Serving the Leftovers (eBook)

Balancing Service and Sanity in an Uncommon Life of Dog Rescue

Alysia Dubriske (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
280 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-9900667-1-7 (ISBN)

Infos

'Serving the Leftovers' follows Leasha from corporate to canine uncovering her greater purpose-dog rescue. Can she balance the continual urgency of saving lives without jeopardizing her sanity? This animated memoir offers a glimpse into the loyalty, inner strength and perseverance required to chase a life with purpose.

A Peking-ista at heart, the Pekingese breed not only dictates Alysia's 'Leasha's' daily life, but also her heart and soul. With a graduate degree in education and clinical veterinary technology experience, her decades-long career led her to directing university and state government divisions. Her labor of love is founding and directing a small national non-profit, Liz E.'s Pekingese Rescue and Sanctuary, that helps Pekingese and other cast-off animals as well as supporting other animal rescue groups. Donations to Liz E.'s Pekingese Rescue and Sanctuary can be made at www.Pekingesepatrol.com or PayPal or Zelle to [e-mail].

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Leasha's mundane career seemed like a leash tethering her to mediocre expectations. Searching for a greater purpose, her dream of a dog rescue and sanctuary in a society that turns a blind eye toward animal welfare seemed impossible. Her vision becomes an inspiring reality, bringing vitality to broken animals and the people who love them. Set free from a past that cannot be changed, "e;Serving the Leftovers"e; is an animated memoir filled with new beginnings sheltered by unconditional love, offering a glimpse into tenacious human loyalty and fervent emotion. In a domiciliary dictated by the animals saved, this powerful story of wit, patience, and frustration unpacks inner strength and perseverance. Leasha's life on a leash has taken on new meaning, but can she continue to endure the overwhelming commitment of serving the leftovers?

Textauszug

LIFE ON A LEASH

It’s getting dark out. Covered in dirt, Dave is holding the shovel and dripping sweat. I’m dripping tears, clinging to the gift in my arms. I can’t do it. I know I have to do it. I start sobbing again. I kneel and neatly place the gift I’ve been granted into the grave under the cypress tree, overcome by memories of what used to be. My mind reels back to when we first met. Through streaming tears, I whisper, “Wait for me, please wait for me…” and I place a St. Francis medallion on the body.

This is not where it all started. This is not the end. This is somewhere in the middle of a life unlike anything I could have ever imagined. Have you ever gone into a restaurant starving and you want to order all the appetizers because they have great descriptions? Appetizers are where serving the leftovers start. You fill up on the appetizers which leave you with your entrée left over. Before you know it, your life is filled with leftovers.

In a former life, I would drive down the flat straight highway, heading to work in the Mississippi Delta, watching the 18-wheelers come toward me carrying the crop of the season. Talking to myself, as the grain trucks approached, I would say, “What if I just float over the yellow line? Pull my steering wheel to the left, just enough, I’d never know what hit me and I could move into the next existence.” My fear of what that was prevented me from doing it, but never from considering it.

My adult life was a marriage that far underserved my needs and wants in life. He wanted a maid and a mama; a human he could treat like a dog—to sit, to stay, to hang out with when he wanted a pal. I wanted a life partner to travel with, to dream with, to create a home and a life with a purpose. He wanted to drink like a college student, play guitars as if he were some great rock star and spend his nights hunting in the woods, pretending to live off the land.

What I had gotten myself into was no one’s fault except my own, even though I did have fleeting thoughts of why didn’t my friends, my parents, his parents, anyone tell me the mistake I was making? They all knew him. They all knew what a self-absorbed narcissist he was. I met him on a blind date after I had taken my first job out of college. He wore his jeans tighter than any man I’d ever met. He had a stove-pipe neck, and he was as tall as his shoulders were wide. I was taken by his sultry appearance and overlooked everything else. Good heavens, I am my mother’s child. He had a magnetic presence when he walked into the room. Everyone wanted to be liked by him. My mother was infatuated with him. I guess age gives us confidence to say no thanks. If I had confidence at 23, I would’ve said no thanks to him from the start. But he appeared to have a nice family, checked my boxes for having an education, being a hard worker, and whatever the hell I thought I wanted, later to find out none of those things were true in him anyway.

One particular night when he came in, drunk, bitter and ranting, like he did so often, he carried his gun into the living room. He sat on the couch across from me, rambling on about people and their lives. He was critical of everyone, including himself. He turned the gun and rested the barrel in his mouth. All I could picture were his brains splattered all over the window behind him. I didn’t want to witness this. What if he pulls the trigger? Even by mistake? Accidental shootings happen. Horrified but trying to remain calm, I put my hand on the phone. He was an emotional wreck, slurring on about life and all the people he hated.

