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read between the lines
last 'live' post for this yr 22:30 sigh, this was not how i wanted it to be. once again, my mother has succeeded in fucking up my plans...but never my life.i am forced to type from my tablet in bed at my parents' instead of at my brother's apartment i'm renting. (& he's snother no-choice regular irritant w/ his whatsapps, even now, that i have to put up w/, because i find it obligatory to regularly update him abt things in the apartment he bought here.) i have not had my "lunch" yet, just woke up again, & have been suffering diarrhoea & flatulence since yesterday's 8.30pm dinner my mother provided...until maybe 10am here, when i finally took eno (from my father's stash here) after my fretful mother wanting me to take charcoal pills instead. (my stomach might be fine by now, but i've continued feeling hella tired, & it hasn't helped that my sleep has not-as-frequently-but-still been interrupted by me needing to empty bladder, retake desmo, & drink more water again. hence being too sleepy to even leave this hse. i've only just reluctantly-stirred in bed.) except i had to remind my mother i'd just taken my desmopressin, so she freaked & claimed i couldn't take it together with eno when i've done so pretty often (up till before last oct when a sun svc livestream's prayer by jp on healing of gastritis, surprisingly finally worked for me). she did the same nasty freaking-out when, the day after my disheatening hospital appointment last mth, when i decided to google what to take when my sodium levels were low (which they were as usual, in my blood test results at the hospital*. *i was told again i was 'overdosing' on desmo & i needed to cut down. if it were that simple to do, i'dve done it a long time ago. i dehydrate, can't think straight, keep needing to piss for up till an hour [every few secs] on the toilet bowl, keep needing to drink water or hot drinks to satiate my thirst. so i was told to take food with high water content in it. i forgot to mention to them, because the endo docs keep forgetting, that the antibiotics in the iv drip i was given, just after jan 2015's skin graft, immediately gave me a whole host of food allergies (& mild skin allergies) that have lessened by now but never fully went away. this includes fruits i used to welcome rather greedily before that, since my self-control skills went out the window immediately post-accdt (& that affected everything from binging whenever presented with even mere tv shows on food, to laughing against my will at an old woman my mother was laughing at [who got giddy after having to walk in a circle while pressing her head to the top of a closed umbrella, as exercise] during my physiotherapy sessions back when i couldn't walk so well after the skin graft. i was very sad because after that session, the physiotherapist head told me i could do the rest of my leg exercises at home instead of coming over [& at least getting outta the hse i was mostly locked-up in]. back to topic.) at the time, the answer to low sodium levels was so 'duh' – sports/ energy drinks. so i immediately downed a mug...& it lasted me 12hrs (not 4-6) on half the desmo dosage. i decided to continue the nexr day when she freaked that it'd give me stomach problems (i had to remund her i've been healed of them over a yr ago). after which, she proclaimed yet 1 of her many curses over my future, (which i thankfully increasingly disbelieve & reject as i lean more into god's grace), i.e. "ur teeth will all erode!" & "why substitute 1 sickness for another?!". so i looked it up to see if her fear-mongering had merits (it did). as a result, i switched more to the vanilla-flavoured almond milk i'd discovered the mth before to be the best-tasting milk substitute i've tried (coz 1 of my post-antibiotics allergies is dairy-that-isn't-frozen-like-ice-cream). the almond milk had the same effect on my desmopressin. & not only that, i'd discovered the mth before that that, sometimes when i'm too tired after putting off making my dinner, i can just down a mug full of almond milk, & it'd not only fill my stomach but also make me sleepier/ help me k.o. a lot more readily. so that's 1 significant health improvement, nearly a month short of 10 years since my hit&run, & this insipidus started. spking of: i rly did want to blog for my birthday, for the 1st-decade anniversary of my hit-&-run, for christmas. but yup, u guessed it – my mother stressed me out for all those occasions. not that i never got to carve out some personal space (& therefore much-needed literal peace & quiet) away from my mother. but that hiding-away time was so precious to me, i rightly prioritised it over blogging. except i'm not doing so now coz it's the last less-than-an-hr of this year alrdy. 2 things i realized (from as late as xmas eve, & the other, only just yesterday) that i felt were worth blogging about: 1. it finally occurred to me by xmas eve's night, that it once again falls upon my to rally my parents over for a joint christmas eating-out the next day. (my mother had initially angrily told me not to come over for occasions like christmas last mth. i thought it was finally my opportunity to break free from these shackles of febrile maternal micro-management hell, but nope – as i was packing up to leave, she said i could stop by but jusr not plan joint meals. she also strangely apologized through my open car door window, as i was driving off. this has never happened before, so soon after such heated arguments.) so i stated my reasons. (i.e. i'm not overseas or even out-of-state this yr so it's...odd for us to celebrate separately if so; & ikea requires no booking & there'd be no lack for parking, plus it's near the apartment.) & even though my reluctant mother asked me to check with her again the next day (& used my father as an excuse for not being sure abt lunch, when she's the one who calls the shots on food every time), we all still ended up lunching at ikea for christmas the next day. so that xmas eve night, i finally realised i shouldn't shirk my responsibilities toward often having to spend time with, & look out for (although my parents will be quick to deny & say it's the other way round) my parents, as the eldest & as the one who's still living within physical reach of them.. why? because i finally realized i was born into this family to steward them, as 1 of the many reasons it has to be these parents. & that this stewardship is a test, for greater (but less pain-in-the-butt) responsibilities in the future to later steward. that it is my christian duty to, even though i don't even have a job or my own family yet (or other life-goal things) to steward. & not only that; my role (in context of w/ my parents) in life is not to reflect & negatively react* to their poor parenting skills. *sometimes w/ great mental paralysis outta stress, like what happened in oct after a stressful longer-than-expected outing to areas around neighbouring tmn daya – lost my appetite, skipped meals & slept much, started spotting & even lactating (thankfully both were mild symptoms...no, this is not the norm for me), which fcked up the timing i next bled the next mth (coz it wasn't s'posed to be around my birthday – i still made it work, though, & celebrated more, several days later). it is to show them what god's grace is like, out of the outpouring of grace he himself has given me. which means i need to get my supply (of whatever i lack & expect to get) from abba god, jesus, & the assuring inward-hugging holy spirit; not my parents or anybody else. 2. i saw a set of verses yesterday while bible-flipping, & it started to make so much sense to me re:not yet implementing any biz ideas of mine. (been working on my latest idea's collateral, but it's still not done yet since last mth so i've taken a break all wk. it's kinda like the upfront startup costs of a business...except my costs are time, apart from living-off-my-settlement $.) dammit, googling showed too many bible verses & versions in time for now. it was abt not working on the 7th yr, but that the 6th yr's crops would still provide food up till yr 8 when that yr's crops get harvested. k done, 'made it' (re:posting) for this yr!
hari raya helliday the sound of missiles, rifle gunshots and bombs (complete with flashes of light for each detonation) don't just exist in afghanistan, they exist here too, almost every fucking day, whether early or late night, morning or afternoon, in malaysia (assuming the neighborhood is malay-majority and right next to a 'kampung'/ malay village). tbeh, the topic should apply to every holiday and non-holiday thinkable, even on this easter sunday for god's sake, when i was trying so hard to listen to the message on my laptop. on top of that, my ex-landlord sent me an incomplete refund during service, and he only responded that time (with an excuse), only to my mother, while "my" useless rental agent said he no longer wanted to talk to me. (this is the same agent that kept multiple-messaging me on whatsapp claiming "you are in breach of contract!" when i said i needed a few hours, since it was morning and not even afternoon yet, to go through my previous rental's records and compare whether they matched up. the rest is too long a topic for me to wanna elaborate on, now.) and this resurrection's new crea service was...so traumatisingly painful for me to watch, because it was about a man who had a heart attack in the hospital and had been resurrected to life with cpr. i was trying to do exactly that for beagle, except i still have flashbacks of that night, and need to keep asking god for the wisdom to see past them (and to see why in beagle's case, his tumour-ridden body was not worth returning to). and in fact, it was god who pointed out to me last week, that these relivings of that night (and of every traumatic thing that keeps occurring in my life) are called (the) flashbacks that are symptomatic of ptsd. so back to the malay taliban kids (teenagers leading the pack, with little ones in tow) here. and i'm not even counting the teenage or even tweenage, helmet-free & engine-modified 'mat motor's and their common usage of ['pig' and 'cunt' in malay as'] swearwords which they regularly spit out almost every other day here, that is really unfair for my echoey room to pick up on and amplify. for the record, this category is almost always malay and male. just like the road ragers who used to frequently find fault with me, even the day before my accident and my accident itself: malay, male, young and self-entitled motherfuckers. i don't even know why i'm still stuck in this country. right, i need not to start going down a racist rant. because not every young malay male is like that. but the uncultured (especially from the 'kampung' or low-cost housing dwellings) ones are all like that. the little ones all try to act 'bodek' in the playground across me and use swearwords to try to impress their teenage older brothers. and the worst part is this has been my life for several decades and counting, with seemingly no end in sight. (i mean, i've attempted to escape this place so many times yet, since my hit-and-run, i am still failing to break free.) i attach herewith an example from last night, as one of my most stressful recordings of jp app's audio prayer. (note the midnight timing, yet the noise still ongoing. and that was only just a mild, lesser-in-frequency-and-therefore-quieter sampling of the aural madness that took place earlier, and every consecutive night-and-sometimes-day since the stroke of raya this year.) --- i usually ignore any "hellos" at this familial house's front gates post-accident because in the past, it has also been an insistent salesman, or even that pesky (literal) dwarf my father befriended for decades, who rides around in a motorcycle that has one of those carts to collect (& sell off) old newspapers for a living. these latter 2 are a lot harder to shake off (and sound noisier due to my oversensitive post-accident hearing), what with my brain's emotion & decision-making centres being a lot more fragile after my accident's tbi (traumatic brain injury). i apologised for my late pickup, explained why i was fearful, and thanked him (he nodded understandingly) before both of us left front gates. (he got back into the delivery van his colleague driver was steering, and left for his next package drop-off.) now that's an example of a polite, smiling, young-adult malay. so, the audio recording of midnight: i found myself wondering bitterly why this 'secret place' jesus was failing to protect me from all this loud-noise torture, for so many consecutive nights and counting (and on easter this year, of all nights). and thankfully, at 2.03am, 2 police motorcycles actually rode past my road and around this block, before leaving 7mins later. i think they made their rounds because the bombings in the distance took turns to eventually stop, too. the previous night, it was a police car at 