Written by Kaitlin Hayes – Jonesie was abandoned twice before he found me. His first owner loved him, as far as I can tell, since he got all his vaccines and grew up with good musculature and a healthy coat; but still, one day Jonesie was surrendered to a shelter.
Jonesie’s paperwork — medical history, license — was surrendered with him, which is how I know anything. A pure-bred Boston Terrier, his provenance is stellar, especially for a puppy at a shelter. He was purchased from a reputable breeder, the offspring of show dogs. I Googled the names — Anise and Milton — but I don’t think Jonesie’s parents were ribbon winners.
A new family took him four weeks after he arrived at the shelter. They called it fostering, but they kept him for three months, and Jonesie must have thought that was his new home. He settled in and got comfortable and then the parents decided their daughter was too young to deal with the responsibility of a dog after all.
They decided not to return Jonesie to the shelter. In my more cynical moments, I think this is because they want to adopt from that shelter again, in a future where their daughter is more “responsible.” They passed Jonesie along to the husband’s sister, who had a dog of her own.
That sister happened to be Nancy, my neighbor. We weren’t close, but we were both night-owls and smokers, and our apartments shared a balcony. Her half and my half were illogically separated by a wrought-iron gate rather than a real fence. San Francisco is like that sometimes, strange pieces cobbled together.
Nancy and I had grown accustomed to chatting over that waist-high barrier for the length of time it took to smoke a cigarette. In our two years as neighbors, we’d learned a lot about each others’ lives through a friendship enjoyed in ten- to twelve-minute chunks.
I liked her Cocker Spaniel, Panda, well enough to pet him once in a while. Unfortunately for Jonesie, Panda was a territorial little beast and not happy about sharing his apartment with Jonesie the Interloper. One day — in an effort to avoid Panda’s wrath, I’m sure — Jonesie crawled through the bars from Nancy’s side of the balcony to mine, and took refuge on one of my patio chairs. When I came home that night, I found him curled up in a tight donut, snoring. One look at his tiny face and pointy ears, and I was toast.
The obedience trainer I hired for Jonesie told me that after being abandoned once, let alone twice, dogs grow distrustful of humans. Some resist bonding with you, for fear that you’ll disappear. Jonesie was the opposite. I could see the desperation in his eyes, the pleading of please God don’t leave me I love you. Jonesie took to sneaking onto my bed once I was asleep and curling up just above my head on the pillow. It could have been his idea of a puppy pile, but I think it was an effort to prevent me from getting away while he was unconscious.
It took three months to convince him to sleep at the foot of the bed. When I tried to wean him of sleeping with me, he destroyed every dog bed I brought home. After the fourth, I gave up on the idea of sleeping alone. But I was okay with that. The company was nice.
#
I decided to live because I refused to die on Jonesie. I know that sounds ridiculous, living because of a dog. But you’ve never met Jonesie. He needed me. He’d been heft aside by two families, and he wasn’t even a year and a half old. I knew how it felt to be the one no one wanted to keep. I couldn’t leave him behind. So I set about making a plan.
Firstly, yelling at myself in the mirror had to stop. At worst, my dog thought I was insane, and his nervous disorder would last his entire life. At best, I was neutralizing my stern voice.
Secondly, I needed to go cold turkey on contemplating suicide. Making this decision to live meant sticking with it. No wavering. No bad nights of Googling fatal dosages. No moments where he could feel despair wafting off of me.
In an effort to keep up my end of the bargain, I did some research. Apparently, the best way to keep myself alive was to let someone know there was a problem. I guess it’s strange I never thought of that. Honestly, though, I didn’t care much. I was too exhausted.
#
I had been managing depression for at least seventeen years by the time Jonesie appeared, with varying levels of success. I say at least, because the time before my original diagnosis was the blur of hormones and horror that is middle school and puberty. It’s nigh-on impossible to know for sure if my misery was “normal” or the result of my brain chemistry.
Regardless, including that extra three years’ experience in my credentials wouldn’t make me any more successful at managing than I was. Depression isn’t something you become an expert in. Putting in your 10,000 practice hours doesn’t allow you to master the beast. And, really, is there any honor in being the best depressive on the planet?
#
Mandela, my best friend, prescribed distraction as the solution to my episodes; her word, not mine. She genuinely thought listening to her problems or looking at baby animals helped, and I certainly didn’t want to dwell on how little I felt from one day to the next. So I tried her way. I admired the penguin gifs. I offered advice for dating troubles. But finding humor in the story of a bad date was difficult when I’d forgotten how laughing felt; when I’d forgotten how amusement felt.
The thing with depression is that it doesn’t mean being sad all of the time. Sadness is definitely one aspect, but depression is far more interested in inflecting self-hatred if anything. Hopelessness is a void, and a vacuum for everything else. Emotions disappear into it, going silent, like someone reached into my soul and turned down the volume.