Then he saw my hand. He moved the gun from himself and propped it on his shoulder, aiming it straight at me as if I were the wild game in the woods. “Don’t touch the phone, my beautiful bride.”

“Please let me call someone...”

“Get your hand off the phone, NOW,” he said with a chilling calmness. Click. I heard the gun. I took my hand off the phone. Suddenly all I could see were my brains all over the wall behind me. My heart was racing. I was shaking. This could turn bad in a blink.

“Let me call your brother. I won’t call the police, I promise. You can watch me dial,” I pleaded with him. “Let me call your brother.”

“You call him, but do not call anyone else.”

“Just him, I promise.” He started sobbing. I called his brother to come over more so to save me. I stood still with my heart pounding, never taking my eyes off him until his brother arrived and took over. The moment his brother stepped in the house, I said, “You help him.” I raced upstairs to lock myself in the bedroom. I hoped he would pass out or wander off somewhere. I knew this was the last straw. I had to get out while I still could.

Having never been religious and always questioning the reality of God, the next morning I got on my knees beside my bed and said a prayer. My life changed in what seemed like overnight. None of it was easy. It never is. After almost 10 years of scrapping through a tumultuous marriage, I moved across Arkansas, took another job and sat in a rented duplex with Stetson, my 17-year-old Pekingese and Liz E, my 7-year-old Pekingese, wondering what I had done. Alone and emotionally broken, I had to start from scratch. Where was the big grain truck when you needed it? Every smile was a struggle. Every morning was an effort, getting dressed, pretending to be a normal happy person, happy in my single life at 32. Gone from a nine-year marriage and pretending to be okay. All he had to say was, “I love you. Come home.” And I would have. Thank God, those words never came.

I had a childhood friend who was in the same town, which made it much easier to be single and 30-something with her. It was not the life I imagined for myself, but it was a hell of a lot better than a stale marriage that was never going to be anything but dead. Stetson by my side, I clung to my ‘Magic Frog’ keychain, with the notion someday the frog would present himself. What? That’s not how everyone finds love? Well, it was the best I could do at the time. I have always been the type with a vision for what I want.

Fast forward a few years, the magic frog did present himself. Dave was like nothing and no one I’d ever met. In all my years of dating in college, meeting men through work conferences in different states, meeting men on girls’ trips and dating as a new divorcee, I wanted a person like Dave, but I never believed men like that existed. He was not only tall and handsome with a thick head of wavy dark hair, saltwater-green eyes and a sincere smile, but he was also smart and kind. A brilliant mathematician and economist, a university professor, and gracious to everyone he met. We were introduced in January 2004 by the dean of the college where we both worked. We didn’t start dating until May the following year. On our first date, I arrived at his house early. Just before I knocked on the door, I confess, I could see him through the window interacting with his elderly parents and elementary school nephews. He exuded patience and tenderness. I was awestruck. He was a servant of the heart—it came naturally to him. The next day we both alluded to the notion we were what each other were looking for in life. This time around everyone tells me how lucky I am, how great he is, generous, giving and keeping me as the priority in his life. The world that knows Dave never had a negative word to say about him, excluding my mother and sister.

We were married in July of 2007. My world now knows nothing but Dave and this tiny canine kingdom we built together.

While working in the River Valley of Arkansas at a local college, the new chancellor made a comment on mediocrity. He didn’t want anyone mediocre working for him, and if we were, we needed to find another job. His speech was quite the morale booster. It created a buzz with the faculty on campus. It struck a chord with me: I am mediocre; my life is mediocre; everything I do is mediocre. What should I be doing? What is my meaning? Do I have one? Over the years clawing my way up through the ranks of state government, I have spent my career always wondering if this was all there was? This certainly wasn’t my dream, things just turned out this way.

A friend and I would talk about the life of being an instructor at a school like this. Show up at 8am, leave promptly at 5pm, take on a project here or there, teach the same thing day in and day out, semester after semester. My friend found the notion of being a big fish in a small pond a bit old and tired. We talked about what we would rather be doing. For me, teaching people how to eat, how to exercise and motivating them to continue on the path to good health had a burnout mark and I had face-planted directly on it.

Since my second job out of college, I have been the director, the chief and the boss throughout my career. I have been called deliberate. I have looked for and found new jobs, new ways to climb the proverbial chain, new projects to help the organizations I work for and have done a great job. Yet my ordinary life still screams in my head. The mediocrity never seems to settle. What’s wrong with me? It’s a good life. A good time on the weekends but then Monday comes. Monday always comes.

The unfulfilling jobs, the employees who are trying to suck the system dry by doing as little work...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.11.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• ISBN-13: 979-8-9900667-1-7 / 9798990066717