HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ARE YOU LONELY YET?

I realized that my dog died exactly one month before what would've been a celebration of our 16th year together. We had been together for 15 years and 11 months. It's sort of shocking.

My days have been total sadness accented by moments of happiness courtesy of my friends, whom have all been really good to me. Taking me to things like SNL and TRL and shows and parties. Checking up on me. Trying to make sure I'm ok. I can't believe that I'm this sad over the death of my dog. It's been one week already, you'd think I could be over it by now. But i'm not. I went to see Army of Me last night in brooklyn. I was so excited and happy when they got on stage, but suddenly it hit me. You know how in Fight Club, tyler durden splices in images into a movie? That's sort of what happened to me last night... I was standing by the stage watching and being happy when it was like . I'm pretty certain that if you saw my face the moment that image popped up in my brain by surprise, I would've resembled someone getting snuck up from behind. Boo! It's the boogeyman that is your thoughts. All I wanted to do the entire show was run off and call my parents to see what's going on with them and to check in. Had they cremated her yet? What's going on with her ashes? But I was up against the stage, pushing a smile out as my friend performed infront of me. I didn't want to run off and insult him, throw off his game, so i just stood there til the last chord. I will say that I was able to forget about things for a breif moment when they played their new song. Mostly because it was the best song they'd ever written, i think. I was happy to have my mind off things. When I finally called my dad it sounded like he was crying as well. he told me that he missed Maxine. I told him i did too. I got off the phone cause the connection was bad and sat alone for 15 minutes crying a bit.

I found that today was the hardest of them all. My alarm clock didn't go off, but I woke up basically on time. Then I laid in bed and cried hysterically for 20 minutes and managed to only get out because my nose was so stuffed. I blew my nose and fell to the ground crying hysterically for another 20 minutes trying to rock myself into comfort... which only made me cry more cause that's what i was doing for Maxine as she was dying. I finally managed to get dressed and get into a cab, but spent the rest of the day, up until now, crying. I feel like a wreck. I know that she was old and lived a great life and was loved. I'm happy about that. I'm gettng comfortable that she died. But when the worst nightmare that you get about 3 times a year for 16 years becomes a reality, it's sort of hard to not feel a bit of trauma. I had a dream the sunday before she died that there was a snake in the house that i had to kill or else it would kill maxine. I thought i managed to kill the snake and went to dispose of it's body, only to return and find that i was wrong and that it had eaten her up. This is the sort of dream that I had previously had several times a year for years, and here i am now, almost two weeks later, trying to deal with it's reality. Trying to deal with the fact that when i moved my hand from cradling her head to another part of her body is when she died. It's when she made the face that I didnt know was possible. And it's the moment that hasn't managed to escape my head.

I've been told that I should see a greif counselor, but I feel like it's a sort of situation that they can't help me with. How do you erase an image from someone's head? How do you delete a scene in a movie you didnt write?