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 I lost my four-legged daughter, soulmate, best friend, partner, and plus-one sixteen weeks ago. She passed unexpectedly at thirteen from a heart attack. My previous articles explain the initial shock in detail. I saw the squirrel sitting on the curb. She did not move much, and I realized something was wrong. She tried to crawl, and I noticed her leg was broken. She was beneath the tree she must have fallen from. She reminded me of Chai. She looked at me as if she needed my help. I had no idea what to do, but I knew I could not leave her to die alone. I found a small stick and gently stroked her. She did not move. She rolled over and looked peaceful. A woman walking by said she had a cat carrier and a blanket, and that she would take the squirrel to the local vet. Suddenly, the squirrel sat up as if she knew help had arrived. She was not ready to die. She had simply been enjoying the comfort of being cared for. She dragged herself into the carrier on her own, and the woman took her with her. That thirty-minute interaction stirred something deep within me. When I left Chai in her oxygen chamber to breathe, I did not realize that would be the place where she would pass. I had promised myself that I would never again leave an animal to die alone. I saw Chai’s face in the squirrel and knew she needed love first. I spoke to her and told her she would be okay. Suddenly, I began to cry uncontrollably. I never imagined that a moment like this could bring back so many memories and emotions. It has now been sixteen weeks since Chai passed. This amount of time feels impossible. I could not live half an hour without her, yet somehow I have lived sixteen long weeks without her physical presence. Each morning, I wake with her ashes on my chest while holding her toy squirrel. I place them on her chair, which still sits on my bed. I have not removed the shopping list for her from the whiteboard. Her bowls near the back door are still filled with water. I have small bags that carry her ashes when I leave the house. There is one for the daytime and one for evenings, the same way she had her own routines when she was physically here. I have started going out twice a week during the day. Last Saturday, I went out at night for the first time. I managed a couple of hours. Saturday nights still feel too hard. I do not know how I will handle them while reliving her passing, but I am trying. My clothes look different and feel different. I do not want to be who I was. I have no idea what this new normal is supposed to be. I only know how I feel. I feel different. I feel sad. I feel alone. I also feel as if I have been handed a completely new slate. Beginning again is the scariest idea of all. Chai gave my life structure. She gave me routines and boundaries and ways of living that centered around her. Now everything feels undefined. I have realized that my grieving process is not what most people would call neurotypical. The way I feel, analyze, and replay experiences is not typical either. The way I feel I let her down weighs on me all day. I cannot grasp the idea that she is never coming back and that I will never see her again. It makes no sense to me. I replay every last moment we shared as if I am watching a movie that never stops. Chai was my bandage. When she died, that bandage was ripped away and left an open wound. Here is why. From birth until age twenty-four, life was a whirlwind of experiences that created deep emotional trauma. At twenty-five, I had my daughter. She became my first bandage without me realizing it. She became my purpose. I poured everything into raising her to be the kind, emotionally aware, thoughtful person I always wished I could have been. She grew to be far more emotionally mature than I was.  When she turned ten, we moved to Los Angeles. That was when Chai became my next bandage. For half my life, I have had something or someone holding me together. When Chai passed, something inside me came undone. I found myself in a painful and unsafe emotional place that I did not know how to navigate. The only thing I could do was sit with it and let myself feel everything. Once the intensity settled, I felt an instinct to fix myself and understand how I had arrived at this point. The foundation I built my entire life on had collapsed. I realized I no longer had any foundation at all. I knew I needed professional help. I needed someone who could help me understand who I am and why I think and feel the way I do. I chose to undergo an adult autism assessment. While waiting for the results, I felt fear and hope at the same time. I hoped for a positive diagnosis, not because I wanted a label, but because I needed a new foundation. If the results were negative, I feared I would have no explanation for why I feel the way I do. I feared I would have to consider myself broken. The results came back positive. I am Level 1 on the autism scale. Relief moved through me instantly. For the first time in my life, I felt heard and seen. I learned that my processing speed is unusually high. I learned that I was experiencing autistic burnout. I learned that my intense empathy and my literal way of thinking had names and explanations. My sensory overload and need for patterns also made sense. Suddenly, every piece of my life clicked into place. It felt as if the sky opened and light finally reached me. This discovery was not about making excuses. It was about understanding myself so that I could grant myself grace. My brain does not work like other people’s brains. Now I know that. Imagine waking up every morning with your brain fully active before your eyes open. Imagine your thoughts patterning and counting and replaying memories. Instead of fighting it, I now tell myself it is okay. This is how your mind works. Let it move. Forgive yourself. All the questions that haunted me finally became clear. Why I never fit into friend groups. Why certain sounds and spaces overwhelm me. Why I eat the same foods for days. Why I own seven of the same hat in different colors and ten of the same dress. Everything has an explanation now. My world was turned upside down when Chai passed, yet I also discovered the foundation I needed in order to rebuild. Chai led me to this discovery. She was my savior in a physical sense while she was alive, and she continues to save me in a different way now that she is gone. I am forever grateful for her presence, her love, and the lessons she gave me. I honor her by allowing this new version of myself to grow. Missing her does not stop. My heart is still broken. That will never change. But the foundation I am building now exists because of her. She is part of everything I do and everything I am. There is a small glimmer of hope beside the broken pieces of my heart. It is faint but present. That hope is guiding me toward whatever this new life may become. The love I felt for her feels even more powerful now that it is blended with hope. The firsts still feel heavy. The first Halloween without her. The first Thanksgiving. The first Christmas and New Year. I do not know what those days will feel like or how I will move through them. What I do know is that I do not owe anyone an explanation. Whatever I choose to do will be right for me. For now, I write and create and paint and sing. I do all of it in honor of Chai and in honor of this new foundation that is slowly forming inside me. ∎
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