My Heart, The Hare

You ever worry about your heart competing with your brain for what’s truly good for you?

I’ve been searching for a dog and my track record with dogs is…not great. I’ve adopted three over our 11 year marriage and they have all been, shall we say, special. The first was lovely but would sprint out any door, gate or window and run away from you, joyously, for hours. He was all of 15 pounds and delighted in biting cows and chasing horses.

The second, Jack, is a beagle who had three homes before I took him.

Worst. Dog. Ever.

He ate our couches. He screams constantly. He smells like he’s dead inside and after 10+ years, we still can’t keep him from getting on the table.

And then there’s Sadie, who the internet knows affectionately as Derpy. Derps is half lab, half rottweiler, and a total anxiety filled dork. We like to joke that she loves me so much that she wants to live in my skin, but it seems less of a joke when you see how she looks at me. She’s 110 pounds and can open doors. At 9, she’s got about one and a half good legs left, an overblown sense of self-importance, and opinions on when she should be fed. She possesses the rottweiler gift of gab but does it in high-pitched yaps and whines.

She is also the most accident-prone, most expensive dog I’ve ever owned.

Having not learned my lesson, I’m looking for another dog. For many reasons. Honestly, in part because I know Derps won’t live forever and that’s a pretty big hole to have in my heart.

Also, the town is getting rough. Just last Thursday I had somebody reverse directions and cross two streets to walk up to me as I got out of my truck. They told me they were carrying a socket set around, and then wanted to chat about how the wood in my gutter was in my way (we’d had a tree removed.) It was just one of those encounters where you leave it knowing that wasn’t a normal, sober human interaction. It’s becoming a very frequent occurrence, too, along with the break-ins.

So I want a dog. A big, fuck off dog to come running with me and go on car rides. I’ve been searching German Shepherds and Belgian Malanois specifically.

All this to say, I caught myself explaining my excitement to my husband on the phone as “my heart moves faster than my head does, I need to calm down and let my brain get caught up.”

That’s stuck with me over the last week. As somebody prone to intense passion about projects and life decisions, I can see where that fact-the hare of my heart versus the tortoise of my brain-keeps getting me into trouble. I follow a heart which loves too quickly and never learns from old hurts. I make impulse purchases if they make me laugh. I bought a giant house that I have no hope of keeping up the maintenance on. I adopt stupid dogs because they’re the first ones I meet and I instantly love them.

When you realize your heart is racing out ahead of you and all your time is spent trying to hold together the pieces of everything its crashed through, it puts some interesting perspective on your desires.

I want a convertible stick shift two door. I can’t fit dogs in a car like that. I can hardly fit my family in a car like that. But does that make me want it any less? Hell no. It’s going to be 75 degrees tomorrow, of course I want a sporty convertible.

I want a horse. I want to get swole like Thor. I want to write and shoot movies and live on multiple continents and live on the ocean and publish books and have ten dogs and fast cars and talking parrots and learn how to sail on tall ships. I want to go fishing in the ocean and whitewater kayak and eat in fancy restaurants and hike through the rainforest. I want a horse. I want to be so busy that somebody else is booking my flights and hotels and I just have to show up places and be fabulous. I want to plant a garden and quilt and paint and luxuriate in bed for hours every morning. I want to do everything.

I’ve been told I can’t do everything.

Lately one specific, picturesque ideal in my head has been troubling me. I’ve always wanted to have a house out in the middle of nowhere, much like my grandparent’s home place. Dirt roads. Miles from everything. Low light pollution, and quiet at night.

No trains. No cars. No neighbors shouting at each other. No 2AM motorcyles and constant sirens.

Stars, solitude, and self-sufficiency.

Space.

And yet, I don’t know. It sounds perfect. I know I like being alone, and being away from the bustle would be nice. This is where my heart gets into things.

Because this is what my heart wants, what it keeps coming back to. A solitary place where people don’t just show up unannounced. A place with acreage and not another home in sight. Where I can make as much or as little noise as I want and, save for nature, that’s the only noise there is.

I also know that isolating is what I do when I get depressed. I like being alone regardless, but solitude like that is not a good thing if you’re mentally struggling. Last night it gave me pause, and I had to question—which part of me has painted this picture, my heart or my brain?

Or, on the other hand, is this what my heart and brain need together? A place of quiet, with more time, less noise, and as much calm as I can handle? Maybe this is my heart telling me it’s tired of running recklessly about and needs to find a calm center. Maybe this is my brain finally talking sense into my heart and requesting it go a little slower.

I was talking with a therapist (not mine) and she mentioned that people have a mid-life crisis for a reason. That when you’re like me, type A, an over-achiever, striving to be the master of all you do, eventually you get tired. The return is not worth the investment and it wears you down until you break, because you don’t know how to change but you also can’t continue.

I don’t want to get to that point. There has to be a balance between passionately chasing dreams and taking time to breathe, but I don’t know where it is. I don’t want to get to 45 or 50, look back and go, “It wasn’t worth all that work.”

I want to learn how to slow down before I break. To temper my heart before it grinds itself to dust and blows away.

So I look at this country fantasy and wonder. Is it a depressive lie? Is it another fanciful dream that I think I want in principle but would hate in reality? Or is it some combination of heart and brain trying to apply the brakes before we crash headfirst into the wall we know is around one of the upcoming corners?

It’s going to take much more thought but I do know one thing—nobody tells you how many dogs you can have when you live miles from everything.