Stray Dog Syndrome.
There it is again, that lonely feeling. That lonely feeling...
I don’t really know when it started.
The withdrawnness and urge to delete evidence of me from group chats.
The way I drift to the edge of a social circle like an abandoned boat with a rotted tether. The way I wander the streets in hopes to find a companion that won’t lose connection with me. Anxious and afraid to be annoying or loud, because that’s how they leave you, y’know? Being too much. That’s when you start to be the clause of complaints. ‘Why are you so much?’
You lose your voice and become the dog that never barks.
And then, when you’re finally fostered, your hopes of forever waver. You wish this will be your forever home. Companions that become friends and suddenly the house feels daunting and massive and your tummy boils with nausea.
Community has never felt so scary when you’ve been trying to keep up a digestible persona for everybody. As soon as it melts away you feel like you’re the oddball and start drifting again. Stray dog stuck in an abandoned boat.
Stray nomad of a human being, fear of being herself for weirding out the normies. Too unsocialized to try to stretch out and sniff. shaking with darting eyes. Dog who tries her darned hardest to act like a dog and not be exiled from the pack, only to end up doing it herself.
You bite your own hand that feeds you. - My canine nature
Keep yourself passive, submissive and palatable, a reason for them to keep you around.
Have you really become this tame? A mask to be accepted by your ‘society’. Modesty or Pacifism, broken in by those who own you. - My canine nature
And after all this trying, I start to realize, I was never taught. Feral girlchild mirroring a unsocialized dog, never taught how to truly be a functional social human being.
Silly thing, pretending to be normal, living as a house pet. Being an eldest daughter therapist is all this dog was taught to be. Caring at the cost of my self.
From here on out, I’m afraid alienation seems the only feasible response. The lone wolf doomed to love from afar, the boat that loves the sea as its swallowed whole and kept safe inside.
if you like dog symbolism/motif check out this post.
words from the graveyard’s caretaker, Kaine 𖹭