourself.