Keeping in step with the frenetic tap-tap-tapping of Alfie’s tiny claws against the pavement has become a meditative practice for me during this week’s London pet-sit. Were it not for the dusting of white fur across his sharp muzzle, you’d never guess he’s about fifty-six in dog years. His whole life revolves around our three daily walks.
If I sleep past 8:30 in the morning, the first thing I see when I wake is Alfie’s expectant Jack Russel face about three inches from mine, silently pleading for me to drag my middle-aged body out of bed. Aren’t we both technically middle-aged? How are you this chipper every day?
Work has been busy lately, so sometimes I’m hunched over my laptop at the dining table well past 3 PM. The closer it gets to 3:30, the more his subtle whines evolve into demanding barks. “Get up!” he yells. “How can you just… sit there?!” So I put on my black wool coat, we take the elevator to the ground floor, and as we approach the front door of the apartment building, he becomes a rabidly excited, growling beast, biting and shaking his leash as if it’s a small(er) animal he’s trying to murder.
I’ve learned to keep Alfie’s leash short, especially around his arch-nemesis: a grey bulldog who lives on one of the upper floors. Once, just as we were exiting the elevator, the bulldog happened to be entering the building, and Alfie worked some sort of furious tornado-magic to slip his harness and lunge at the enemy, snarling with all the rage of a soldier about to commit war crimes. I dove to the ground and successfully grabbed him before any damage was done, but for an instant, I saw everybody’s life flash before my eyes—the bulldog’s, Alfie’s, and mine. Pet-sitting is fun. And dangerous.
Why all this about Alfie? I suppose it’s because when people ask how my travels are going, how my life is going, it’s easier to tell stories about the cute dogs I’ve met than it is to encapsulate the radical shift in reality I’ve experienced over the past six months. In October, I left the love of my life. In November, I smiled through my fortieth birthday with gritted teeth. In December, I whittled my earthly possessions down to as small a stack as I could—probably around 200 cubic feet, plus a pile of garbage bags full of clothes. By the new year, I’d moved my things into my niece’s garage for safekeeping and decided to travel abroad for an indefinite amount of time. In February, I boarded a plane to San Miguel, Mexico, and haven’t said much or been back since. I plan each international stop as I go and pet-sit to reduce housing costs.
From the outside, it probably looks like I chose to run away from the pain. In some respects, I did, and who could blame me? I thought I’d built a life I could settle into for the long haul—a successful business, a long-term partner I still passionately loved after a decade of (sometimes tumultuous) romance/friendship, and a cozy, spooky little apartment that perfectly blended our different goth aesthetics. After a lifetime of mental health struggles, a nearly twenty-year career in the miserable corporate grind, several heartbreaks, two major surgeries, and two assaults—one at gunpoint, the other at the hands of an opportunistic Lyft driver—I thought, My goodness, I’ve finally made it. I’m stable—happy, even. And then one bad, drunken night of too much alcohol (it’s always alcohol) swept everything out from under me.
I could tell you about the ensuing anguish—the bedridden days of paralytic depression, the hours of crying and unhinged wailing, the cognitive dissonance of living in “relationship limbo” while the two of us dismantled our home—but it seems a bit useless. I’m betting that at some point, you’ve hurt enough to wish you could stop existing, if only for a short moment of relief (or maybe longer). But I can’t crawl into your skin to know exactly what that was like for you, no more than you can crawl into mine and understand the magnitude of what this loss has done to me.
I think the important thing to share—the thing I’ve been dancing around saying for six months—is that I have never felt more alone than I did in October, and that experience seems to have fundamentally changed who I am. My friends and family couldn’t be there in those tear-soaked sheets with me, and I was saying goodbye to the one person who had consistently been available to hold me the way I wanted to be held, who was best at soothing the anxiety demon in my chest. For a severe people pleaser who is terrified of being abandoned, it felt like my worst fear had come true, and the agony was more excruciating than I ever imagined. But then… I didn’t die.
I just kept crying. And breathing. On occasion, I got up to work and keep my business afloat. And I eventually realized that the life I’d lost had been the direct result of all my people-pleasing. I’d been keeping myself on a short leash, following the same path laid before every woman: excel in school, get a respectable job, pursue a man, build a home, live up to your duties as a daughter, sibling, friend, lover. I have held onto every accomplishment and relationship with a white-knuckled grip, as if my entire existence, my worth as a human being, depended on it. And at the end of all that, I found myself alone—at forty!—anyway.
Yes, I ran away from the pain, but I was also deliberately running toward something: the person I wanted to become, having loosened my grasp on all that I once knew. When you’re as good a people-pleaser as I am, it’s difficult to truly know yourself or your feelings until no one else is in the room. I’ve given myself a long leash that extends beyond relationship, beyond family, beyond friendship, and beyond international borders. And out here in the wide, wide world, I’ve found that I am my own best company—more adventurous, capable, driven, and full of childlike joy than I think anyone’s ever really given me credit for.
So how are my travels going? I’ve rubbed elbows with well-to-do socialites in the San Miguel art scene; connected with my inner witch at every historical site in Salem, Massachusetts; partied my face off with a beloved publishing colleague in New York; reunited with an old internet friend and artistic hero of mine in Sweden; explored castles and ancient ruins with another beautiful human suffering heartbreak in Scotland; and walked several adorable dogs through the English countryside and London city streets. Tomorrow, I’m flying to Dublin for an Irish jaunt that I’ve been planning with a dear friend for ages. In short, I have lived more than ever before. The average 40-year-old has about 42–48 years left, and I intend to make every one of them count.
Tonight’s my last night with Alfie, and although he’s quite a handful, I’m sad to be leaving him. We’ve spent enough time together that he’s started to feel like home, and in gratitude for his company, I gave him a long leash this evening. We walked for almost two hours on his usual trails through the neighborhood and local parks, and then further out, past scenic canals and unfamiliar shops and restaurants, the smell of cumin permeating the air. I let him lead me wherever he wanted to go, and we charged through piles of fallen cherry blossoms while a pair of British-Indian teens blasted Jeff Buckley’s “Lover, You Should Have Come Over” out of their car window in the golden light of sunset.
Too young to hold on
And too old to just break free and run
They say, “Wherever you go, there you are,” usually in the context of being unable to escape yourself or your problems, but I’ve been ruminating on it as a positive notion the last couple of days. I might be returning to the States after Ireland, but I say “the States” rather than “home” because I’ve successfully redefined what that term means to me. Home is not where you’re from, not a country that can be unraveled by an orange megalomaniac. Home is not another person, no matter how much you love them. And it’s not a thing that must be accomplished—a career or a house you may never be able to afford.
As I lie here with my laptop, getting ready to leave an apartment that will soon become a distant memory, enjoying the twitches of Alfie’s dreaming feet one last time, I finally understand: I am my own home.
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