My bird is dead.

Pictures:
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http://img806.imageshack.us/img806/5951/aggronbird.jpg
http://img847.imageshack.us/img847/9127/burdinthehand.jpg
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November 12, 2011

Today I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing. My dad called me to tell me, "Connie's gone." What he meant by this is that my bird died some time last night.

This has happened before, but never this bad, not like this. Connie and I loved each other more and more every day and now he's gone. I'm as sad as I can possibly be right now, but the truth is I'm incapable of feeling bad enough to express how much he meant to me. Even so, I've been crying all day, and I can't stop, and I don't think I'll ever stop. I still feel pain from all the pets I've lost, but only Connie and I loved each other so.

I've never been really good at expressing emotions through words, so I'm going to leave it at that.

My internet nickname is Grognor, with an epithet Grognor the Immortal. I've wanted to prevent myself from ever dying for a long time, but that can't happen now because a huge chunk of Grognor died today. Still, what's left of me is going to continue to fight death, not for himself, but for everyone else. No one should have to go through what I'm going through right now, never again.

Goodbye, Connie, I loved you. I'll never forget you as long as I live, however long that may be. I will miss you forever, even though you no longer exist. I wish I could do more than express my sorrow. That's all I have.


November 14, 2011

Even though I know as a fact that I will, somehow, feel less awful about this some day, I cannot shake the perception that I never will. My life seems purposeless, my soul listless, my self empty. As far as I'm concerned, I have nothing left in the world. I can't possibly ever communicate how much Connie meant to me. What am I to do?

I can't die, that's for sure. How could I ever let his memory die by letting myself die? It's unacceptable. Oh god, I can't stop crying.

I just can't handle this kind of pain. It's too much. I'm dying, mentally, there's no other word for what's happening to me. My soul is dying.

On the car drive from Naples to Gainesville, on my way to the University of Florida to start classes, I started crying, knowing how much I'd miss my bird in the short interval I'd be without him. I cried for several minutes during that car ride, just for a few months I'd have to spend without him. Now that I'll never be with him again, I could fill the universe with tears, and it still wouldn't be enough.

November 12 was the worst day of my life. Before that, the worst day of my life was this event for high school seniors called "Project Graduation". It was a time and place for friends, and over the course of the night I had nothing but an awful time, because I had no friends. I wish someone had told me that. I couldn't talk to anyone, and I couldn't enjoy any of the events, especially not dancing. At the end of the event, police officers decided that I didn't have good motor skills and called my dad to bring me home. They must have assumed I was on drugs, which I have never taken. I ended this night crying in front of police officers. When I got home, I just lied on my bed and cried, concluding that my life just wasn't worth living.

Then, after a minute or two, Connie flew to my pillow and just sat next to my head, leaning against me with one leg up and closing his eyes in that cute way he used to do. I was cured. Life was worth living. Oh god, that moment made everything okay. I petted him every day, loved him to the fullest, and now he's gone. He can't show me that it's okay now. He doesn't exist anymore.

What's going to save me from despair this time? I don't have any friends, even if some ignorant fools who think they know me in real life would disagree with this statement. Nothing is going to save me this time. My savior is dead.

Once again, because I'll never be able to say it enough,
Goodbye, Connie. I'll never forget you.


November 17, 2011

I'm not doing so bad today, I guess. I mean, it still hurts, of course, and in a wistful sort of epistemic-emotion way I wish it hurt more now than it currently does, but it's not so bad as it was yesterday, which wasn't so bad as the day before it. I won't say I've "bounced back" because, of course, that isn't true at all, but there was a bounce in my step today that wasn't there yesterday, even if I still look at the ground more often than the sky.

It was too soon. It's always been too soon, really. I had only had Connie for a few years, and green-cheeked conures live to their mid twenties in good homes, which I believe he was in. And I can't even tell you how awful it is that I spent the last four and a half months more than a little saddened by my not being near him, but still with the joyful hope that I was going to see him again, and now that's gone, and he's gone forever, and there's no SUCH THING as hope that I'll see him again.

Even worse than the time-spans is how I've directly or indirectly contributed to the death of every bird I've gotten close to. I killed Spike directly in a violent accident. That kept me awake at night for years after the fact. Crash was mistreated before we got him, but I still could have done more for him if I weren't so young and stupid at the time, before he flew away that one day. Then was Pashmina, the first bird that was actually sort of happy with me, even though I didn't treat her well. One day she was biting my finger really hard and I threw her on the ground and it broke both her legs. The sound of her pain was so terrible, I couldn't bear it. But after that, she was totally dependent on me and I didn't mistreat her anymore and we bonded, if you remember. She actually got close to me again, flying to my shoulder and then falling off because she couldn't use her legs, which was both incredibly cute and incredibly tragic. But she died a month or two later from those injuries, right there in my hands before I went to school one day, making those same awful pain sounds... And you can imagine how I felt when people I (before that day) considered friends made fun of me for crying about this. That was the first time you admonished the Hell out of me for crying in front of other people. Well, yeah, it's undignified, but this sort of thing just damages a person too much to put on a stoic nonchalant act. My favorite creature, dying in my hands, right before I leave for school. God, imagine that. And then there was the lovebird, whom I gave a stupid name to, and who died some time and I didn't even notice until she was already being eaten by ants. That is an image I still remember very clearly.

All this taught me something, of course. That I could never, EVER make the same mistakes again as I did with those birds. I wanted to treat Connie right, and I wasn't perfect about it, but I did so much better than with all the other birds, but then... I still failed because if I had taken him with me to college he wouldn't have died.

None of this is right.


December 21, 2011

Connie was perfect for me in every possible way. No other bird could ever compare to him. There is nothing I can do about that. I have loved and lost.


September 10, 2012

Regardless of how long I have left to live, I would trade the rest of my life to spend one more minute with Connie. You know what the last thing I said to him was? "I'll be back for you. I promise."

I'm not going to let you pretend this is okay. This is the result of evil.


October 9, 2012

I love the bird I have now, but I'll never love any bird as much as I loved Connie. That's just the way it is.


July 15, 2014

All of 2012. All of 2013. Now almost all of 2014. Soon again all of 2015 without Connie. I can't bear it. I can't bear to think of 2016, 2017, year after year without my bird! It's wrong, everything is wrong! I can't live without my bird. I want my Connie back. I need my bird. I will never be reunited with my bird, so all I want to do now is die.