The History Of You And Me

September 2023.

I have a child.

He's got four legs, furry skin, claws for fingers, and he barks when he tells me he loves me.

He snuggles up to me when I'm sleeping in bed and licks my face to wake me up.

He knows it when I'm upset and he hates it when I cry.

He'll do just about anything to put a smile on my face, and will even bite someone who messes with me.

When I'm sad, he snuggles up against me and holds me until I fall asleep. And whenever we have people over, he always knows when to bark so they can finally go home. A man after my own heart.

I have a child. His name is Billie.

"How long does he have?"
Unlike my tears, the words barely make it past my lips.

I look at Billie as he lets out a squeal letting me know he's in complete agony and I somehow release even more tears. My beautiful baby boy.

"I'm sorry Mrs. Harrison. The best I can say is a few weeks, if not days."

I had a thought one day. About reincarnation and the possibility of it.

Like what if our souls don't turn into nothingness when we die? What if they get transferred?

What if our spirits simply reincarnate into another form of a living thing? That we don't really die but our meat bodies do. They expire.

And then I thought about Billie, and how he makes me feel. The only other person I'd had such a bond with was my sister.

It sounds mental, I know, but I'm not letting anything convince me otherwise.

I think that my sister has been with me all this time, cuddling me, barking to tell me she loves me, mending my heart, and making sure I was ok.

It is the only reason I can explain how her absence hasn't been as deeply felt in the recent years. Maybe it's because I've finally accepted it, but I choose to not settle for that answer.

I choose to believe that Billie was a part of it.
That meeting him in that dark alleyway wasn't a mistake, nor was it a coincidence.

I believe that the universe rearranged realities to allow for that short moment to happen.
For Billie and I to cross paths.

People used to coo at the story of how I found him.

'Wow Izzy, you rescued him.'
They would say.

They would also say that he was lucky to have found me. That there were dangerous people who could've found him and done the opposite of what I did. Who could've hurt him or even left him there to die.

I don't think that's true. I think we were both meant to be there at that exact time. It was a moment of chance and it was beyond any human doing.

Is it weird to think that he found me? He rescued me and not the other way around?

Like I could've died but I didn't because he was there, to save my life.