Love and Bucky

I'm tired because I've been crying and crying makes me tired. But I need to finally write this because maybe tomorrow I won't be feeling emotions as intense as now.

So, love.

Not just romantic love. Platonic love, family love, love of inanimate things, love of animals.

Love is great. I guess.

But in the end, it just leads to pain.

So what's the point in loving?

I try not to love people and things. It seems as though people I loved didn't love me back, and I learnt to get over it. After a fall-out with a friend -- which I think of every single day -- it took a few months for me to accept that loving people just wasn't an option for me. Not now, not for me. I'm fine with that. I mean, sometimes an "I love you" slips out when I'm in a reckless, happy mood. Sometimes I just have to say it back. Every time I do that, though, I curse myself for it. For lying -- or for admitting it, I don't know.

I guess admitting you love someone just makes it more real. Too real. It's as if I subconsciously believe that, the second I admit love, the universe is going to come and take that away from me and from them. Whether that be through arguments, or drifting away, or death. Every time I say "I love you", I become terrified that something is going to happen. So it's just awkward when someone says "I love you" and I can't say it back because I love them.

I used to love things too. Books and music. Those were the two Big Ones for me. And I'm still letting go of them, because when you have loved these things so intensely, it's hard to get the roots out of your heart, soul and mind. Like weeds, except metaphorical. But that was a simile. Anyway. I have this thing where, once I like something, like a lot, and someone else comes along after me and wants to like it too, I get jealous. And I believe that they can't possibly like it more than me.

That's how I lost that friendship. 

Well maybe not actually, but that's what pushed me over the edge. I was so used to having to share and give all of my stuff to that person -- my money, my knowledge, my time, my friends -- and having to seek validation from her. Maybe I'm just selfish, but I realised that maybe the reason I got so mad at her when she decided to read one of my favourite book serieses was because books were the only thing I had left that were mine and not also hers. 

She was the type of person who said she hated reading and assured me that she would never read -- then went straight to the super-intense-popular-YA-trilogy area (also she seemed super innocent at the time). She was the type of person who wouldn't read long (but important) messages from me. Gods, she wouldn't even read the texts I was finally able to send her, when I finally got 3G while stuck in bushfires. She was the first person I texted, and she told me to leave her alone because she was watching Netflix. She wouldn't read an article I sent to her about the mental illness I was sure I had -- with which I asked her to help me. And in the end, I don't think she even read The Hunger Games when I loaned her my book. She gave the book back to me months later, unread but still damaged.

My music taste, as you can tell, is unique -- if not a bit strange.

The same situation happened again, but this time with my mum. There's something so frustrating, when you save the word "love" for situations where the love is too intense and obvious to not admit, and then your mum throws the word around every day. "I love this song!" she says, when your favourite song comes on -- a song to which she idly hums, out of time and only at the chorus. And maybe there's just so much hate built up in me for no reason. Maybe I'm just a hateful person. But when you live in a world where heavy words are so lightly thrown, it just... sucks. The word "love" is a risk for me to say, because I believe that when I admit my love for something, I'm giving the universe permission to use that against me.

The only exception to that "no love" rule is Peggy. 

I say the L-word to her. And because my anxieties are telling me that writing it here on this blog is risky, I'm not going to, because I believe my anxieties for some stupid reason.

But Peggy. She may be pretty annoying sometimes, but the unconditional love. She doesn't need words to tell me how much she values me. And she doesn't care that I'm hateful, petty, rude or mentally ill. Even though she's a dog, she seems to know how I'm feeling. Maybe it's the fact that she's a dog that makes me get along so well with her. She cannot take anything from me, she can only give. But she can be taken from me, and that idea is so damn terrifying.

Today (or rather, yesterday, since it's 12am) my mum found a baby bird on the trampoline. It wasn't dead, just huddled up. My brother named it Bucky, after Bucky Barnes from the MCU (because we're watching those movies together).

***For this blog post, I will be using "they/them" as Bucky's pronouns. We weren't sure whether Bucky was male or female. I know it sounds a bit weird using "they/them" pronouns for an animal, but I'm sick of having to refer to Bucky as an "it".***

Bucky was found on our trampoline by my mum when she heard Peggy barking non-stop out in the backyard. I had just finished an online class, and I believe it was about 12:30pm (8 October 2021). At first, I was confused and really concerned. I didn't want to go near the bird, because I thought the bird's body was twisted at a weird angle, or that the bird was lying on its side. But later I confirmed that Bucky -- as my brother had chosen to name them -- was sitting upright, though they were huddled up and it looked like they were shivering.

