She chose me before I knew how to choose myself. There is something undoing about being loved by a creature who has no reason to lie.
I didn’t go looking for a dog. I simply wanted something to hold, something that would stay still long enough for me to catch my breath. Daisy found me, arriving at the exact point in my life where there was nothing left, and no reason to stay.
Daisy asked me to stay.
There is a particular kind of love that asks nothing of you. Not your best self, not your most presentable version, not the one who has it together. Daisy loved the version of me that sat on the kitchen floor at 2am eating cereal from the box. She loved the version that cried in the car. She loved the one who hadn’t showered in three days and had stopped pretending she was going to.
“She loved the version of me that sat on the kitchen floor at 2am eating cereal from the box.”
I’ve spent most of my life trying to earn love — performing for it, shrinking for it, contorting myself into whatever shape seemed most likely to be accepted. And then this small creature turned up and simply chose me. No audition. No conditions. None of the fine print I’d always assumed was in there somewhere, waiting.
What do you do with a love like that? I didn’t trust it, at first. I kept waiting for the catch. I kept expecting her to work out that I wasn’t worth the trouble and quietly revise her opinion of me. She never did. She just kept showing up, all fluff, and cuddles, and certainty that I was her “One”. Morning after morning, she was there as though there were nothing about any of it to reconsider.
I’m still learning what to do with being chosen. It might take me the rest of my life. And Daisy, for her part, seems perfectly willing to spend it choosing me again every morning for as long as it takes for me to start believing her.