Sophie and the Dog

Sometimes you don’t have anything to say. Sometimes you’re sitting in the cafe, looking out the window, and a gruff man in a Patriot shirt (not a Patriot’s football jersey, but a black cotton T-shirt with an American flag and the word PATRIOT across the front) pulls up, gets out, walks into the cafe, and his small very small dog with an underbite that looks like a sockpuppet peeks up and out of the passenger window. And sometimes you just can’t stop staring at the little dog, with his little sockpuppet fur, hairs sprouting in every direction, a mess but a cute mess, and because it is very cute, so cute it makes you laugh, laugh out loud, and for that moment all is right with the world, and you don’t need to have anything to say, because that moment is enough. 

That little cutie muppet dog who’s whole world is that car window, is enough. 

That was the case with Sophie. She had nothing to say even though people were asking for her words and poking at her for response and even indignantly insisting it was her obligation to reply, but she looked out the cafe window and the dog made her realize: nothing need be said.

Before, she felt the pressure more acutely. To perform, to engage, even just acknowledge. With everyone and everything in every moment. She often felt like not enough and went about trying all means of enough-ness: fancy jobs, stylish clothes, regulation of physical appearance, validation from lovers, of course copious apologies. All the trappings of our prove-yourself culture were laid tantalizingly across the buffet table of adulthood of which she regularly sat, taking a bite of them all. Identity and self-worth was closely correlated with approval and pleasure of others.  Imposter syndrome was rampant. 

She once worked with a colleague in New York on a high-profile project and it became clear this colleague felt she was, in addition to not being suitably coiffed, ‘just not bringing it’ to the work. You know, just not doing good enough. A lot of them were reasonable criticisms. Sophie wanted to please this person, but just couldn’t. Each time something different. Couldn’t guess, couldn’t ask, couldn’t deliver–just wasn’t. Concerted efforts attempted, different strategies tried, but over several instances it became clear the grade was not being made. 

If only she could do different.

If only she could be different.

If only she wasn’t her and this wasn’t this.

In the moment of being present to another human being dissatisfied with her manifested existence, she was… scared. Her survival felt threatened, in a six-degrees kind of way. If this other person was unhappy, then she had somehow failed, and was therefore unloveable, and would henceforth be rejected from humanity – and die. In the two months Sophie and this colleague collaborated, there was so much tension and so many, many  sighs of unmet expectation, she thought she really might pass out from self-apology. At the post-mortem meeting, disappointment was expressed and right then and there she crumpled up into such a shame ball that she imploded. Nearly.

“Is continued and inherent inadequacy worse than death?” she wondered. “If I cannot be what others want me to be, am I invalidated from living?”

“I should keep trying. I will keep trying to be better”

But it didn’t matter whether she kept trying or was fired or quit the job. The framing was clear and crime committed: it just wasn’t enough, and this probably wouldn’t change, wherever she went.

Things degenerated quickly. Her therapist chided her on the friendships she kept. Her friends thought unfavorably of her parental relations. Her parents didn’t approve of her choice of a new boyfriend. The new boyfriend didn’t approve of how Sophie chopped… anything… in the kitchen.

“No, not like that. If you chop them that small you’ll overpower everything. No, long thin slivers, like this. Geez, you never learn… Well …what do you have to say?”

And don’t even let me get started on the judgements of strangers. 

“Learn how to drive, bitch!” 

“You really should use less paper” 

“Hello! It’s your turn. Pay attention” 

Unpleased and unpleasable, the lot of them. And at the center of it all: Sophie. The common denominator of disappointment. 

All these voices of critical reproach ping-ponged around in her head for months. Depression was imminent… and obvious. She took a stern, protracted look in the mirror. Everything was pretty all right, to be honest. Not vogue-cover-worthy, by any means, but certainly acceptably average. But there was always that one hair annoyingly sprung.\. No matter what she did: gel, conditioner, bobbie pins.. A little flyaway people were always trying to pluck off her, thinking it was an error let loose on her sweater, until they realized “Oh, it’s attached” and recoiled in horror to realize it was, in fact, part of her. 

She snipped it with a thin pair of scissors, like she always did. She knew it’d be back.

A year on, after all New York and the job and those friends and therapy and parental opinions had faded into the background, she found herself alone drinking coffee, at a cafe, looking out a window.

The coffee was so-so there and they never had soy milk, but she liked it fine. It was what it was, and that was comforting.

And that’s when she saw the dog. His powerful, influential owner just recently having departed the car and disappearing into the depths of the cafe, the little dog popping up like a whack-a-mole. So sincere. He waits a beat, this canine-ette with the underbite, and then goes about exploring the front seat, sniffing and looking, popping up again to look out the car window, right at Sophie. 

It’s a special moment, the two of them, taking each other in unconditionally and letting themselves be taken in, unapologetically. The dog, being a dog, makes no particular significance about it, and turns away again to sniff a thing or two. But Sophie, she smiles, relaxed.

From her left, Sophie hears, directed at her “Excuse me, lady, you really shouldn’t –”

Without turning her head away from the window, from her soft gaze at the carefree puppy in the car, Sophie puts up a hand.

The other person, arrested, says nothing, or maybe they do say something, but Sophie can’t really hear. There is nothing more lovely to her than staring out that window and seeing that little scruffy pup, the whole judging world suddenly in an eternal balanced harmony so perfect she wouldn’t move a hair.