When my mom called to say she was having him picked up, I made a few arguments but she said she tried everything, that no vets can see him. If he had a diagnosis, if he had been confirmed to be in excrutiating pain, I wouldn't feel so guilty. But all I know is he was frail and weak, and still wanted to be petted behind the ears and taken out for a few minutes and I feel like I took that from him, rather than giving him any mercy, and I feel like she took this away from me, going to see him after work, even though I've felt sick and tired, but I knew it was important to be them for him as much as I could. I feel like I just spent my whole life under my mom's control, kind of broke out, and then when it could have made a difference, when it was about life and death, I just forgot everything wrong with her. She keeps buying stupid cheap shit online, boxes of it, and never asks about it after I bring it into the house. Like she just buys to buy, and she fed him really cheap dog food when he was starting to act sick, and I kept telling her to stop, and if I didn't put the high quality food in her direct path, she'd just keep feeding him garbage, and I don't know if she made him sick with this stupid shit. And not only did I allow her to make a decision about this, not realizing I could have said fuck it, and loaded him in my car until they left, not realizing that when she tells me how things are and just talks to me like I don't understand how things work, that I could have said no.

So part of it is that I just did the bidding of someone who makes stupid choices. I can get over that eventually, but if it was the wrong choice, that will be much harder. It is hard. It feels like a full-body dread and regret whenever I consider that. I think it's normalized to do, but I wouldn't have done it so the only thing that kind of makes me feel better is hoping that it was right to do, even by someone who does a lot wrong. And I still feel erong about lying, like taking him on this walk, at the last second, not expecting him to even be able to walk, and then transitioning into the truck. It made me feel like every walk I took him on, that I did out of earnestness and love, to give a neglected dog something, was just turned into a tool for me to trick him into being euthanized. The other thing that makes it feel okay is that the dog was very social and he probably liked seeing new people. I wish I could have been with him until the end, but he probably liked seeing people.

There's nothing I want to do now. I feel like my life was taken from me.