Sometimes, depression actually had perks. No one could hurt my feelings. My mother’s hints for grandchildren – despite my last relationship being four years earlier and miserable – rolled off my back. At work, I didn’t care what the bigwigs thought of me, and they interpreted my indifference as confidence and moxie.
The bad bits were excruciating. Crying on the bathroom floor because the water wouldn’t heat. Staring at my blank, beige walls and wondering how I got there. Listening to the neighbor upstairs argue with his boyfriend, while the silence of my own apartment pressed into me from all sides.
Depression was the voice in the back of my mind, hissing. “You’re not even worth fighting with. Who’s going to want you when you can’t get off your couch?”
Depression made me feel invincible, until it stabbed me in the back again. A veritable frenemy.
#
I suspect Jonesie knew when I was sad, but he never knew me when I was happy. He had no baseline for reference. Or maybe he had a baseline and a trough, but no peak for comparison?
Either way, something about the jingle of his tags and the click of his nails on the hardwood floor made a smile come to my face. Light and barely felt, but there.
#
With depression comes the basic knowledge that as soon as you reveal your condition, your relationship with the person you tell changes irrevocably. You become damaged or broken in their eyes. I made that mistake only three times.
People are rarely bad at heart; most want to be supportive. The problem is that people always start with the same token sentiments. “If you ever need to talk,” they say, “call me. Anytime.”
I used to think they genuinely wanted to help, and the offer wasn’t the result of pride, or a sense of superiority that I needed their help. But I grew cynical.
At first, I took their offers at face value. I did call. I asked them to come out to play. I asked them to listen to my fears that nothing would change, that life would never get better. But people get tired of negativity very quickly.
They don’t want to listen to you. They want to fix you. Most people think that all it will take is positive thinking; the power of mind over matter, or, more to the point, sadness. They ask you to will yourself to feel better.
We inevitably reached an impasse. Someone who has never suffered from depression will never understand that I wasn’t letting myself feel any way. In fact, I would’ve preferred not to be depressed. I just was, despite any beauty I saw in a sunset or how many times I went into downward dog and concentrated on my breath.
At first, when those things — magic potions everyone insisted could cure me — failed to work, to give me hope or ease the pain in my chest, I felt even worse, even more of a failure, even more broken. But people found it difficult to understand that, too. After a while, just keep trying began to sound a lot like shut up. So I listened.
Making the decision to live for Jonesie placed a second decision in front of me: who was I supposed to choose?
#
I am a pragmatic person. I made a pro and con list.
#
My mother was not an option. I knew my mother would watch me like a hawk, but she retired to New Mexico when she remarried. Putting her on sentry duty would mean her coming to stay with me. She would be convinced this was a short-term deal, something she could fix in a nice month-long chunk of time, like renovating a kitchen.
#
My father was out since he died when I was twenty-three.
#
Mandela was great, if a shade too sweet for the modern world. She, like my mother, would move in. Unlike my mother, Mandela wouldn’t leave. Besides, she had been through enough of my bitterness.
#
I had friends at work. We were happy hour friends, where I would plaster a smile on my face and disappear into the noise. My brain couldn’t yell, drowned out by so many other voices. One of them might listen.
But at work I was in Power Mode. Finance is a cutthroat field. I couldn’t afford to show a soft underbelly.
#
Mandela and I had a small, close group of friends. But if I told one of them, it would get back to Mandela.
#
The only person left was my smoking buddy, Nancy. I had no one else. It seemed fitting anyway, since she was to blame for bringing Jonesie and a will to live into my life.
I underlined her name twice on my pro and con list. Having a watchdog close to (but not inside) my apartment would be convenient.
Nancy would do.
#
Our walls were thin, and I heard when Nancy opened her back door and stepped outside that night. When I came out onto the balcony, she was leaning against the railing.
Nancy was beautiful, with an edge of screw you that made people stare from a safe distance. Tattoos crawled down from the base of her neck and ended just past her elbows.
“Hey,” she said.
I lifted a bottle of wine. “You want a glass?”
“If I don’t see another glass of wine until I’m fifty, it’ll be too soon.”
“Wedding?”
She nodded. I knew she was back to catering gigs when the mock turtlenecks reappeared, smothering every centimeter of ink. Nancy was a great bartender, but finding a steady bartending job was hard. All the young people trying to be artists wanted to bartend in San Francisco.
I glanced over my shoulder, as though I could see inside my cabinet. “I think Mandela left some whiskey.”
After my last relationship, drinking began to feel like self-medicating. I find it hard to care about much, but I watched my dad and only serious boyfriend slip into the comfort of oblivion. I know how easy that fall is. If prescription drugs couldn’t heal my issues — I had tried them all — booze certainly wouldn’t.
