I'm a Puzzle Even I Can't Figure Out

Tonight, when we got home from a drive, I opened the car door to guide Linus out and into the house, but he slipped passed me and went running. This happens on occasion, and it's never a time when I feel like I can handle it emotionally. It never happens when I can laugh it off and say, "What a jerk. He'll come back." Of course he always runs past the house in which that old lady that stuck her tongue out at me lives. She stuck her tongue out at me once when I stuck my tongue out at her yappy dogs on the porch. It's a long amazing story that I'll tell you sometime, if you're nice. He runs past her house and riles up her dogs. Which means there's a chance she'll come out and yell at me for being a delinquent or something.

When I could get close enough to him, I'd call for him to come, and he'd stop briefly, size me up, then dash away from me. When I say I can't handle it emotionally, I mean, I take it personally. I admit it. I do this. I pile on all the reasons that he has to want to run away (I've been sick and not taking him out for long enough walks, I don't have enough toys for him,  he doesn't get to play with his friends every day, he doesn't get to run free as much as he wants, he hates his food, etc.), and eventually I get a little stifled by it all. AND I cried. Like a little kid whose dog has run away and she doesn't understand why, except I felt like I knew exactly why, and it had more to do with me than the fact that HE'S A PUPPY and LIKES TO RUN.

This is what I do in almost every situation in life. There. I admit it. I am ridiculous. I take everything personally (to an extent). I'm a little better about it than I used to be, but I still have my glorious moments of ridiculosity. I can't help feeling that the world's ailing might be slightly my fault. Where, in the name of all that is holy, does this NONSENSE come from? Is it religion? Is it childhood trauma? I can't figure it out. The only thing I can do is maintain a calm dialog with myself when it starts to overtake me. Yep. I talk to myself, slowly and methodically explaining that my immediate thoughts are not necessarily rational, or based in reality. I think the thing we need to focus on here is the fact that I'm aware of this. That I figure it out.

Here's where I'm going with this. A friend of mine recently described a fight she had with her partner in which her partner was making a horribly irrational argument and she was fighting back...until she realized how irrational the argument was. Once that happened, she simply said, "you're right," and left her partner, who eventually came around and apologized, alone to suss it out.  I have never found someone that would do that with me. I have never found someone that would recognize my irrational thoughts as irrational, disarm, and leave me alone to come around. Because I ALWAYS come around. I'm actually pretty sharp. Despite evidence against the fact. It's true. I'm a smart kid.

A neighbor eventually helped me trick him into coming home, and he pouted, of course, which made me even more sad. But I sat down on the couch, ate my pizza and watched my movie, and, eventually, he jumped up and plopped down next to me, half in my lap. So, I gave him some pizza, which is probably all he really wanted. Whatdya gonna do? He's a dog, for cryin' out loud. And he freakin' needs me.