Today I had to drag my sick, achy ass down to my Iowa Workforce Development office (i.e. unemployment office) to sign a paper about getting my hearing aids. Neither rain nor sleet nor creeping crud was going to keep me from completing this task. But it was hardly the in-and-out-done errand that I anticipated.

I was asked to take a seat at a table a little uncomfortably close to a job counselor and another female client. I can’t eavesdrop on someone’s conversation. I couldn’t hear any of their conversation except one part when she said (had to be loudly because hello, I heard it!) “I can’t leave without my dog!” and sobbed. For a moment, I was sucked back in time.

One reason a woman may refuse to leave an abusive relationship that you may not have thought of before is because they can’t take their pet or don’t have anyone who can take it/them. Do you think if someone is abusing you, that they would hesitate to abuse something/someone near and dear to you, such as your dog or cat? Fluffy or Fido; that’s the first thing on the mind of an abused woman and the last thing on the mind of everyone else. If I leave, what will happen to them?

As this woman cried quietly, I closed my eyes for just a moment and I was back there. Packing quickly, my heart thumping wildly in fear. Since I didn’t even have time to get boxes, I was just throwing things into black garbage bags; breathing so ragged, I was working through a stitchy cramp in my side. I threw all those bags out the back door onto the snow-dusted porch for my step-dad to pick up shortly; I would already be on my way out of town. Before I left, I thought, what will I do with the puppy? I paused a moment and thought, his family won’t let him hurt the puppy, no matter how enraged he was going to be when he found I was not home. We lived with his mom and dad and two brothers, and I felt that they would take care of him until I could send friends for him in a few days.

The wave of crisis rose and fell that weekend. I left. Police were called, tearful conversations were had, promises that had rang empty in the past waived their tattered banners for the final time. This time I had made sure that I didn’t meet him alone while I knew I still couldn’t trust my own judgement. Yet I felt free for the first time in almost five years.

The people who I was staying with had agreed to let me have my puppy with me at their house, and my best friend and his father went out to The Girl Beater’s house to get him. I waited for them to return, still reveling in the rather exhilarating feelings, almost manic, that I hadn’t had in years. As I emptied black bags and put things away, I had a small nagging doubt niggling in the back of my mind, but I batted it away, determined to enjoy my new found lightness of being. I heard the truck rumble up the driveway and I hurried out, anxious to see my pup after five days away from him.

But something was wrong.

My best friend and his dad walked up to the front porch where I had burst out of the door, cold air zinging my lungs.

As they raised their faces yet said nothing, I knew.

It was too late. He was gone.

I shook my head, hard, angry at the tears that were squeezing from my eyes. My best friend’s dad hugged me close and let me cry. “We buried him properly. We’ll take you to say goodbye.” he almost whispered, as my best friend wiped tears from both sides of the top of his nose, guy-style. “I’m so sorry, honey,” he said.

They told me later that The Girl Beater, his mother, his father, and two adult brothers had simply put the puppy in the basement and ceased to provide water and food. You see, those were the “consequences” of my leaving without making arrangements for his care and feeding. Five adults listened to a puppy cry until he couldn’t anymore.

I opened my eyes, the moment over; and was almost surprised at my surroundings, the flashback was so vivid. The woman was still crying quietly. The counselor sat across from her, cool and detached. My guy popped around the corner and said, “Hey, Dory, you ready?”

I got up and on the way back down the hallway, I shook, just a couple jerks, as if I could shake off those old recollections.

This is one of my grandma’s old towels, which were handed over to me when she moved into a nursing facility and I had just bought my first home. Maybe it’s crazy, but every time her towels come through the wash, I have to bury my face in the soft, aged fabric and inhale as deep as my lungs (and heart) can hold before I fold it and put it in the stack. Because perhaps my it’s just my nose and brain playing a lovely game of wishful thinking, but I swear these still smell a little like Gramma’s house even after years of not having been there anymore. After untold different detergents and softeners have flowed these towels over the years, they still smell like light bleach, and outside in the sun, and safety, and everything just-so, and love and happiness. I can remember drying off with this towel after running in the sprinkler when I was around school age and staying at Gramma’s house in the summer time. So, I breathe deeply of the past, remember Gramma for a moment, and put it away with the rest of the linens. I don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to bear throwing Gramma’s towels away.

Isn’t it completely bizarre the way our brains seem to pick and choose what to forget or remember? It’s like, one day, your frontal lobe decides it’s time for spring cleaning and starts pitching stuff in the basement of your mind. It picks up that bitch in kindergarten that made fun of you for not being able to whistle, twists it to give it a once-over side-to-side, and pitches it into the Goodwill box. It grabs that time you were on a mission trip in the Appalachian Mountains to build fences for poor farmers when you looked up from your work, sweaty and exhausted, and beheld the most spectacular sunset across green summer meadows that you had ever laid eyes on.

Sometimes a certain song or smell will run down the basement steps, yelling “Maaaaaahhhhhmmmm, NoooOoooooo!” and pull out of garbage the time that you were invited with the others to the cool kid’s birthday party. “Mom, how could you throw this away?! It’s my FAVORITE! It might even be worth something someday!”

I’m sure that there was a very important memory that would point to the reason I hate the name Dennis, but I have no recollection of a jerky boyfriend or rude customer service guy or scary “uncle” that would instill that high a degree of contempt in my mind. It must have been one of those that got flipped into the back of the truck with the other memories deemed useless, along with some various trivia facts, and taken to the Life Lesson Landfill.

I can’t remember ever not being able to read.

Preschool… Each day, a kid would have a parent visit school and share a favorite storybook with the class. It was MY day. The sunlight streamed into the room through the windows set so high you could only see trees with new green leaves swaying in the wind against the sky. Kids fussed and fidgeted while I sat in the small chair at the front of the group. The teacher got the class’s attention and they settled a little, as much as a group of lively four year olds can. The teacher asked if I’d like to show the class my favorite storybook. I nodded and held it up.

Softly, haltingly, I began. “Th-this is Peter-Pan… in Adventureland.”

I gulped and looked to Teacher with big eyes. She smiled comfortingly and encouraged me to tell the class a little more about it.

I nodded quickly, and opened the book the way the teacher did when she was reading to the whole class. “This is Peter-Pan in Adventureland…” and launched into reading the story to the class. I read to them about Wendy and Peter-Pan and the naughty little Tinkerbell. The teacher’s eyes got a little bigger as I read on. When I had gotten a few pages in, as I turned the next page, I stole a sideways glance and saw Teacher catch my mom’s eye and as she tapped her temple with her pointer finger she mouthed, “Memorize?”

Mom eyes shone proudly as she dramatically shook her head slowly back then forth, keeping Teacher’s gaze. Teacher’s face crumpled in with disbelief and she mouthed “Reading?!”

My heart fairly burst with happiness as Mom nodded slowly up and down.

I continued reading the story to the class. My teacher squinted her eyes and nose as she mouthed “Really?!”

Mom smiled big and warm, and continued to nod her head slowly. The teacher broke Mom’s gaze and swiveled back to the front, shaking her head slowly and blinking several times in wonder.

The happiness bubbled inside me like a shaken bottle of Coke and I involuntarily shivered. I shut my eyes and savored that moment of bliss, as the happy squished through my brain and coated it, and I had to remind myself to breathe.

Just like that, I was hooked. I was addicted to approval. It is my crack.