clyde

this is a post with a purpose (hmmm...i wonder if that statement actually means something i should think on further) anyway...clyde is in someone's thoughts lately and i really do not verbally articulate clyde very well so i thought maybe i would write this and see if i can get out what i want to get out about clyde.

not all animals are put together very well. some have pieces that don't fit well or are missing altogether. not their fault, just how nature sometimes works (or doesn't). some animals cannot live in the real world...they cannot handle it and the world cannot handle them...again, no ones fault...just the way it sometimes works.

clyde is a question mark for me...i don't know if he can or can't function reasonably well in the real world...maybe, maybe not. we won't know until we try.

but here is what i do know about clyde. clyde is damaged...whether wholly or partly due to a seizure condition and whatever else has happened to him in his lifetime. has he been abused? maybe....has he lived with uncertainty and anxiety...probably. he strikes me as someone who has never really been loved and accepted and i do believe his life has never seemed to have any rhyme or reason for him to rely on. i think this because he tries too hard now, and usually he tries in all the wrong ways. so many of his annoying behaviors...mouthing, excitability, dependency are puppy behaviors...a broken innocent trying too hard to be loved and accepted....they are acts of desperation for him.

his fearfulness...yes clyde is afraid of somethings...like collars and leashes, being restrained, angry voices, loud noises, being picked up, men in general, strangers, anything new or unknown....all stem from his lack of feeling safe inside himself and inside his world.

the picking him up is an odd one...he wants it...he wants me to lift him onto the bed each night. that is his very favorite place to be. he feels safe in the dark of the night, he feels happy close to you. but he hates being picked up, it makes him vulnerable and so he freezes rock hard solid, shrinks down and waits for it to be done. when the lift is finished, he explodes with that pent up, bottled hard energy. and like a puppy given a reprieve, he plays with rough abandon.

and then when it is all out...he shoves himself hard against you...pushing as close as he can. he goes for necks and heads and faces and pushes as hard against them as he can..."i belong"

and finally he sinks and settles against you and relaxes and trusts enough to sleep. sometime during the night...in a few minutes or a few hours, he gets up and goes away. he is not meant for sharing soft safeness forever...he is used to being an isolated soul.

and every day is the same day for clyde...pushing and testing and taking what he can find to fill his heart as full as it will go. and it hurts him this living with not fitting in well and always trying so hard.

i don't know how clyde will do in the real world...he may not do very well...but he might. but any failure to cope out there will be from inside of clyde, from what is broken or missing. not his fault nor whoever decides to try.