“I’m good with these,” Nancy said, shaking her pack of cigarettes.
She blew a stream of smoke into the air as I set the bottle aside and drained the last of my own glass. Jonesie pushed his nose through the crack in the door. When I glanced at him, his mouth opened in a grin, his tongue unfurling with joy.
“Can he — ?”
Nancy shrugged. “Panda’s inside.”
Panda scared Jonesie so badly he never came outside if Panda was already there; so Jonesie was ecstatic to be on the balcony. We had no view, but the ocean was only a few blocks away, and even Jonesie’s tiny, flat nose could pick up the scents.
I settled into one of the chairs, and Jonesie came to sit at my feet. One look at his big, dark eyes, and I knew I had to stop stalling. A cigarette could last only so long.
“I wanted to talk to you about something,” I said. Nancy tapped off some ash and waited. “It’s more of an I-need-to-talk situation.”
Her brow wrinkled. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” The word was automatic. “I mean, no.”
This is going well.
Nancy raised a brow, her face sardonic. “Okay.”
The word was elongated. Her accent was nearly eviscerated by the time she moved in next door, but her drawl resurfaced once in a while, usually to underscore her sarcasm.
“I’ve been having some thoughts,” I said.
“Alert the media.”
“Shut up.”
She grinned, but I could see it, hovering under the surface of her calm. The suspicion was settling over her. The worry of What does she want from me?
Nancy took a drag. “What kind of thoughts?”
I was tip-toeing. I despised beating around the bush. I glanced down at Jonesie, who had found a plushie somewhere and was chewing contentedly.
“I’ve been thinking about killing myself.”
Done. Alert the media.
The suspicion drained away from Nancy’s face. When she spoke, the words came out snappish and confrontational.
“Are you serious? I can’t tell.”
“Yes.”
I nodded for good measure. Nancy burst into tears.
Oh God. “You okay?”
Her eyes were incredulous, even as she continued crying. “Are you?”
“Probably not.”
A light jingle made me look down just as Jonesie finished slipping through the bars to get to Nancy. At her feet, he balanced on his back legs, placing his front paws squarely on her shin. He was asking, in fluent Dog, “Can I help?”
I watched Jonesie as I asked, “Would cocoa help?”
“Cocoa?” She sniffled.
“I don’t know. Isn’t chocolate supposed to be comforting?”
“Whiskey would be better.”
“Right. On it.”
I shot to my feet, glad to have a purpose and not be lost in the tangle of this conversation and her reaction. After I had poured her a shot, then a second one, I managed to say, “I’m sorry.”
“No,” she said, fierce. “I’m glad you told me.”
“Really?”
I sounded doubtful because I was. She heard it and gave a wet laugh.
“Of course. You had to tell someone. I’m surprised you didn’t tell Mandela.”
“She has a lot going on.” Then I realized how that sounded. I didn’t want Nancy to think Mandela was selfish. She wasn’t. I was. “And if I told her…”
“She’d worry forever?”
“That. And she’d move in.”
“I’d feel a lot better if you did one of these with me,” she said, lifting the shot glass.
I splashed some whiskey into my empty glass. The dregs of the wine floated through the amber liquid.
“What now?”
I hesitated. I hadn’t considered anything past that conversation. Her reaction was a question mark, the one thing I couldn’t plan, so telling her seemed like the biggest step I could take.
But as I sipped at the whiskey, I couldn’t imagine anything except more of the same: work, happy hour, home, dog parks, friends, rinse, repeat.
Jonesie, satisfied that Nancy was okay, leaned over to scratch behind his neck with one hind foot. Listing too far, he fell over, only to leap back up and prance over to my feet. I meant to do that.
Was I supposed to just continue? Go about my day-to-day existence with my neighbor on high alert for suicidal tendencies?
Or was I supposed to make some sort of life change? If so, what? Logically, nothing made sense to change. I had a good job that I did well. I had friends. I was in a book club. Nothing was wrong with my life, in theory. The problem was my brain, and fixing that wasn’t as simple as taking up a new hobby.
I nearly groaned out loud when I realized what I needed to do. “Now, I guess, I go back to therapy.”
Because it went so well the first four times.
Inwardly, I shuddered. Therapists had never been able to help me. But if training could help Jonesie, whose fear of abandonment was hard-won on the battlefield, then maybe I just hadn’t found the right therapist. I had to try.
Nancy looked horrified, then grim. “Mazel tov.”
For the first time in as long as I could remember, my chuckle was genuine. Jonesie’s head shot up to stare at me with adoring eyes. One look at his tiny face and pointy ears, and I was toast.
______________________________________________________
Kaitlin graduated from UC Berkeley, approximately one thousand years ago, with a degree in Victorian literature. She does not write Victorian literature. She currently lives in San Francisco with her boyfriend and a pug named Tako.
