Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

Jesse turned up again today.
I had been feeling predictably edgy for some days now, but hadn’t given him a thought. My routine was all to hell and my workload suffering because of it. I was forgetting what I was doing, right in the middle of doing it!

The impending radiotherapy was starting to haunt me, that’s if my breast ever healed enough for them to start. It was still uncomfortable and felt as though they had stuffed something in there, instead of removing anything.

Thinking about not seeing Jesse for a while, I assumed it was because he probably knew I was way out of his jurisdiction and would be wasting his time coming to see me.

For what was going on now was not the small frustrations of an aging woman after all. This was something pretty big, or could have been.
I was still surprised to see him when I came downstairs, and his dark and brooding presence was so welcome, I cried.

Most people describe their own personal ‘black dogs’ as something to detest, something to be got rid of at all costs. But Jesse has been with me for so long now and seen me through some terrible depressions that I cannot resent him. He has become an old friend.

I know he shouldn’t be, for he is just a figment of my imagination after all. A symbol of all my failings and weaknesses. But when you are left with nothing else, you desperately cling on to anything, even a mirage of your own making.

I had a real black dog once when I was a child. A black Labrador retriever called Folly. She was a wonderful dog and was very kind to this miserable child when she really needed a friend. She gradually taught me how to hide all the sadness away, although I liked to imagine she deliberately took it away from me for a while.

All dogs are able to do this, I think and I miss having one of my own so much. This is probably how Jesse came into being, and although I cannot touch him, or feel his soft black fur, I can feel his calming presence in my soul, and will be forever grateful…

Especially now…