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Ripping your face off
By audhill | October 14, 2007
My dog bit my face yesterday. Actually, it’s not my dog… anymore. I was with my husband and he was laying on the couch. I took my dog and lifted him up onto my husband’s chest and I sat down on the floor next to them both and tried to give love to my dog and to my husband both. My dog has been very attached to my husband and I guess I know now.. he was guarding his special person and jockeying for second dog status. Anyway, I put my face down by his face and kissed him. He sneered at me and seemed not to want me to do it. My husband suggested I move back a little off of him, so I did. And he reared up and bit my nose. I’ve been to a plastic surgeon and I have about 15 stitches. I think there’s going to be a large scar on my face.
Today, we took the dog back to the no kill shelter where we found him. I cried the whole way and was hoping that maybe we could work it out. Of course, we can’t. Tonight, I’m looking at my stitches in the mirror. They seem to be oozing and tied tight. Not small enough… I think I’m going to have a really big scar on my face.
My husband is tired of my crying. It started with all out bloody screaming but when I finally stopped being hysterical, it’s been a steady stream of non stop crying since. Two days of it now. He’s being patient, but a guy would suck it up. I know that and I respect it… but, I can’t seem to.
I’m not letting family come visit me because I really don’t have the energy to expend in their direction. It’s not that I don’t want them to care about me, it’s just that I dont’ want to have to expend energy to respond to their comforting or have to talk about it. And I’m tired. I’m very very tired. It’s just been too many emotions, too unbidden, too out of my control, too contradictory.
Yesterday I was terrified because I experienced this dog go after my face.. I thought he was going to take my nose off, and if my husband and I hadn’t pried his mouth open, he might have. Then the rest of the day I was grieving for this dog that was going back to a cage. I felt I’d wronged him by ignoring the signals that he needed a behavior specialist. Now tonight I feel sorry for myself and scared about being scarred. I’m coming full into the awareness that I am not going to emerge unscathed (although I keep hoping that somehow I will) I can’t stop crying… even knowing that people die of hunger in Calcutta and get gang raped in Darfur.
I’m afraid. I’ve kept company with myself my whole life. To ground myself before a meeting or a date, to get some courage or to remember that I exist, I would look in a mirror. Do we all do that? I always found someone whole. I was never offended by who I saw there. Now I expect to see someone with a big criss cross Bride of Frankenstein scar across my face for the rest of my life. A sudden change of view. Turning a corner and realizing that everything has changed. I’ll have to see how I feel tomorrow.
Topics: personal |