I am not a good dog.
More often than I would like, I bite.
I growl and bark, and then I bite.
My old owner was good at scolding.
Every time I bit, he would hit me.
He would yell at me, and tell me I am not a good dog.
So I believed him.
He must be right.
Good dogs don't bite.
And I, even without malice, bit.
I was patient, I tried to be good.
I tried every day, constantly.
And I tried to show him that, by licking and cuddling him.
Many times, I tried to show him that I knew
I am not a good dog.
But admitting my own faults is, apparently, trying to look like the victim.
And I am not a victim.
Because I bite.
And no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I censor my growls.
I will always be the dog that bites.
And I will be reminded
Constantly
Daily
That I bite.
And all the other times I have.
I don't deserve a scratch behind the ear,
Or a belly scratch,
I don't deserve any kind of love,
Because I bite.
Even if I don't mean to.
Even if I'm not bad.
I still bite.
And that's enough.
But when you adopted me
And I bit,
You told me I hurt you
But you forgave me.
Bad dogs don't deserve forgiveness.
I certainly didn't.
I've learned, all my life,
That bites are unforgivable
And that I would always be rememided of
And punished for them.
But you forgave me.
You told me I was just a dog,
And that dogs bite sometimes.
I didn't understand.
They told me that no dog bites like that,
That often.
But you knew it wasn't on purpose.
When I licked to apologize,
You accepted it.
You scratched my belly and stroked behind my ear.
Even when I warned you that
I was not a good dog,
You said that wasn't true.
That I was trying,
And that you loved me, even though I bit.
But I was in anguish.
Every time I bit, I expected you to hit me.
I expected you to hate me.
You to remember, for the rest of the week, of how I bit you.
I wanted you to hit me.
I wanted you to punish me.
And when nothing happened,
and forgiveness came,
Then I had to punish myself.
I started biting myself, starving myself.
Never, ever forgiving myself.
How can I do that?
How can I bite someone I love?
But for you,
Biting me
Hurt more
Than biting you.
And then I understood what love was.
To be forgiven, even when I bite.
Because every dog bites sometimes.
And after all, I was just that:
A dog.
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