The Bittersweet Balance of Love By Real Loss of Childhood Dog

The Bittersweet Balance of Love

Six months ago, my childhood dog passed away. I loved her more than I knew I could love anything, then ten days after her passing, I met the love of my life. Though I understand the balance, it remains bittersweet.

Understanding Love Through Fiction and Philosophy

Before this experience, I already had a rough understanding of the bittersweet balance of love, though I had understood it through far more fictional lens’; The Force in Star Wars, and the balance explained by Ursula Le Guin in The Left Hand of Darkness, with also ties into the ancient philosophy of Daoism. Though after this personal experience of love and loss, I understand the bittersweet balance of love more thoroughly.

The Pain of Losing Sandy

When my childhood dog Sandy passed away, it felt as though a giant hole was torn in my chest. I had never experienced a pain so cleaving, a sadness so all encompassing, so gaping. The loss left me vacant in ways I was previously occupied by default. An autopilot I hadn’t remembered turning on, turned off, and now everything was different.

Finding Love After Loss

Ten days later, I met the love of my life. This is an issue I still battle with; the fact that he never got to know her and never will know her, the idea that the more I know him, the less I know her, the feeling that the closer he and I become, the further she and I become. Yet simultaneously, I understand.

When One Door Closes

I understand that life is balanced, I understand that when one door closes, another one opens. Though I cannot help but wish that life was more lenient, that life allowed overlap.

The Patterns Life Creates

My mother met my father a year after my grandmother passed away. My sister was born 6 months after my great grandmother passed away. I met the love of my life ten days after my childhood dog passed away. When the facts are in front of me it is hard to ignore the ways life sets up the dominos and is also the one to knock them down, the way life is playing chess while we are playing checkers.

Looking at Life as a Whole

The best attempt I have found in understanding and accepting the movements our lives make, is to look at our lives as a whole. I find I am at my most overwhelmed when I am only focusing on one side of the balanced scale. Though when I look at my life as a whole, when I understand the epiphanies and events like the twists of a novel, and I try to imagine the protagonist's redemption arc at the end, there is ultimately nothing I would change; nothing I would go back and rewrite. The thought of this, if anything, excites me for my future. The blankness ahead of me, the imbalances waiting to be balanced. There is something undeniably exhilarating about the uncertainty of life before us, scary and exciting as it is.

Finding Motivation in Loss

When my childhood dog passed away and I felt the world cleave into two, I wasn’t prepared for what was waiting for me on the other side of the grief, and I don’t think we ever are. The bittersweet balance of love has been one of the toughest pills for me to swallow, yet also the most motivating. There are so many doors in my life that never would have been opened without another one closing. So many opportunities I never would have been given the chance of if I didn’t lose a different one just before. So many people I never would have met if I didn’t make the room. So many loves I never would have felt if I didn’t lose one first.