1am. and none on official holidays. so i assume they can only be called over past midnight. problem is, they arrive late. for example, on the saturday before resurrection sunday (or technically 5am sunday), a set of motherfucking bombs went off in the playground across from me. (i'd just finished watching yet another unsettling 'black mirror' episode, so the bombings unsettled me even more. ruined my entire night's disposition and the day after.) worst part was, i saw kids (for fireworks, i've noticed it's both genders – 'enby's apparently officially don't exist here, nor do gay or trans* people; according to certain, various-races politicians here) continuing to light up the playground with more 'bombs' for 15minutes more before dispersing. this time i was too scared to scold them. because the last time i'd scolded the teenage 'mat motor' during lockdown, he rode round&round my house day&night for 3 months non-stop (in his noisy, engine-modified bike) and cost me so little sleep, that i finally dialed 994 (emergency) here, explained why my mental condition made this an emergency, and got patched up to a policeman on patrol, who amazingly gave a shit and rode over to scold the kid. it just so happened that the kid and his friend stopped at the road opposite this house's kitchen sink, to mutter even worse swearwords about a certain 'perempuan' (female) for an hour. hence the policeman actually told them off because they were stationery. they initially tried to argue with the cop, but he thankfully argued them off, before calling me to update. (i told him i was listening and watching the whole time, and thanked him for caring.) the kid never harassed me any more after that. and it at least showed that not every malay policeman is like the fucker who has been also one of the many cogs in the machine that've tried to cover up my case so it almost never made it to court, and even then, almost never got settled. (i never wanted to settle. it was my mother that kept insisting to my siding-with-her also-responsible-for-forgetting-my-case lawyer, who pleaded that he accept an settlement. which forced my hand, because my father was all of a sudden acting all faint even though he's beat me up and continues-to-threaten-me my whole life, up till i kept using my age of 21 to scare him. my mother kept gaslighting me about the beatings, but thankfully my thorough self-records in writings like these, and other forms of media, verified i had indeed remembered accurately, once my memory came back [after having lost it from the accident]...in very jarring and traumatic form, no thanks to ptsd.) that ex-policeman conveniently retired and therefore walks free. ditto the young malay male who hit-and-ran into me, and never even made a police report (which would've therefore made him eligible for the criminal instead of civil justice system) until that fucker policeman bribed him into suddenly making a report (in february 2019) after i'd finally learned i was supposed to make one, and did so, in january 2019. the fucker even changed the date of the kid's report to january 2019 and kept all my case files in his house, so that no police station could even find any record of my hit-and-run's existence. thank god my lawyer by then was now finally helping me out. his colleague conveniently dropped my case and resigned for another firm, and my mother kept scolding, shaming and fear-mongering me into never personally driving over to the firm to demand to know the status of my case, right until i couldn't sleep that whole countdown night and drove over on new year's day 2019 to officially kickstart my case...that was was supposed to have started when my parents and i first stopped by in may 2015. it's not that everything was smooth-sailing after that, either. the firm lacked any errand boy, so i had to do part of the legwork of chasing the various medical departments of the hospital i still have to get my synthetic hormones from, and some of them were really horrible in making me wait hours&hours despite not having any Q number, and then finally claiming they'd lost my hit&run files from dec 2014 (even though legally they're not supposed to discard patient records for a decade). and being rude and so on, and so forth. it was the same type of rudeness with 1 of asshole panel surgeons the firm's lawyer'd sent me to. and other horrible stories. so thank god this nightmare was finally over (settled in 9 years last year), despite me preferring to've rather won the case and walked away with less $ but more integrity/ justice of some sort. but then again it's not like god doesn't care, and doesn't...handle this justice thing in his divine way. it's just that god is also merciful. which is why he hasn't done anything to the various pyromaniacs that keep tormenting my ears around this familial house. one last thing about that fucker. he kept refusing to see me (postponing the date, or making me arrive and wait several fucking hours long, and then feigning that he couldn't even remember my case or who i was) to do his fucking job as the investigating officer. and when he finally had to (coz my lawyer's firm was pushing for the officer's official conclusion-of-investigation), after i had to wait so many hours that my insipidus condition made me end up having to use the no-tissue-nor-soap public police toilet and continue waiting, he kept trying but failing to make me switch to his lawyer. after that, he asked me to call in my father, and then made up some cock&bull story about helping to wipe blood off my face until the ambulance arrived. my mother refused to enter. that stupid bitch, who's been blaming me for being hit-and-run (despite standing safely on the road shoulder behind a driver's seat car door) all this while, even up till this year of nearly-a-decade later, has some morbid fear of police and the courts. yet has no problems controlling me by fear ever since i was young...until my brain literally lost the ability to fear for a few freeing months. god, i wish i had that kinda fearlessness again...remembering it helps me, but only for a few fleeting moments. later on over a mid-afternoon first-meal-of-the-day lunch (in which my gastric-prone-at-the-time stomach was bloating), my mother said sth like: "bullshit. the police reached over an hour late, long after the ambulance had sent you off. they even scolded dad for obstructing traffic with our car, because even the tow truck [operators that magically arrive on the scene like vultures in this