NIGHTMARES
It's not unusual for me to have nightmares involving attackers, maniacs, fights to the death, and all manner of threats to my personal safety. I often endure vivid realistic nightmare experiences of being beaten, strangled, stabbed, etc. Many times I'm aware it's a dream but there's nothing I can do to escape it (believe me, I've tried every lucid dream technique in the book). I sometimes have to force myself to stab, shoot, beat the attacker/pursuer (which is almost as traumatic as having it happen to me . . . nightmare people are so hard to kill. . . maybe regular people are too, I don't know).

Often the scariest parts are when I look into the bad guy's eyes and realize that he's completely crazy and there's nothing I can do to reason with him. Unless someone rescues me, I am DOOMED. This is a big departure from the dreams I had as a small child where I would be kidnapped by a couple but able to talk them through their issues and convince them to do the right thing and let me go. I don't know how old I was when I had those dreams but I was *successful*. Bizarre.

Anyway, last night I dreamt that The Irish Think Tank was stalking me and intent on punishing me for some perceived wrong (I'm afraid in real life that he'll get evicted or something and find a way in his sick head to think it's *my* fault since I have talked to his landlord Tom about him). He tries setting me up for another one of his famous "meet-Brianna-who-never-materializes" dinners. He is stalking me everywhere. Looking in his eyes he's completely in his own crazed irrational world. My mom is trying to rescue me. But he's going to kill her too. Then I'm in my apartment and he's right outside the door. He's turning the knob and the same time I'm trying to lock it. He's on the floor breathing under the door. He's unlocking the door while I'm struggling to lock it and that lock vs. unlock struggle goes on for a horrible suspenseful eternity. But I got woken up last night at this point. I woke up at 3:46 am to the sound of something dragging on the sidewalk outside my open kitchen window. Right away I knew it had to be the Irish Think Tank outside for real, dragging one of the recycling bins up to my window so he could get on it and climb into my window and get me. I fucking jumped out of bed and ran to the kitchen and looked out . . .

It was just people getting out of their car they'd just parked under my window. There's no Irish Think Tank. There's no garbage can or recycling bin being dragged anywhere.

My heart was going a mile a minute, legs quivering, shaking . . . and I could have just calmed down and gone back to sleep but instead I almost threw up then felt so disturbed and unhappy and mentally invaded that I just cried.

I feel resentful and angry . . . this is no way to live!! Even if it's all in my head, I feel so . . . disrupted. I have other things to enjoy (and be afraid of) in my life without THIS.

Speaking of other things I'm afraid of . . . I have a feeling of impending doom with the houseboy. That a big let-down is coming. And that regardless of his feelings, whatever they may be . . . I've reached a level of insurmountable cowardice, fear, lack of faith and hyperawareness of everything that is NOT in favor of developing a happy full intimate relationship.

I feel like I'm on such shaky ground and that my moments of comfort and joy, although they're brighter than anything else during those moments, are laying on a foundation of emptiness and insecurity. I feel like my perfect apartment . . . my perfect view outside . . . is not going to be around for long because I want to escape the Irish Think Tank's threatening nearness. I feel like the more I build certainty of my own feelings for my houseboy and the more energy I want to put into sharing with him, the closer I get to losing him.

I think about my dad dying . . . watching it happen. I did not feel the hand of God. Those minutes when he wound down and stopped breathing . . . those quiet life sucking drying up hardening yellowing moments . . . they were empty. I was not sure of the light the nurse told him to go towards. I did not see him sure of it either. I did not see him become more peaceful. I did not see him at peace.

I just saw him die. I just saw him suspended for a few moments of in between flowing blood and petrifying. I really just don't know. I just saw him finish and I don't think he really was okay with it . . . I think he just finally couldn't breathe anymore and started to stop. I don't think it was a relief to him. I don't think it was a comfort. I didn't see any of that when he died. He just ended. Like a book you finish and you can't believe it ended THAT way . . . that can't really be the ending . . . they couldn't have left me hanging like that . . . I feel like if anything, he was turning those last blank pages at the end of the book . . . searching for words to wrap it up, an epilogue of some sort . . . but the pages are just blank.

I cannot be reassured. But I can love the bright patches. I decided (without any hesitation) that I am NOT using my part of the life insurance money to just do practical things like making a small dent in my huge debt. FUCK THAT. I am spending some of that money with joy and generosity the way my dad would have done. I'm getting some stuff that I'll always have around to remind me of how he always wanted to be able to give us more and more. I am going to window shop and buy pretty things the way he loved to do. I did order a flag display case for the flag from his funeral. I want to buy the PBS "Jazz" documentary/series of tapes that my dad and I never did finish watching together. Yesterday I started it . . . took $100 to the Farmer's Market and thought about how Daddy would have given us anything we wanted there. I bought my little sister some pretty little head-hanky things and a silver celtic cross pendant. And I bought myself a big bouquet of flowers from some Laotian people. Daddy knew that buying flowers was a good thing. Spending money on small things that I'll be able to look at in my home feels good to me and makes me feel like I'm honoring him and enjoying his presence and affirming that he provided something for us. I'm making a list of everything pleasurable and worth cherishing that I buy with his money.

Labels: dreams

posted by Trixie at 8/02/2002 02:54:00 PM -