If it looks like I've been crying, it's just because I've been crying.

Today has been on the horrible side.  It's been one month now since Millie died.  I have no idea how a month has gone by.  I feel like I've been running as fast as I can away from March 4th, knowing that I definitely won't feel better until I get to the future, so I'm going there in a hurry.

It still doesn't seem real.  It just seems like I've been transported to another possible world where water is twater (for the philosophers out there) and I am the momma of a 5-month old lab-mix instead of the momma/soul mate of a 9-year old pug-with-special-needs.  I can't believe how much of my identity consists of being Millie's momma.  I know I've said this at least a hundred times in the last month, but everything is so different now.  When I think back about the moment I heard that Millie was gone, it is the memory of a bomb blast.  As I remember it, my hair was blown back by the rushing bomb wind, and my skin was melted off by the bomb-radiation.  I can see that somehow I've made a future for myself, but it's nothing I recognize.  "My world's the surface of the moon, my heart's down in a diamond mine."  (Mike Doughty)

It seems too real.  From what I've been reading, many people feel a presence of their pet when he/she dies.  Jesus Effing Christ I wish I felt that way.  Instead, Millie's absence colors every perception I have.  Where's-Millie?-colored-glasses instead of rose-colored-glasses.  I think this is largely because I was very aware of how meaningful and important Millie was to me and how much joy she brought me every day.  I often marveled about how that much intensity, that much silly sweetness, that much L O V E could be packed into such a tiny bundle.  I can honestly say that I did not take her and our love for granted.  That's good, I know, but nothing is really very good.