country, then charge exorbitant fees later, after taking advantage of unprepared frazzled minds] had already come and taken away your car from the scene." this lie convinced my father, which then convinced me. (coz how was i to know? i wasn't even conscious, nor could i even remember being in a hit&run in the first place – i only remember the moments up till right when i called my father over, because the fucking angry young malay male from the night before had key-scraped my car's body and caused my car tyre to be punctured again, despite a petrol station attendant erroneously declaring otherwise, soon after i found my car like that. and all for a car park space that i first got to, in order to catch 'the hunger games'. wish i'd driven away instead of running into the building when the vandal was so angry he said in malay that if i wasn't female, he'd beat me up; and sounded like he was still considering, the longer i stood outside my car.) 6.23pm. and the first of distant bomb blasts has begun. and again now. here we go again. to wrap up. what that fucker did was to convince my father and then me, to switch lawyers, claiming his lawyer'd finish the case a lot sooner than mine. (true, but with no justice and even less settlement compensation, if there was ever any, and with a cut of the commission going right into his pocket. he was even asking for "something" from my lawyer to testify taking the stand for. [like what 'something': a banana? monopoly money? as if he wasn't asking for a bribe.]) it was only my mother's refusal, because that fucker'd made us wait from morning until late afternoon (without any lunch nor breakfast), and her insisting we eat and think about it until the next day, that i later also came to my senses and agreed with my mother that we shouldn't switch lawyers, no matter how angry-sounding the one-assigned-to-talk-to-me was. ("i told you so!" was her response, as if i was the one who'd —fuck the fucking bombs from that bomber kid now— listened to that fucker convincing me to switch lawyers). and that 'next day' happened to be sunday, which is why the firm wasn't even callable (only the errand boys were, and we had to wait for them to show up at the station, while they willingly showed up at our gates on sunday because my parents refused to answer their calls). that fucker initially last wanted me to come in the middle of the night on a weekday (as if i would dare do that; which is why i brought my parents along in case i got beaten up or went missing). and prior to that, i was asked to come during chinese new year at night. i don't celebrate it ever since my accident (it's too traumatic with my mother making unfair comparisons and listening to all the bitches belittling me and bossing me around), but my parents still do. so they refused, and there is no fucking way i was heading to the police station to be interviewed alone. (what if i never walked out alive? who'd be there to witness it? even that pastor raymond koh's body has never been found, even though a kindly neighbor's cctv helped unearth what the cops here were trying so hard to cover up: that their own members were the ones who likely-killed him and many others.) ok done with my ranting. i never wished to remain in this country. and i am still praying for a way out of this hell. re:re:beagle died 4.40pm. trust a fucking noisy motorbike (most likely another underage malay [or that 1 indian] male child) to ride past and have the noise all echo about in this high-ceilinged prison i call my room, despite the rain still continuing. (it was raining cats and dogs with lightning and thunder an hour ago, whereas now it's the lighter side of moderate.) sigh, back to how i wanted to start. as in this title's post, i've decided to continue filling in the blanks. because i didn't know i'd be haunted for not continuing. i just...don't know how to write something any more, without it getting all traumatising yet again. but there is no closure for me not to continue, so i might as well (before time catches up and erodes more of my recollection). that said, after i'd lost my memory immediately after my hit-and-run and when it started flooding in, no thanks to my ptsd (and likely because desmopressin is a nootropic, yet i...divinely needed it to not keep drinking like a camel and emptying out all those liquids every few minutes, to the point i hardly have time to do anything else [which is still the case when my pill efficacy starts to run out]), it was insane how vivid and jarring old and distant memories were to me. stuff that i thought i'd long forgotten exact details about, started to resurface. yet...i keep wondering if it was god taking me back in time to those moments. because for over a year, it was like i was harry potter staring into the pensieve, where all those memories i was recalling were always me viewing them from a silent, invisible 3rd-party perspective. it got to the point where i was starting to feel left out of my own memories, because...i was basically staring at someone else living out their life, and rifling through the diary entries, photos and videos of another, or so it seemed. thank god for eventually correctly realigning my memories to a first-person view. that was the closest to depersonalisation i've ever experienced, and there's no doubt the greater harm it would've caused me had that continued. back to title's topic. the final time i'd checked up on, and gone over to beagle while he was still alive (around that 12.30am-ish timing on the 5-mins-fast wall clock, was roughly when i'd last left him), i felt his nose. and found it unusually dry; ditto his tongue and side of his mouth. his left nostril (not the usual right one) even had crusted-up blood stuck to it, which signified that blood hadn't been running for some time. i tried to pluck it out but when beagle kept moving his nose away, i knew it was too physically painful for him. so i went to the sink, got some t.p. and dabbed water with it, then gently dabbed away that crusted-up blood. there was hardly any new blood dripping out of his nostrils so (again) i thought whatever injection he was given, must be working in helping him improve. (i didn't know he was running out of life and blood to to bleed out.) i then brought over his water bowl, carefully lifted his head above the bowl (he couldn't even lift his head, just like hours earlier, i'd observed), but he didn't open his mouth). i then left bowl nearer to him (by the screen door & grille, instead of further away almost behind him by the cardboard 'wall' perpendicular to the grille), despite my parents only just scolding me earlier in the month for not doing so (because my father'd step into the water when opening the grille). for the past few months, beagle's had to use his front paws to heave his body toward the water bowl, because his back legs tend to go temporarily lame after being not-sitting-up for some time. i'd also noticed how...much more water he drank, during the almost-1-month i'd returned, until the point of his death. and how much hotter he became when nights were hot. i just thought it was due to the hot weather and his thick fur coat, akin to my insipidus condition. the last time i'd brought him into my air-conditioned room to cool off was at the start of last month. i then decided to t.p.