Lucy In Peoria With Heartbreak
I woke up on my tenth day of quarantine to wonderful news - my COVID test was negative, meaning that many of my friends would feel comfortable seeing me, albeit from a distance. But even better than that, I was going to get a puppy that day.
The moment I knew I would be going back to Chicago, a little over a month ago, I decided to get a dog. It was the perfect time since I’m going to be working remotely the next few months, and the biggest thing that scared me about heading back was the loneliness I believed was inevitable. I was also afraid of being bored, and the challenge of raising a dog would be perfect to fill both holes in my life.
I started looking at various local shelters, aware that I would need to do things in advance since there are so many people hoping to adopt pets during the pandemic. I applied at several shelters, checked out breeders, and wrote to my landlord to get the specifics of what kinds of dogs are allowed in my apartment.
The first day after I arrived in Chicago, I found the first dog I was interested in - a Hug (Husky/Pug mix) from a local shelter who got adopted out to someone else. I loved his face because he looked like one of my favorite dog breeds and the one I’d want most, a French bulldog. Over the next week, I applied for half a dozen dogs I’d be okay with before I came to the conclusion that if I was going to be spending a good deal of time and money on a dog, I should go for one I really, truly wanted - and that’s when I got taken for a fool.
I connected with a man from Peoria named Javier (the first real name I’ve used in this blog, as I hope to warn anyone else who he might be scamming), who said that he had a puppy available. She was a grayish Frenchie with bright blue eyes like the sky on a sunny day, a funny little soul patch and a white tummy, and in the videos he sent me, she seemed to be playful, kind, and curious about the world - definitely my kind of dog. And, as he told me after I sent him the first payment, her name was Lucy.
Since my pseudonym is partially inspired by my favorite Beatles song since childhood, “Eleanor Rigby” (a song that felt like both a call to the loneliness endemic to my school life and the possibility for change if either of the lonely people in the song had reached out to each other), I loved that the puppy’s name was Lucy. It reminded me of the way I apparently learned to sing “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” along with nursery rhymes, and loved to entertain adults around me by singing it as best as I could.
It struck me a few minutes later, as I enthusiastically showed off the puppy’s picture to several of my friends, that there was an easy solution to the fact that I always wanted a dog with a nerdy name. Lucy would be a great nickname for Luthien, the most beautiful elf maiden in The Silmarillion - and she was one of the most beautiful puppies I’ve ever seen. I could already picture her dog tag in my head: Luthien on the top line of the heart, followed by Lucy in quotation marks to show that that’s her nickname, and finally my phone number. I pictured myself dressing her up in a little costume to match my elf dress, carrying her around on Halloween, showing up to Pokemon Go raids with her in a baby carrier so I could hold her and play at the same time.
Javier was supposed to show up the next morning, and I was so excited that I couldn’t sleep. My Fitbit recorded sporadic rest interspersed with pacing and reading and picking the perfect outfit to meet my puppy. I cleaned my apartment after crawling on the floor to make sure there were no small objects at a puppy’s eye level. I did as much work as I possibly could, hoping to spend Friday afternoon getting that cute dog tag and other supplies I’d need to make her comfortable.
I heard from him in the morning, which made me feel more confident, but my hopes were shattered when hours passed after the second payment and I never heard from him. I tried to text and call the number that had always worked before, hoping against the odds that he was just caught in traffic and would bring my puppy to me like he said he would.
By the time 1:00 rolled around, I knew I had been scammed, and the thing I’d feared since leaving my parents’ house started to happen: I started to breathe so fast I couldn’t catch my breath, my heart was pounding, and all I could do was rock back and forth in my comfy chair as every emotion I was terrified of poured over me all at once, in addition to the loss of a (to me) significant amount of money.
I called my bank immediately, sobbing, and was told that I’d need to wait 5-10 business days to see what they could do. I filed a report with the FTC and the police, but the odds are still slim I’ll be able to get the money back except by the one strategy I’ve come up with: finding old video games, Pokemon cards, and other valuables that matter to me but not too much, that I would be okay with selling.
My friends and family helped me get out of the initial near-panic attack (only calling it a near miss because I was able to dispel it over an hour instead of several days), but I am still horribly ashamed to look at the texts with Javier, full of red flags I can see now that I’m not looking at the situation with rose-colored glasses.
My friends and family are trying to encourage me to see this as a learning experience, but a consequence of the way my head works is that I beat myself up about mistakes and failures for years to come. I still feel a pit in my stomach when I think about the college honor I didn’t get, the messages I sent while in the throes of depression, and many other moments throughout my life that I can never seem to forgive myself for. And my dog-less apartment is a reminder to me every day that I failed once again, and this time, in a very costly way.
It’s been a few days since the incident. I haven’t looked at her picture, because I know the bright blue eyes won’t be following me around my apartment. I know the love I thought I would get from her will come to me eventually from another dog, but for the foreseeable future, I’m going to be living in my apartment alone, bored except for the entertainment I come up with for myself.
Instead of learning the lesson my family has told me to focus on - how to avoid scams - I’ve learned something else: I’m very used to my tendency to fall into the easy territory of my favorite stories when I’m frightened by something in real life. However, I never had the opportunity to realize that I can retreat into these stories even before I know if things are going to be hard, that I can be so deep in denial that I ignore obvious signs. I trapped myself in a vicious cycle of repeating my mistakes in my head, thinking over every sign that I should have seen and everything I should have known.
There are two silver linings to the situation - my newfound openness about my search for a dog with my friends and family, and the way I was able to stop a burgeoning panic attack from completely derailing me. And as of the time I’m writing this, I’ve made back 1/7 of the money I lost to Javier. It might be a long journey, and in the meantime, I’ll need to find new ways to cope instead of making up a story of myself, happy, with a dog that doesn’t exist.
One day, I will have a puppy - hopefully a French bulldog or a dog that looks like one - with bright eyes that will stare at me like my family’s dog stares up at my mom, like she hung the moon and every star just for him. In the meantime, however, I have decided on a new goal: to reflect on my past mistakes and try to see them as learning opportunities instead of simply criticizing myself in an endless loop of negative feedback. It’ll certainly be hard, but now that I don’t have a new puppy to raise, I’ve got the time and energy to invest in my mental well-being. It’s time to break the cycle of negativity my OCD has trapped me in about my past mistakes while turning my puppy dream into reality.
For now, I’ll be looking up at the sky. My thoughts of Lucy will hopefully diminish, and by the time I am able to find a puppy to love, I hope to have forgiven myself for this mistake (among others) and approach dog ownership with a full heart.
Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.