Clueless

C10

                That school year was the year my depression was coming forth more than it had in the past. It started when my parents got divorced but it was never enough to make me need medication for it. I noticed it when I was often in my room at night and I would just sit there and stare at a wall and begin crying for absolutely no reason. Throughout the years, it progressively got worse.

The next school year, Christlyn and I slowly lost touch because we had separate classes. But I did make a little group of friends later on in the year.

In my ELAR class, we had to get into groups and do a project together. Of course since I didn't like working with people, I asked if I could do the project alone, but he didn't allow me to. Rude. He put me in a group that only had 3 people, Kennedy, Christina, and Jenny. I was again, like usual, the quiet one in the group who people assumed I wasn't going to work. I did work in group projects, in fact, I always did a majority of the work because I spent my time doing the work while they talked. But this group wasn't like how I was used to. They actually did work and knew how to properly do it.

This was the year where Secora died as well. Do you remember her? My first dog that I introduced at the beginning of this heap of confusion story? When we were living in Spruce Wood, she got pregnant by what we assume a pit bull, and on July 8th, 2010, she gave birth to two puppies that were alive and the other 6 were stillborn.

Secora was acting strange after she gave birth, it could have been her depression after losing many of her puppies or she could've been ill with something because of the pregnancy. Britini and I got to each keep a puppy and she named hers Oreo and I named mine Bella.

My mom informed us that there was a chance that she wouldn't make it much further and that we should say our goodbyes while we still could. Secora was our back lying in a tuff of grass on her side and we each went out back to sit by her and talk to her individually. I remember not being able to think of anything to say because I didn't want it to be goodbye. The only thing I told her was that I loved her and I went back inside straight to my room.

The night of July 12th, my sister and I were in our room watching something on our TV while she was on the phone with her boyfriend and she went to go check on Secora and to see if the puppies were getting milk. She hadn't come back in the room for a good 4 minutes, so I paused the TV and heard sniffling coming from the living room. In that moment, I thought to myself, "She's dead".

I slowly made my way through the dark hallway to see Britini on her knees beside where Secora was laying with her puppies with her phone across the room on the floor still on the phone with her boyfriend. Before I could get close to her, she told me in a broken voice to go and get mom. That's when it was confirmed that Secora had passed.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't wake up my mom or stepdad. I stood at the doorway whispering and gave up and told Britini that they weren't waking up. I had a fear of waking people up at that age, so not being able to in that moment, made me feel cowardly.

We had to separate the puppies away from her because there was no more milk left. We placed them in a box beside the wall and the next morning, they had crawled out and were lying beside their dead mother.

We got her cremated and put in an oak wood box with her name engraved on the top in a gold plaque that now sits above out fireplace. We had gotten over it pretty quickly and moved on with our lives.

It wasn't long after, that the puppies got sick and completely stopped eating and drinking anything we offered to them. It got to the point where we had to inject water into their stomachs in order to keep them alive. They were prescribes some shots as well from the vet and we had to give that to them routinely.

Sometime later, they had shown signs of getting better and had begun eating regularly again so we stopped giving them the medication and water shots. The morning of my sisters choir performance, my mom came up to me and informed me that Oreo had passed away in his sleep. Before I could say anything, she told me not to tell Britini because she didn't want to ruin her performance, so they were waiting to tell her after the performance. Out of 8 puppies and Secora, Bella was the only one who managed to survive.