-dab with water from his water bowl, and then dab his nose with it. i also dipped my fingers into the water bowl, and then wet his tongue, and stuck my fingers into the sides of his unusually dry mouth, to get his jaw to open a bit more. strangely, he only opened his jaw more as a result, but didn't lick the areas i'd wet or made-damp, like he usually would have. i know this signified physical weakness, but based on that incorrect info about (how strange, that several hours later it still lasted) the anaesthetic being the source of that, i was too fucking ignorant to trust my gut and ignore the lies. at that point, beagle's nose started acting up and he was struggling to breathe (as if trying to breathe out whatever blood that was blocking his breathing). so i prayed over him, and ran my right index finger down his nose, which seemed to stop the struggling, for the first time during that nosebleeding long-drawn-out nightmare, i prayed for "healthy nose cells" because those words came to mind. unfortunately, i could not remember one of the 2 go-to prayer clips that i've chopped up (as in, selectively edited and kept) and played over beagle, that he has always responded to the most, and indicated as if he's understood the words. (i believe god enabled him to. and likely did impart some healing to him —oh god, the fucking 'mat motor' child hellion returned; thank god he's soon putt-putted away— albeit not complete healing, at least not in this life. as in, i believe the prayers really did extend his life, and slow down his illness' progression. but sadly or not, he only got fully healed by going to heaven.) --- the prayer clip in question was when jp prayed psalm 103:2-5 over his congregation. all i could remember (at the time i was last with beagle) was the last part of jp adding in his bit before he ended his prayers. so i said (like i've always reappropriated, when playing out that clip to beagle), "beagle is young again, strong again, healthy again, because of jesus!". it visibly relaxed the dog in the dark. i then said sth like, "if beagle needs any help, just call 'jesus, jesus'!" and flapped his ears as i said that. he again looked visibly calmed to hear that – he has always...looked like he's understood, whenever i've mentioned jesus by name. i then stupidly returned to my room (coz it was a hot night yet beagle didn't want the cold, as i said, plus my menstruating made my body temperature even hotter than normal) and continued googling beagle's meds and and blood test results, instead of breaking for "dinner" like i ought to've done, since it was past midnight already. i only ate close to 6am that day for "dinner" that night, since (after the family cleared off) i'd spent 2 hours until nearly 4pm by beagle's body, half-heartedly trying cpr without the mouth-to-mouth (coz his jaw was closed a lot firmer, and i didn't wanna break his jaw by opening it up, his lolled-out tongue was in the way, plus there was already some halitosis). at least i got to try it this time on this dog...although after learning the next day what i'd learned, i was a lot more understanding of why it'd be cruel to temporarily resurrect him (only for his suffering to be prolonged until he'd die again, shortly after). fast forward to me finally checking again on beagle at 2am. i found the water bowl in between his paws (so he must've used the last of his strength to paw himself over), with his head dangling oddly to the right of the bowl. and...that eerie silence in the dark. i immediately knew he was dead, verified (after putting away the bowl) and started shouting through the door of my parents, before going over to my room to grab my phone (and then return to record how he was last found). after roughly only a minute of filming, i returned to my room to scream and wail for a while. (i soon stopped because...it was pointless. there was still a sense of disbelief at the time, yet peace also.) my parents and brother'd exited the room to congregate where beagle was (with my parents checking up on him). when my brother thought he was still alive but unconscious, my mother noticed his lolling-out tongue. i mean, his tongue has always had to stick out because of his busted-up gums, but he's always slid it back in to lick water, breathe, etc.. and there was at least some tension to it when he was still alive (even at 12.30am when he hardly had any strength left to move)...not limp and lifeless, like that-point-onwards. i immediately pointed out the absence of breathing, and lightly moved my fingers in front of his nose (i didn't block his nostrils, but my mother soon waved away my fingers). there was no breath coming out of them. his eyelids could not be closed (even by the time i'd left his corpse around almost-4am), because they'd pop back open by reflex. but there was nothing scary about them; just...me feeling sad. at least his body was still soft, cuddly (alas, too late for him to feel me hugging him) and warm by the time i'd left his corpse. because it wasn't the case when i'd checked back at 5am (it was cold and rigor mortis had set in). and that video (of finding him dead) was helpful in looking back, to...remind myself that his face wasn't a look of pain or terror or fear or agony. it just looked like...he was sick and had a stuck nose. my father wiped up a bit of water by his chest, but at least none of my parents or i remember his mouth or chin being particularly wet. this was helpful too because...for a while, i did wonder if he was waterboarded and choked to death. it looked like he'd drunk his last gulp of water (but managed to somehow at least lift his chin out of the bowl) before likely choking to death, which was