There's one image that has stayed with me

I found the puppy hit on a dirt road, while out riding my horse. He was still breathing, just panting, really, but couldn't move. The image that stays in my head is of his staring eye, with dirt and gravel stuck to it...if he didn't have it in him to blink, he just wasn't going to make it. The thing I can't fully remember was shooting him -- it's possible that an adult did, but in my memory it's always been me. It was horrible, but by that time I'd seen animals I loved bitten by rattlesnakes, found them rotting under a tree when they didn't come home from pasture, watched our cow frozen over in the lake all winter long when she fell through the ice...you kind of wind up with this frontier view of reality. It's almost less painful to kill it than to watch the suffering.

I think I was much tougher as a kid than I am as an adult. It's all that therapy -- I was pretty damned shut off to anything as messy as feelings. I was one of those girls that would kick your ass if you pushed me. My family life was pretty shitty and tense, lots of passive AND active aggression going on. At that time, I think my parents were both having affairs, they barely noticed what I did. I could get on a horse and be gone morning 'til night, no one ever noticed. It was a beautiful kind of freedom in a way, but came with the heavy knowledge of absolute vulnerability.

Don't get me wrong -- I think my parents were fundamentally good, but seriously fucked up at the time. Oddly, my brothers' memory of the family is like an entirely different family -- they're 7 & 8 years older than me, so they remember happier times.

It's freaky, but I sort of related to the whole Harris / Klebold anger when they shot up Columbine. I was alienated enough to fantasize about horrific things happening to my peers, but thank GOD I didn't ever seriously consider acting on it. I wasn't crazy, at least.

And I'm also thankful I got therapy before Prozac was so in vogue. I honestly think it saved my life. Having someone to be accountable to every week was almost a new thing. I would have OD'd on some damned substance, or crashed my car speeding, or done some other self-destructive thing until I was dead, at that point.

Wow, where the hell did all that come from? Can you tell I'm bored? Babysitting a rave, which, luckily, I get to do from my studio...but the night after an opening, I just don't feel like workin'!

Only four more hours....