The North American Friends Movie Club Are Not My Friends

 

On Tuesday, my dog was fine.

Wednesday she... wasn't.

Thursday morning my wife took her to the vet.

Thursday night the whole family took her to the emergency vet.

And-

On Thursday we had three dogs living in this house

On Friday we had two.

It's sad, okay. Those of us that have multiple pets know that there's one that we consider ours. She was the one I considered MY dog.

Fucksake- 

Whatever, this is not the point okay this isn't the thing that got me to sit down and write today.

This thing is isn't about loss.

It is about gratitude.

So Thursday sucked.  It was full of dread and fear and uncertainty and stress. And on top of all that I had to work which takes concentration and focus, and on top of that I had just a few hours sleep.  

Picture me at my desk with my headphones on, distracted and worried, and waiting for the other shoe to drop, picture me with a heart preparing to break, picture me with a head filled with questions: am I too soft for what is coming? Am I capable of making difficult and painful decisions? Am I, in the end, just too much of a pussy? Am I going to be adult enough to shoulder this thing, to be unselfishly merciful?

And, spoiler alert, the answer to all of those questions ended up being yes.

But this isn't about loss or self doubt, or grief-

Unless it is.

What I wanted to write is thank you. Thank you North American Friends Movie Club for releasing, on Thursday, a silly goofy podcast that is ostensibly about movies but is more about friends, an hours worth of jokes and banter and laughter and easy conversation, a hug for your lonely insides.  

What I wanted to write about is that for people who make stuff, we don't often hear about how the thing we created made someone feel. We put out our shit and that's it.

 

This was supposed to be nice.

On that difficult and awful Thursday, these three released a podcast that made me feel just a bit better.  A hug from a friend doesn't make anything better, it just comforts you for a second.  Your dog is still dying, your job still is getting neglected because you can't concentrate, you are still avoiding the inevitable fact that this will come down to you saying yes, please kill my dog for me, because I can't stand to watch her bleed on my floor and I can't stand to watch her walk into walls and I can't stand to have to help her up the stairs.  I can't stand to watch all this, so please kind veterinarian lady, please tell me it is okay to ask you to kill my dog.

And even now I'm trying to push it down, to not face it, because I am, at heart, a coward.

So I want to write about a podcast and the strange relationship we have with the people we put into our ears and I do not want to write about my dead dog at all.

And I have tried to write this many times and in many ways because I wanted it to be one thing and it wanted to be something completely different, something that I couldn't quite bring myself to write, an examination of why I can't allow myself to feel things, why I have to push all these things down and not acknowledge them.  I wanted something that celebrates the warm parts that have come from this, to say to everyone hey you should listen to Nate and Kate and Brent every week, because they are funny and sweet and have a off kilter viewpoint that really resonates with me, and listening to them makes me feel a bit less lonely sometimes.  

What-

 

Lonely?  Who said anything about lonely?

They are not my friends, I know that, but a friend would call me if I was feeling sad and alone and they would know that I love movies and they might just be there for a while, for an hour maybe, just because I needed to listen to them blab about Hot Rod or Barb and Star, just because it is a kind and warm thing to do for someone who is going through some shit.

And so maybe in the end this isn't about my dead dog and it isn't about the North American Friends Movie Club at all, maybe it is just a confession of sorts, that I am fucked up a little and a bit broken somewhere inside and I can't allow myself to feel real things, like sadness when we lose someone, or love for an animal.  I have to distance myself, I have to tell myself I am somehow above all that, and then in a week I will feel sad and alone and I won't understand why, and then I will try to hide in movies and games and podcasts and I will tell myself that I'm not alone in this, I have my friends Nate and Kate and Brent.

But they are not my friends, I know that, I really do.

I have friends, at least a couple, Tom and Eric and my best friend of all time Sheri, my wife, that makes me do things I don't want to like write this weird rambling piece of shit when all I really want to do is play Civilization or watch Lucky Number Slevin, or play Borderlands for the millionth time and instead of exercising or doing something that might actually help, I just want to turn in on myself, wrap my body around a dense core of iron and ice until I collapse under my own weight and the weight of all these stupid and obvious feelings.  

They are not my friends, okay?  I know that.  But for a bit on that Thursday, it felt like they were, if only for an hour.

So thank you North American Friends Movie Club, for being warm and soft when all I needed was a bit of warmth, a bit of softness in a world that too often seems harsh and abrasive and sharp, where every word can cut. Thank you for being safe for those of us that need it.

And I know all of this is obvious, okay?  I'm not a fucking moron.  

Well maybe I am, at least about some stuff, like emotions and dogs and podcasts.

Still Writing, 

RP 

 1-25-25

Anyway, you can email me if you want, dissent.within at gmail.com, and I am on Bluesky @rpullins.bsky.social 

 I think I am going to delete my Facebook, but I haven't yet.  I haven't logged into Twitter in years so I have no idea if that is still active, but I suppose I should delete that too.  Feel free to share wherever you like though, no judgement from me.

 

Godspeed you hairy pain in my ass