likely the choking-and-gurgling i remember hearing. (i'd thought it was of the same kind from the previous night. so, like i said, i stupidly ignored it.) fast forward to the next afternoon. my mother asked if i wanted to be informed when beagle's body was getting buried but i declined, coz (i) i hadn't slept yet and the sunlight was too bright for my eyes, and (ii) it's only his body and thankfully not his spirit that's still in there, so what would be the point. since i still couldn't sleep, a few hours later i did ask (to video) where they'd buried him. god'd somehow caused one of the large-leafed potted plants (on one of my parents' many cars*, except this was one of the degraded-to-point-of-scrap-metal ones) to have one leaf in particular, wave conspiciously, apart from the other not-as-wavy leaves, when i was approaching beagle's body's grave (as if it was beagle's version of tail-wagging). i never saw the leaf wave that way again. *the fucking hypocrisy: so many cars, yet i've never been allowed to drive them. and even attempting to drive the car in my name, that i'd even finally bought back last year after my court case settlement, has been met with so much opposition. and scolding and nasty words, to the point i am too anxiety-ridden to even drive out (ever since moving back here), still. i squatted down and could immediately smell him. it was only the next day when i did that again, and could still smell him, that i remembered something i don't think he was aware of, but merely following god's leading toward: the night before he died, in order to get him to empty his bladder* outside, as well as to compensate for his nosebleeding unwell-ness, i opened screen door and grille and helped him out. *my parents have been cruelly expecting him to hold it in, yet keep him indoors for up to 12hrs ago, and scold him if he pisses indoors. my father's even roughly shoved his falling-out c-shaped curled-up body out once, when beagle couldn't move back legs in time to walk out; horrible fucker. (what i meant by helping him out: i'd grabbed one of the kitchen carpet-doormats for him to walk over the rolling door&grille 'tracks' so he wouldn't slip. this and previous night were the only times it occurred to me to do so; since i'd moved back in, i'd noticed my parents had once again confiscated the carpet-doormat he used to sleep on.) he went out sniffing around as usual. but what was unusual was how his nose led him to the front 'garden' area of the house where his body's now buried. i thought he was eating grass again (like...all my dogs have sometimes done), so i waited for him to sniff his way back to the front gates, where i held out his compensation (the final of-that-opened-pack stick of dentastix). he gratefully accepted it after i'd quickly gone through the usual paw-shaking and pointing-out-of-features (re: his unique markings) with him, before passing him his prize. at one point, it sounded like he was choking, but when i turned around (i was by the grille), i saw him walking between the 2 cars by the front of the gates. so i didn't worry too much. by the time he'd stepped back onto the carpet-doormat i'd rolled out for him, there were surface-level drops of blood (from his nose) as he did so, that i was able to later wash off at the kitchen sink. so...him walking over to what-would-be his body's grave site, was why i could still smell him after that. shortly after visiting beagle's body's grave site, i went to sleep. (how i wish i awoke to beagle and heaven, instead of this still-shitty life's unchanging-for-ages circumstances. my life would be drastically different if my mother would just give me my damn space.) shortly after i awoke and had my dinnertime "lunch", my mother'd returned from her mother's. she said before she'd gone there, she'd stopped by the vet's clinic to return the pills beagle never lived to ingest (and to claw back some $, which she did). it was truly...providential that the vet beagle saw was out for lunch, because she could then speak to the vet clinic's namesake. she showed him beagle's blood test results where he was able to reveal they were indicative of internal bleeding. (this helped relieve half of my guilt, because...i really thought i'd killed the dog, since i was the one who triggered his nosebleed.) he said at that point, a blood transfusions would be needed, of which that clinic has no stock. and even then, there was no guarantee a transfusion would help in beagle's cells repairing and not bleeding again. he mentioned other what-to-do-next options that...would only prolong, not cure the dog's life, at that point. he also at least apologised thrice, on behalf of previous day's younger (read: inexperienced), newer vet, for not at least warning my father and brother that the dog was at death's door. that said, it is also my father's fault for not saying more. my mother only told me (around that time) that her husband told her the vet had said beagle was haemorrhaging. (motherfucker: does that word not even mean a thing? if i'd heard that i would've sat by beagle's side until the end, no matter how hot the weather or how much i was not-harmfully bleeding.) and 2 nights later when my father finally revealed his account of the vet's, he said the vet actually said beagle's blood platelet count was low (which was what was in the test results i was googling; it also said his white blood cell counts were high and that he was anaemic i.e. low on red blood cells). my father also said the vet had suggested putting him on an I.V. drip (which was what i'd originally bemoaned, after seeing beagle drink the littlest i've seen in...ever – namesake's vet told my mother that putting beagle on the drip would've only prolonged his life for a few hours, but not have changed beagle's life-threatening circumstances). but that my father'd declined coz he thought the vet was trying to squeeze more $ out of him. (what is wrong with these...idiots. even for all i've suffered after my accident, it seems that $ matters more to them than a human or canine life. honestly, there are many times i still wish i had died, for every brush i've come close to death with. the pain of living through tragedy after tragedy is...so much worse to deal with because i'm still alive.) my father also said the tranquiliser injection at the start (before the vet dared to touch beagle and check his mouth and front-of-nose – sad that this had to be the protocol, because beagle has always been so amiable towards every