Weeks after being displaced from New Orleans due to Katrina, I was 17 and walking home in Chicago when I met two men who changed my life forever.
After talking with them for a few minutes, they pulled me into a nearby alleyway and started roughing me around. They kept yelling at me that they were going to give me AIDS. Eventually they pulled my pants down and they raped me.
While it was happening, all I could hear were those words over and over, rattling around in my head: “We’re gonna give you AIDS! We’re gonna give you AIDS!”
I tested positive a few weeks later.
The only way I knew how to cope with this was denial. This led to a major downward spiral and breakdown. For over tens years, I battled different addictions, major health issues and the death of a close friend. But most of all I battled meth, which became the cure and the cause for everything good and bad in my life.
It was a dark time, to say the least.
After a decade, I fell into a deep depression while dealing with a relationship that went south. I decided I needed to do something to help myself get better, because for the first time I was starting to feel like I didn’t want to wake up anymore.
I needed someone or something to hold me accountable for my life and my responsibilities, and to remind me to travel lightly — to carry as little emotional baggage as possible. I had a dog earlier in my life who was a big help in dark moments of my life. I thought of her and thought maybe another dog could help me now.
While searching for dogs, I came across the French bulldog, which is described as “a clown in the cloak of a philosopher.” Immediately, I thought this was so perfect for me and described how I had felt my entire life! I had just never been able to put it into words.
Between growing up in a southern household where I was the rebel, the black sheep, and the colorful son (as my mom used to call me) my life seemed to have gone from one tragedy to the next. But I kept pushing forward. These words describing the French bulldog stuck with me.
Stud is from a breeder in Kentucky, and when I met him I immediately felt myself become lighter. From the moment I brought him home, I started to see my life change for the better.
He would wake me up each morning to take him out with him waking me up on a routine; he gave a consistency to my schedule, and I began to get better at taking my medication, which made me begin to feel better as a whole.
Stud’s love for me doesn’t expire. Before our morning walks to the park, I would actually get dressed and put myself together to go outside. He keeps me present and that helps alleviate the social anxiety I had acquired. Once we were out, people always stop and want to talk to him, and knowing that motivated me to present myself better, which started to make me feel better, and my confidence grew.
In our time together, the most important way Stud has helped me is by raising my self-esteem, which had been very low since my last relationship ended. He has given me my confidence back.
Without him by my side, I wouldn’t have had the strength to keep going.
He’s an amazing dog. Being a dad ensures my continued purpose in life as I am a lot less reckless and self-deprecating. I couldn’t have passed up this opportunity of sharing our story. He truly saved my life, and I hope that this story will bring someone hope.
-- as told to Zach Stafford of When Dogs Heal