PDSD.....What the Hell next?????????

January 2 at 4:39pm Report
Dear Save Brindi Friends:

Please allow me to send you holiday greetings and my best wishes for a wonderful, joy-filled New Year! A heartfelt thank you to all who have sacrificed hard-earned pay for the sake of my little dog Brindi who I love so much – and who so many of you love so much, without even setting eyes on her. You are truly special people!!!!

It is 1-1-11, numbers that seem to suggest a good day for a new beginning. If only I could feel optimistic and energized, rather than as if somebody set back the dials one time too many on me.

You may have noticed, I have been fairly silent for several months. This is not because I have nothing to say, or because I am not doing anything to get Brindi home safe, or to get my house back and finished. In fact I have tried very hard and somehow nothing has worked, and I am overwhelmed over and over. I have faced a lot of hard things in my life, often many at once, but I have never been stretched to the breaking point quite like this, without an end in sight. Never have I had so many failures, so much downright bad luck. Talking about it is hard, because I am still plagued by cycles of shock and disbelief, anger and frustration, sadness and grief, terror and dread. It is truly unreal. Also, I am very aware that so many of my FB friends have very hard situations to cope with, and I do not want to make my problems more important than theirs. Sharing them is not saying they are.

If I feel anything other than numbness, it is sincere gratitude to all of you who have worked so hard with such generosity and faith, doing your best to sustain me through this ordeal even though it seems it just keeps getting worse. I am sure many of you have questioned why this is. I do not know the answers, or rather, I do not like the answers very much, as ultimately it is my responsibility, the situation I am in and what is happening to my dog and my life. Certainly it is my responsibility to figure out how to fix it, even if I feel incapable of it. At the same time, it must be said that this place and my experience defies all rational expectation. I am not the only one who has been crushed in the gears around here; I have come across unbelievable stories (May Ocean and others) of persecution and denial of rights, but I believe I remain the only one in North America, I believe, whose dog is on death row despite never having bitten a person (even when kicked in the head repeatedly) or seriously wounded or killed an animal.

I know I have probably lost a lot of supporters because they did not get the answers they wanted back in September. This is the way it is. As you can imagine, I was just beginning to recover when Brindi was taken again, and so was she. It is like being disemboweled again if that Is possible. I had no choice but to put whatever energy I had into dealing with things on the ground. While my FB friends are loyal and strong, I have few friends on the home front; few, if any, are in a position to help effectively. So I juggle a growing list of things I want and need to do – in and out of court; appeals, letters, actions – against diminished resources and strengths, against the constant harping of harassers and stalkers out there, all the while conscious of what turns out to be a very united bureaucratic front at all levels of government and institutions in Nova Scotia and even beyond.

Perversely, does not help me feel much hope to know of the husky named Brandi in Broward, Florida, who killed a poodle, released not long ago, along with other dogs on death row; her supporters also managed to replace the mayor. I know of three dogs in Mobile County, Alabama, released six months after they allegedly attacked a toddler, leaving her with hundreds of stitches; and two dogs in BC who attacked a woman and broke her arm, who were seized and released.

Halifax does not care. The media do not care. The judge is not bothered by the idea of waiting till November to decide whether to let Brindi go, or the fact I have not been allowed visits. The Human Rights Commission is not interested. All of them, plus a whole list of people and groups find the contrast between Brindi and these other cases irrelevant.

So at this starting point of 1-1-11, I am out of prayers, out of hope, out of energy, just empty. I am fairly certain I am experiencing a complex form of PTSD but I cannot get medical people to confirm it for me – they, like even the structural engineers, are fearful of the consequences to them. That they react this way (as if their lives would be ruined if they helped!) puts me into even more disbelief and shock.

As I asked on my long-forsaken blog way back in August 2008, if you (me, you, us, they) cannot save a dog like Brindi, what good are we? If she is put to death, what hope do we have of saving anything in this world? The question is still wide open, like the mouth of hell at every turn.

I often think of the ape in “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” a book I admit I barely understood and never finished reading: there is a point where Nietzsche talks about the ape needing to jump over his own shadow, more or less pick himself up by the bootstraps, so to speak. Heaven knows (and I re-learn it every day!) I am no Übermensch, no superwoman here, but if I could somehow figure out that trick, Brindi and I might have a better chance in this harsh world.

I truly hope all of you find ways to do this in your own lives in this year 2011. And thank you again, very, very much, for caring.

Blessings and love to everybody, and thanks for reading this,

Francesca