human) had stopped beagle's nosebleeding, but that beagle still had strength in him, coz he was still holding up his head head on his own. and that it was only the injection of (it sucks how these people don't even bother to ask) "antibiotics" (that my father allowed, just before leaving the vet's) that significantly sapped beagle's physical strength, and took away most of the remaining ounces of strength he even had left in the remaining hours of his earthly life. my father also meant it to be conciliatory, but it did quite the opposite for me: he revealed that my brother'd photographed beagle upon parking at the vet's (and waiting in the car, while my father went out to ask if beagle could be admitted a lot faster, beyond the always-long queue – yes, for a fast-track fee). when i later got my brother to send me the photos (he'd taken 2), the photos troubled me for the rest of the night-to-day. poor beagle was posing for smiles, despite blood spurting out of both nostrils and onto his tongue. his eyes were more crossed out than usual. speaking of crossed eyes. from the 'internal bleeding' diagnosis (and the blood only being emitted through his nose and never his mouth), i can pretty much guess it must've been another one of beagle's tumours, except this time it was in the nose. googling tells me nasal tumours in dogs are rare and tend to happen to city-dwelling dogs. i can't help but wonder if beagle's eyes were crossed (they're a lot more obvious when he's staring-intensely-and-smiling directly at me or any of my family members) because of that tumour. and the signs were...in hindsight, telltale (yet no vet picked up on it, likely coz he knows how to be quiet when he's around people he doesn't know): noisy breathing and frequent sneezing, throat-clearing, and coughing. it also made me wonder if beagle's previous owners, or relatives he got handed over to, had actually (i) already taken him for a neck-upwards scan for his busted-up gums, (ii) seen that the scan showed a nasal tumour, and (iii) decided to dump him on the streets because they were likely asked to euthanise him (as is common for this country's vets) or because they didn't wanna pay for his chemo sessions (i.e. the only non-cure but life-prolonging treatment for nasal tumours in dogs, according to googling). i'm theorising this handed-over part because...i noticed something highly unusual too, around 7.20am on...(i think it was) the day of the night i made him nosebleed. (it was either that day or the previous day.) i hadn't slept yet and was about to head into my room to email, when i heard him "ooh, ooh ooh!"-ing loudly. at first i thought he was injured, but when i went over to by-the-grille where my parents have kept him most-of-the-time at (for the past few months), he was evidently dreaming. i actually saw his tail wag for a bit...which i've never noticed him do before*, when dreaming, after that only, came the usual ear-lifting and nose-twitching, which i'd recorded before. too bad there was no repeat so i couldn't film it. *i've also never heard beagle call out in that way when dreaming. for the times he's talked in his sleep, he's either gone "woof, woof" or "howwwww" (the latter of which is what he usually sounds like when awake and daring enough to talk in this house, what with all the beating and threat-of-beating). a few days after beagle died, it made me wonder...was beagle dreaming of a loved one (possibly his owner) that has died, the way people who are going to die tend to dream of already-dead loved ones? i was only reminded of this because, when i was telling my mother a few hours after beagle's dreaming (when beagle was still alive and not-nosebleeding), she said he must've dreamt he was "coming home". i was half-joking that it sounded like he was going to heaven. and...how (sadly, in a temporary way for me) true that turned out to be. as for the 2 verses that assured me beagle's with jesus, i forgot to preface that with the verse that...i'd immediately flipped to in my bible, in the minutes after discovering beagle's lifeless body. it was totally out of context for its passage, but i am one who increasingly believes god uses his written word in even different interpretations, as long as (i) they're in line with god's grace, and (ii) they confirm the HS' prompting within me. the first words i saw (without even being aware of the story) were, "when the time was up, they looked healthier and stronger..." from daniel 1:15. and then i saw how different the context was. but...although it made sense with me telling beagle (the last time i saw him when he was still alive) he was healthy and strong because of jesus, i couldn't...make any sense of beagle's time already being up. i thought he still had many years ahead of him. so mercifully (and thanks to answered prayer from myself and the only other two who know of beagle's passing), my mother seeing the right vet, helped to reveal that...that beagle's time was indeed up, and he wasn't as more-or-less healthy and my whole family thought he'd been. i mean there were more signs towards the end, but my parents put it down to aging. for example, my father was saying a month ago that...beagle seems to've aged drastically in these past few months when it came to walking, because my father had to carry the dog back in his arms as-the-norm coz beagle'd be too tired to walk back. and...i think it was only a week prior (or 2 at the most) that, no matter how much i blew into his nostrils (like i usually do when his throat's irritated and he needs to clear it), i still failed to successfully clear his throat and prevent him from coughing a great deal. and the drinking-more-water thing. (i noticed this of snowy on the pre-dawn before he died later in the afternoon: of how snowy drank a loooot more water than usual when i'd helped him to the bucket my parents've always allocated for the dogs outside.) and so on. as for the other jp prayer clip i'd chopped up? it had to do with praying for fatigue, heart conditions, removal of fear of death and problems with memory. i'd even sing the song along with him ('teach me lord, to wait'), and reappropriate it, such as "rise up on wings like beagle". (how sadly-or-not true that turned out to be. at now, instead of beagle having to wait, i am the one that has to. to see him, and all my other previous mostly-dogs-but-also-other-animals, again.) beagle already knew what 'run', 'wait' and 'walk' were, because they were in my everday interactions with him. i