I spent my entire lunch break researching what to do if you find a little bird out of their nest. Bucky looked like a fledgling -- and the websites said it's perfectly normal for fledglings to be out of the nest, practicing flying and exploring. I'm pretty sure there was a birds' nest pretty close to the trampoline we found Bucky on, too. I assumed that Bucky was fine. I don't think my mum cared. "Its mother will find it," she said. My brother didn't really care about Bucky too much either, and it kinda offends me that he was the one who named Bucky. Even though I think "Bucky" was a perfect name. I did insist that my mum should call a vet if Bucky hadn't moved for a couple more hours.

I told about five of my friends about Bucky at this point.

I should have known. I should have known. I should have known that if there was a baby bird huddled up, shivering and unmoving on a trampoline, that it wasn't ok.

I had more classes after lunch. I checked on Bucky during these classes. I could see that Bucky's breathing seemed difficult for them. During math in the last period of the day, I got really worried about Bucky. That was the first class I've skipped/abandoned during online school, just so I could sit with a dying baby bird. My friend was telling me that I should cover Bucky with a box so that they didn't feel as vulnerable. But I couldn't. I didn't have a good-sized box. And Bucky was all the way on the side of the trampoline furthest away from the trampoline entrance, so if I went over there I would've had to put my weight on the trampoline and this would've scared and potentially injured them. I also have issues with anxiety around contamination, and I just... I didn't want to go near Bucky in case they were dead.

At this point I was freaking out. I remembered to text my mum, and I told her that we had to call the vet for Bucky. At this point I had noticed what looked like a cut on Bucky. I was so embarrassed for not seeing it earlier.

I let my friend come over (legally of course, she is in my friendship bubble). By the time she got here, my mum had responded, saying that she'd call the vet after her Zoom.

When my friend got here, I told her that it looked like Bucky had stopped moving. Immediately, my friend said that Bucky was probably dead. We checked by moving the bottom of the trampoline and watching for a reaction from Bucky. There was none.

I had unknowingly watched Bucky the baby bird die. Bucky died huddled up like how they'd been sitting for hours. Alone, scared and cold.

I think the reason I didn't cry more at that moment was because my friend was there. We made Bucky a grave -- they weren't buried there so it was more like a memorial thing. My mum along with some other people who I sent pictures to thought we had actually buried Bucky. Even if we didn't have a dog who would've dug up the body, I probably still wouldn't have buried them, because I could barely even bear to look at Bucky after I'd betrayed them in this way.

My friend left, and Peggy ate the memorial, which was made out of sticks. Bucky's body was still on the trampoline.

When my dad got home, I tried to get my brother to tell him what'd happened, because I knew that if I did, I'd burst into tears. But my brother refused to, so I had to tell my dad about Bucky. And, yes, I cried. But as I told my dad, Peggy started chasing her tail so I was laugh-crying (I sounded pretty weird).

I feel like such a traitor, because I didn't get rid of Bucky's body. My dad did. This was the moment in which I cried the most, because it was like the final confirmation that Bucky was dead. I never got to see Bucky up close, I never got to see how injured they really were. Not that I would've, anyway. But I feel like such a traitor to them because I couldn't even manage to go close enough to see what they really looked like. And I didn't say goodbye. Not to mention that I basically neglected an animal in need, and they died. This not what 8-year-old me wanted older-me to be like. It's the opposite.

Though I only saw Bucky for a few hours and from a distance, I guess I really formed an attachment to them. I think that giving Bucky a name made me feel closer to them, which I guess might have made their death sadder.

My mum said the vet probably couldn't have done anything. She said that "its neck probably snapped as it was falling", which was probably not the case, since Bucky survived so long, but something similar probably happened. But it amazes me how Bucky's death was pretty much nothing to my parents and even younger brother. But on the other hand, here I am at 1:07am crying again.

My anxiety saw Bucky's death as a warning for Peggy. Now I'm terrified that something's going to happen to her. No more L-word even for Peggy.

Bucky, I'm so sorry that I didn't help you. Hopefully you're in a better place now. I just hope that you knew that I was not watching you because I was bad, but because I was trying to care for you. It didn't work, though, and maybe you do see me as bad. That's fair enough.

Bucky, I love you.

I guess this is my new longest post. It's beating the Warner essay by a lot of words (this is about 2000). I was proud of that, but I guess it's only relevant to a small amount of people. And I think Bucky deserves this. 

This drawing that I did at the start of the year really is relevant to this post. And how I feel. It's more relevant to this post than the other, original one, so I'm going to leave it down here. You might have to zoom in a bit to read it. But nobody's actually going to read it. Except-future me.