Facing Your Fear--a Spy's Dilemma

In case you don't know yet, my life revolves around my furbabies, the mutant poms. Five of them are a family--mom, dad and three babies (there were four but BoomBoom left us a few years ago) and then there is Lilah, my Commando baby who's about two years old. My furbabies are old--dad is fifteen, mom is going on thirteen, and the three kiddos are nine. I've been very fortunate that they had always been in great health. In spite of all the dog hair and peepee pads, they enriched my life all these years with unconditional love.

Magic turned diabetic this year and I had been steeling myself that her time to leave me is drawing closer. She's been a proper fighter, letting her mom and doctors administer tests and shots and more tests as we try to stablelize her sugar and electrolyte levels.

Magic had a horrible seizure last night while I was doing laundry. I had never seen a seizure before but you know one when you see one. She was flopping around and all I could do was helplessly called her name as I tried to put some sugar on her tongue (SOP). When she came out of it, she was obviously very frightened because she made these almost-human sounds that could have been a person wailing.

I called my dogsitter, who, blessed her heart, drove straight over so she could drive me to the emergency clinic. Magic seemed better--calmer--but I know she's not well. She's there still but she had two smaller episodes last night under the doctor's supervision, so she was stablelized.

I have no idea what's happening next. The vet's doing blood work, a full profile, and an X-Ray, and costs aside, I'm wondering, like any fur-baby moms, whether it's time to let go. I look at Marlon Brando, my oldest baby, and see him milling around looking for his wife this morning. He misses her, even though Magic tends to bully and bitch at him. He even sleeps on her spot.

As a writer, I have a bad habit of dissecting my own emotions, dividing it in skeins so I could examine every aspect of them. It's not natural, I know, to be holding on to your dog after a seizure and feeling one of your characters rising out of your soul taking over the moment. "He" was quietly reminding me that I had considered a certain scene in the story in which he would be holding his love who has had a seizure too.

I have no control of moments like these and I don't like them because they interrupt my private life. This was my time and yet part of me had to share it with...well, myself, actually. Sigh. I'm not making any sense, am I?

I guess I'm sharing this private instance of my life with you because I wanted to show how emotions are used in creating life in my writing and my work. It's easy to make sweeping generalizations when one writes--black is black; white is white. It's always more difficult if one starts mining one's own experiences because it makes everything gray. You're stealing from your private self and you feel a bit guilty, yet to be true to your character and creation, you have to do this.

So I was holding Magic and I was extremely frazzled. Yet, way, way, in the back of my mind's eye, I see my character carrying his lover against his heart and his was breaking just as mine was. A moment's guilt, but I felt double the pain--his and my own.

It isn't easy being an uber-writer sometimes.

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