I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night*
I started this blog, originally, to whinge about my broken heart, and although I haven't been moved to do that very much recently, today I will.
I've been having dreams about reconciliation. While I was away I had a series of them, night after night. I think I even felt, like, "No, this isn't right. I can't just accept this, him coming back to me, after all this." But I did. In the dreams he was just there, moved back, come back to me, and took up matter of factly as part of my life again. He came back, not even nicely, just matter-of-factly, or in some of the dreams sort of bullying, but I didn't say no to him because it's where he belongs, he should be back, I guess I still want him back.
I do believe in soul mates and one true loves. I always did, and when I met him I knew I had found mine, and I guess I still believe he is mine. I hope I do not always believe this and when my real one true love comes along it will put the whole experience in shadows so deep that he will, rightly, seem like the no-good edgy guy you live with for a while in your youth before you grow up and can actually form an adult relationship and commit and be married and really love. But, right now, he's it. In my dreams. In my sleeping unconscious.
The dream woke me up, because my waking self finds it easier to say, no, this isn't right, I don't have to accept this, I can say no, you can't come back, you can't just come back, after what you've done, after all this hurt and pain and letting me down, even the very beginning of the letting me down when I needed you would disqualify you from ever getting considered as even a candidate for being my boyfriend ever again. Not to mention that my sister would have you killed. My waking self finds it easier to think these things, and after I woke up today I repeated them to myself over breakfast, in the shower, trying to melt the thought down into the layers of brain so that in my dreams too I'll be able to turn and tell him, tell him no, you can't just come back, it isn't right, not after what you did, I won't have you, I don't want you.
But I do. I want him back. I hope I do not always want him back.
So today, with the lingering emotional residue of the dream still on me, then suddenly all the sensory details of the whole thing came back to me. Not just sensory, the emotional details. I walked up Oxford St to get a book for Book Club, and walking back I passed all sorts of spots where we had been together, and I saw lots of men walking in the shadows of evening who were sort of the same height as him, sort of in clothes he would wear, sort of the same kind of hair. I not only remembered what he looked like, walking, in the distance, when we were supposed to meet and I would walk up to him, I remembered what it felt like. The emotion of being with him, of being together, connected, part of a whole, him mine, me wholly his, so thoroughly, and so fucking long, ten fucking years, no wonder it's saturated in all the dreamy parts of my brain and won't come out.
The memories, today, were all so vivid, and there were so many of them. Rich texture, and all that. So close, so present. I hadn't felt this way in ages and ages and ages. I guess I have been pushing the memories down, and blanking the feelings, so that I can imagine that it's 20 years from now and I feel only wistful nostalgia. But today the rich detail of it was all coming back to me, triggered by all the places around here, and I don't like it and I want it to stop.
My counsellor lady told me very early on that the last stage of grief is when you can think back on it and remember the memories happily, and value the experience because it made you who you are today. You can remember the memories and not feel the pain of their loss, and the anguish that they are just memories and not in the now. So maybe, praise Jesus, maybe the reason I'm having all these dreams and these sensations of memory is that the scars are finally healed enough that I can dig down and uncover all that stuff, safely. The wounds are healed over enough that my brain can present the memories to itself and not explode in pain. Maybe. And so once they are opened up and they fly out like ghosts from a box, maybe what will be left will be those memories without all the emotion, the appreciation of the value of the experience without all the pain. Maybe. I hope so.
But it's kind of weird in the meantime.
*title of a song by the Electric Prunes, from the first Nuggets album, and the theme song for my radio show at college.
I've been having dreams about reconciliation. While I was away I had a series of them, night after night. I think I even felt, like, "No, this isn't right. I can't just accept this, him coming back to me, after all this." But I did. In the dreams he was just there, moved back, come back to me, and took up matter of factly as part of my life again. He came back, not even nicely, just matter-of-factly, or in some of the dreams sort of bullying, but I didn't say no to him because it's where he belongs, he should be back, I guess I still want him back.
I do believe in soul mates and one true loves. I always did, and when I met him I knew I had found mine, and I guess I still believe he is mine. I hope I do not always believe this and when my real one true love comes along it will put the whole experience in shadows so deep that he will, rightly, seem like the no-good edgy guy you live with for a while in your youth before you grow up and can actually form an adult relationship and commit and be married and really love. But, right now, he's it. In my dreams. In my sleeping unconscious.
The dream woke me up, because my waking self finds it easier to say, no, this isn't right, I don't have to accept this, I can say no, you can't come back, you can't just come back, after what you've done, after all this hurt and pain and letting me down, even the very beginning of the letting me down when I needed you would disqualify you from ever getting considered as even a candidate for being my boyfriend ever again. Not to mention that my sister would have you killed. My waking self finds it easier to think these things, and after I woke up today I repeated them to myself over breakfast, in the shower, trying to melt the thought down into the layers of brain so that in my dreams too I'll be able to turn and tell him, tell him no, you can't just come back, it isn't right, not after what you did, I won't have you, I don't want you.
But I do. I want him back. I hope I do not always want him back.
So today, with the lingering emotional residue of the dream still on me, then suddenly all the sensory details of the whole thing came back to me. Not just sensory, the emotional details. I walked up Oxford St to get a book for Book Club, and walking back I passed all sorts of spots where we had been together, and I saw lots of men walking in the shadows of evening who were sort of the same height as him, sort of in clothes he would wear, sort of the same kind of hair. I not only remembered what he looked like, walking, in the distance, when we were supposed to meet and I would walk up to him, I remembered what it felt like. The emotion of being with him, of being together, connected, part of a whole, him mine, me wholly his, so thoroughly, and so fucking long, ten fucking years, no wonder it's saturated in all the dreamy parts of my brain and won't come out.
The memories, today, were all so vivid, and there were so many of them. Rich texture, and all that. So close, so present. I hadn't felt this way in ages and ages and ages. I guess I have been pushing the memories down, and blanking the feelings, so that I can imagine that it's 20 years from now and I feel only wistful nostalgia. But today the rich detail of it was all coming back to me, triggered by all the places around here, and I don't like it and I want it to stop.
My counsellor lady told me very early on that the last stage of grief is when you can think back on it and remember the memories happily, and value the experience because it made you who you are today. You can remember the memories and not feel the pain of their loss, and the anguish that they are just memories and not in the now. So maybe, praise Jesus, maybe the reason I'm having all these dreams and these sensations of memory is that the scars are finally healed enough that I can dig down and uncover all that stuff, safely. The wounds are healed over enough that my brain can present the memories to itself and not explode in pain. Maybe. And so once they are opened up and they fly out like ghosts from a box, maybe what will be left will be those memories without all the emotion, the appreciation of the value of the experience without all the pain. Maybe. I hope so.
But it's kind of weird in the meantime.
*title of a song by the Electric Prunes, from the first Nuggets album, and the theme song for my radio show at college.
posted by Ellen at 10:46 pm
1 Comments:
Geez -- I loved reading your stuff..but please add a few more paragraph breaks so these old eyes of mine don't go crazy!! haha I'm serious. I'll be back~not that you want me to be, but hey, why not? Cece
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