(Literal) Baby Steps

I have always walked at night.

Sometimes I run as well, but before I even considered the possibility that I was capable of running without an asthma attack, I walked. Sophie was a very active puppy who did not tire easily, and up until five or so years ago I still routinely took her out for three or four miles at night. It’s where I work out fight scenes with my book playlists in the background, where plots untangle and books fix themselves.

Particularly during times of high stress or worry, I would walk at night. Always. In 2005, when Aunt Judy was seriously ill and hospitalized, and I learned she might not make it, I would go out with Sophie for two hours or more at night and just walk around town. When she died, I walked. When my dad died, I walked. When I grieve, I walk. Less so in winter, obviously, and there’s always a period in the spring when I build up the habit of 5-10K a night for five nights a week.

It’s been nearly four weeks since Dinah died, and I can’t walk at night.

What happened that night is something only a couple of people know: I was getting dressed to go out for my nightly 5K. My friend Danni is in Australia, so it’s usually late at night that I get her emails for freelance stuff. I’d had one email and a couple more came in, so while I had my shoes on and was dressed, I sat by the laptop to answer them real quick, then got up to go.

Dinah began vocalizing from the kitchen, and then I discovered one of her legs was paralyzed. What followed was the longest wait I have ever experienced as I tried to find someone up that late to take us to the emergency vet out of town. She died not ten minutes on the road (from a blood clot–random, unpredictable, and the likelihood of the emergency vet having a clot-buster was unlikely, I have learned…even humans die routinely on the way to the hospital from blood clots, although it brings me no comfort to know she couldn’t be saved).

Had I not stopped for that email, I would’ve come home to find her dead (or not found her at all until it was time to go to bed around 2am). She was already in horrible fear and pain that I couldn’t stop, couldn’t comfort her over, but she would’ve died entirely alone as well.

For the next week I functioned in total shock, still unable to believe she was gone–the first four days I spent entirely in bed, not speaking to anyone. And when my friend suggested I meet her in Montreal two weeks ago, I hopped on a train and spent the next week and a half traveling. I could do that, for some reason–I could leave the rest of my cats for a week and a half and trust they would be okay. Part of me even believed somehow I’d come home and she’d be there, like it was all some horrible nightmare. (She was waiting for me, just in a different form.)

But now I can’t go out at night for a walk. It’s like there’s a block there and I physically get sick and start having panic attacks when I even think about getting up to go out. Every time I try, I just keep thinking about how she would’ve died alone, about how I lost the rest of my heart that moment out of nowhere, and I can’t move. And I also have no reason to–with no dog (and no, I do not want another right now, please do not ask me), I have nothing external making me do it, and no reason to leave.

It feels stupid and illogical–realistically I know no one is going to die the moment I step out of the apartment. I have always had anxiety and always had pets, which means I am very used to the feeling of “What if the apartment is on fire and my babies are dying” that I have to fight against every damn time I’m outside the home.

But this is different and it’s paralyzing and I relive her dying over and over again.

I have gone all this time not really speaking about it to anyone–most people excel abundantly with making it clear they do not understand this bond that I’ve lost, or the actual trauma this has been, and it’s better for my mental health if I juts keep it buried than have to deal with explaining to humans who aren’t going to get it. But course my Platonic Murder Wife did. In discussing health issues last night and needing to pick up some good habits again, I finally confessed the difficulties I’m having and she simply said to me “Just go downstairs, go outside, and then come right back in. Next time, try one minute outside. Then five minutes.”

Oh, I thought, of course. Baby steps.

I am an all or nothing person and it LITERALLY never occurred to me that I didn’t immediately have to start back up with 5K around the canal. It’s the kind of lesson I have to keep learning over and over again.

So last night at 11:30, I went out.

I walked to the park, and then came home. I set the stopwatch on my phone–it was five minutes exactly.

A five-minute baby step.

It might take a few months but I’ll try to get back in the habit. I have neighbours downstairs now, and no matter how well-insulated their ceiling is, I don’t want to risk my very old, loud treadmill bothering them. My health will suffer if I stay physically inactive and I can’t be out during daylight without getting really sick.

Everything is different now–my entire household is different. Temperance von Eviltry, aka the Doombuggy, is the one that grieves with me–she was Sophie’s cat this past seven years, and Dinah was the matriarch she grew up with. When she isn’t lying on the back of the couch behind my head, she sits in the hallway and stares at me and cries all day; at night, she’s the one who sleeps with me now, as we’ve both lost those we were bonded with. It’s not the same–not for her, not for me–but at least when I reach over, I find a cat there in the dark at night. But it’s never Dinah, and I can’t even walk myself to exhaustion at night to be able to sleep.

Baby steps for now, though.