always found it amazing that beagle could stare intently at that almost-9-minutes clip and not get bored. but i was the impatient one. so i'd last only played that song portion, as well as the psalm 103:2-5 clip, over beagle when he was finally sleeping after the first night he'd nosebled. he was noisily (with his breathing) in agreement when i played the two and gently rubbed on his shoulder. (he's also the only dog i know, who's never minded me disrupting his sleep. my parents would always scold me for doing so. but i always pointed out that he's never minded, when i came over to cuddle him while he was already sleeping, for example.) i didn't do so for the following nights because i...thought his frequent nosebleeding was disruptive enough. as for the 2 verses that assured me beagle's definitely in heaven with jesus, they were: my bible's illustration, and that particular translation of psalm 23:4's "even though i walk through the deepest darkness..." (with a figure standing over and holding the hand of another who was in bed, as if dying), and 2 timothy 4:18's "and the Lord will rescue me from all evil and take me safely into his heavenly kingdom." as for my church's theme this year, it was something the worship leader said, to remind the congregants (and me, and everyone else who was watching online). and when she said it, the prompting in me immediately knew it was referring to beagle too (despite jp not believing animals go to heaven). and how i need to remember it's the same for me too, although not all of me's there yet. she reminded us we were living in the upper room (this year's theme). and...that's when the thought formulated in my mind: beagle's living in the upper room (i.e. with jesus now). as for the whole "this is not a shrine!" retort, it's because 6 days later when i went to visit beagle's body's grave (i wanted to do so half an hour earlier but waited till my father took a break and returned to living room to watch tv), i saw a dustbin and pail blocking the entrance, the shade-providing plant in front of beagle's body's grave now cut up, and 2 potted plants in front of the horizontal wreath of bougainvilleas my family'd laid out, as well as a cross for beagle. in fact, the day after beagle's body's burial, my brother'd pointed out a photo frame he'd placed in front of beagle's grave. it's now in my room because my father got angry that day, said a buncha insensitive and rude words*, and stated sth like, "what, so i can't do anything with my garden there after this?!?" in anger. *like "who the hell are you, man!". who the hell am i? is this how you respond the daughter you've beat up for over half their life, and whom you've still been scaring and threatening to beat up, every time your eyes bulge, nostrils flare, and you start almost chest-bumping in that...retarded asking-for-a-fight stance? like i said, i do not want to be around people whom i...don't even associate with, as being my real "family" (other than through genetics). as for why my mother mimicked the 'shrine' statement, it's because she'd picked up a large photo frame my brother'd left for beagle, which was at the corner of where beagle was mostly confined to for the last few months of his earthly life. this was 6am on a turning-into-thursday pre-dawn (of 29th feb), when i was finally considering bathing, after over 2 weeks of not doing so. (after beagle died, i couldn't for a week, because when i'd carried him after death, his scent was still on my right arm.) and i haven't bathed regularly, or rather once a week (or longer) has become my new 'regular', not since after lockdown when that bitch known as my mother returned, and has even-until-last-month scolded and scolded me, to the point that i dare not even bathe any more. i used to bathe at the places i'd escaped to, or nearby my workplace, during the year of my accident when i'd finally legally owned my own car. yet that bitch was scolding me even up until last month, mockingly claiming i'd also bathed once a week during that year. this is the kind of living hell i have to put up with, and more. remind me again, jesus, why i am still alive? back to topic. she'd awoken at the time to use the toilet. whereas i was still snacking (in vain, after hunting around for various bits of snack-like food to eat for at least half an hour, after a very not-filling-at-all meal i was given). (i used to drive out on my own to get myself food after my court case was settled. but that bitch kept interfering and buying me meals, so i had to stop getting my own. and nowadays she's scolding me for not getting my own meals, and whenever i've finally almost worked up the courage to go out, has started dissuading me and buying me the meals she when-in-a-bad-mood wants me to buy instead. fucking hell! when will this nightmare end, and my freedom begin! i just want to be free from my mother. and even that is something that still has not happened, nearly 4 decades later. every day i declare and pray i will not suffer the fate of my spinster aunt. i have a lot more faith after my accident that it will not happen, whereas just-before my accident, i was starting to resign myself to it.) she then kept scowling and growling while walking around trying to find where else to place the photo frame, and repeating that 'shrine' comment, while declining whatever places (in the communal living space) i suggested she could place the photo frame at. i mean, i'm not the one who bought that photo frame (and all other photo frames eric'd helped to put up, mostly of beagle, before he flew back overseas – one photo has helped me cope; the rest have not). yet, i was getting blamed for it (yet again, as has always been the default mode in this family whenever anything goes wrong), at such a late hour, right when i was seriously considering getting myself to finally bathe. needless to say, i lost whatever remaining willpower to bathe at the time. i did bathe the next night though, by the grace of god. and i will bathe a lot more often, and be free, hopefully this year too, by the grace of god. well...that's what i always pray for every year. and i will not stop praying until i die. (and then, i'll finally be free of that bitch. i don't wish anything bad to happen to my family; i just want to be free to live my own life, the way i want to. seems like that is too much to ask for, from a helicopter parent. nonetheless, i will not stop praying for freedom until i die.) |
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