Thursday, October 15, 2015

Letting It Be

The worst dreams. Stuck in an urban area in a dump of an apartment with two children and the locks don't work and people just walk in, demanding to see someone who doesn't live there and I can't protect my children and before all of that was another dream and I can't even describe it but I couldn't find my bed where I was staying and lights on and people talking and so am I pre-worrying about getting housed in a nursing home?
I don't know.

All I know is that sometimes I think my brain is just wired for fear and loathing and disappointment and worry and was wired that way when I was too young to try and connect it all up in a different way and I was born with a sense of responsibility that was way out of proportion to reality and I will never in this lifetime be done with trying to keep everyone from myself to my children to my chickens safe and protected.

And that there is always a mess to be cleaned up and it is always my job to do it.

Well, obviously not in real life.
Thank god.

A beautiful morning here and I am going for a walk to try and shake off the dream demons, try to align myself back into the reality of where I live which provides calm and peace and safety to all and where the messes are not so bad if I keep up with them a little bit.
Where my children are grown and quite capable of taking care of themselves and their children too. Where if my chickens need a place to be safe in, my husband will build it.
Where tiny children do not lie in bed and hear the yelling and crying of adults and look over in the gloomy darkness to the little brother lying in the crib and worry about his safety.
Where a light on in the house at night does not mean that an abuser is still awake and could come silently into the room where I lie unable to sleep from fear.
Where all are provided for.
Where there is even a sort of comfortable beauty.
Where even the old trees offer reassurance that there is continuity and wonder.

Where I can write my way back to a sort of sanity and get on with life.
This life. This real life.
On such a beautiful day.


11 comments:

  1. I had dreams that I was having sex in my friends' house while she was there. Sex in someone else's house! In their spare room! Which is tastefully decorated, but when the sun rose in my dram, the walls had paneling, ugly curtains and holes in the blankets. It had a cool sleep number bed that rocked instead of inflating.
    Anyway.
    Hormones.
    Have a better day. Much love!

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  2. It breaks my heart for the child you. But you rose out of those ashes into an incredible mother.

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  3. I am glad you can write your way back to what is true now, and blow away the vapors of bad dreams, bad memories, into the blue air. I do think you're on to something, though--we get wired in childhood before we know it is happening. I think that is why I am so moved by the life Owen, Gibson and now August are living; they are being wired with love, imagination, affirmation, freedom, humor, care.

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  4. Long ago, when I was on antidepressants for a brief period, I used to have the most vivid, bizarre dreams: Riding in pink & yellow hot air balloons over a cruise ship, hiding in a subterranean shopping mall with Lars Ulrich (the drummer from Metallica!)where the floor was covered with shiny, golden bullets...oh, man. Every night was like a movie. Nowadays I can barely remember my dreams. Maybe that's better? Anyway, Mary...your writing moves me, and at times, nearly brings me to tears with its beauty. Take care..they are just dreams, after all. :o)

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  5. That Lars Ulrich dream is the best.

    Oh Mary. I wish the child-you had been safe and cared for too. How miraculous and momentous that you were able to give your children that love and care.

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  6. Your paragraph about your brain being wired for fear stopped me cold. That is one of the best things I have ever read about my own brain. The sense of responsibility that is way out of proportion to reality... Damn. I have never been able to put into words about how I feel and how I think I should act. It never lets up and it causes me endless grief and sadness and hopelessness.
    I am going to cope that paragraph and put it in my book of quotes.

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  7. I too think we are hard wired for fear or possibly it is inherited I come from a long line of worriers. Gail

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  8. Dreams are weird things. It's like our brains have to exercise all the memory cells that lie dormant during the day, and sometimes strange spirits arise.

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  9. We are of the same heart in so many ways. I get it about the fear and loathing.

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  10. it's not bad enough that you have those dreams but you remember them too! I do not remember my dreams. I used to but not lately. I know I dream, am usually woken in the heavy midst of them but they are washed away with my first conscious thought.

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