Cat Food.

A Dream:

I'd been away in Florida vacationing with my family, and I'm excited to be back home and see my cat. The home I'm coming back to is the one of my childhood. I'd entrusted the care of my cat to a male cousin. I'd not told him to take care of the cat, but I'd been sure he would know he was supposed to take care of her anyway. I just knew he'd know it was a job I'd mentally delegated to him. I also kind of half-expected that he'd blow it, and then I'd be able to yell at him.

My family was unpacking the car, and I rushed up to the house to find my cat. To my horror, she was outside. My cat doesn't go outside, but there she was, offensively, awfully, independently outside! I was horrified.

I went closer to her, afraid to approach to eagerly lest she take off running. As I got closer, I realize she was very, very thin. Her breathing was labored. She seemed to be dying.

My cousin hadn't done his job! He must have known I'd wanted him to care for my cat! I'd clearly left the cat uncared for and decided very loudly inside myself that it was his job to care for her, yet he'd willfully left her unattended!

The bastard! The selfish, irresponsible bastard! He must not love me at all! (I must not be worthy of love.)

I decide the next most important thing to do is to tattle on my cousin, and I go looking for my mom. I also hope to bump into the cousin so that I might let him have it.

While I'm searching, I come across a lovely pink box of cat food. I remember that I should probably be feeding her as my first task, since lack of food is what had gotten her so sick in the first place. I open up the box and pour a few kibbles into a bowl for her. The kibbles are croutons, which I recognize from a salad I ate recently that was made by my Al-Anon sponsor. It's just the food she needs.

Cliff's Notes Version for the Dream-Interpretation Impaired:

So I've entrusted my most precious cat to an untrustworthy man, and forgotten even to tell him that it was his job to care for her. My deepest desires are to tell my mother about it and to yell at the untrustworthy man. I happen upon a box of the best bits of my sponsor's salad, and realize that she needs those particular croutons desperately.

I woke up a few minutes ago laughing at my prissy, fussy dream-mind's lack of sophistication and wild connections and couldn't wait to write it all down...so I'm done now, and signing off to go back to bed.

Sex. Prayer. Flight.

For a while, when my husband first came back home from the hospital, our disappeared sex life was back. We were like normal married people who love each other. It was a glorious thing.

A few weeks ago, though, it started to wane again. At our last marriage counseling session, we discussed the crisis of our parent-child relationship and how we need to find some creative ways to over come it. The day after that session, my husband had watched Dr. Phil.

Yes. He watched Dr. Phil.

He said to me, recounting the wisdom he'd gained on Dr. Phil:

There was this couple on the show today, and they had a parent-child relationship. It wasn't because the man was a big fuck-up or anything. It was more because the wife was kind of needy and controlling. She was upset because they weren't having sex, and Dr. Phil told her that it was obvious why they weren't having sex. No man wants to have sex with his mom.

My husband's words hurt me, and not too long ago, they would have sent me into a tailspin. I would have accepted all the responsibility for our disappearing sex life, and I would have forgotten that our sex life disappeared exactly when my husband started relying on a heavy dose of opiates to get through his day.

This time, I wasn't willing to accept the responsibility for something that isn't mine. Also, his words drew my attention to something about my husband. I don't want to have sex with a child. Neediness and dependency and an inability to take care of oneself isn't sexy. His use of the parent-child dynamic in this way made me look at him differently, and I haven't quite been able to unscrew my vision of him since.

I don't want to fall out of love with him. I don't want to. I really, really don't. I'm not sure if that's what's happening, but if my sexual desire and the premise of our lovely sex life is removed from the marital equation, there isn't much left. I have hope that the housekeeping he's in the process of doing in recovery will eventually translate to benefits for the relationship, but I'm not sure that I have the patience any longer to stick it out.

This time of year is hard. There are some important anniversaries for us in the coming weeks, and over the last couple of years, these anniversaries have been marred by his addiction. Last year at this time, things were very, very bad, and I am not sure that my reactions to him aren't somehow skewed by the smell of the weather, the color of the sky, and my emotional memory of how it felt the last time things looked this way outside.

On the advice of my new Al-Anon sponsor, I am praying, on my knees, every morning and night for clarity in this relationship...I ask God to show me if it is God's will for me to continue to be in this marriage and to give me the tools and resources necessary to support my husband and myself in recovery; I ask if it is God's will for me to get out of the relationship, that I be shown a clear path. I ask God to remove the scales from my eyes, the biases of desire and judgment and fear and resentment and to show me, truly, what it is I'm meant to do with my life in this relationship.

I keep having these dreams where I'm flying. Sometimes, I'm flying a kind of dilapidated old airplane that I've found abandoned on the street near my parents' house. One time, it was a wheelbarrow; if I ran fast enough, I could make it take air, and I could steer around. Each time I have this dream, there is someone telling me to come back down. Stop flying. Hit the ground. Don't imagine other possibilities. Stay low, always.

I don't want to anymore.

A Dream.

I dreamed last night I'd been kidnapped. I was living in a strange house at the whim of a strange couple. I was with several women, and there were often more women coming and going, in and out. Some of why we were kidnapped was to serve as sexual prisoners, and some of it was for housekeeping, and some of it seemed just for the fun of being bossy and torturing someone.

I was miserable and afraid. I felt like I'd never be able to get out.

Suddenly, though, in an odd green jumpsuit, my favorite grandmother appeared. I was happy to see her, as I knew she'd come to rescue me, but also because she's been dead for several years. I miss her. She came in, politely, and winked at me in a way that told me I could walk right out the back door. She stayed to schmooze with the kidnappers and distract them from my departing, and I was somewhat surprised by how easy it actually was to leave. I went outside the door, which kind of transformed into my childhood home as I was escaping, walked out through the garage, and jumped in a green car. I fumbled with the keys a bit, but I got the ignition started just in time to scoop Grandma up as she was fleeing.

We were free!

Detox Day 3

So far, no projectiles are flying yet, and he hasn't brandished any knives or guns. He's miserable. I'm miserable. It's great at our house.

I think I might be depressed. I'm struggling with getting out of bed, ever. It's been accumulating for a while, and I think it's getting worse. I don't want to sleep, especially, I just don't want to face the world. The world is a mean motherfucker, and I'm tired of it.

I had a dream a few nights ago. I was on an elevator, and it was packed. I started humming to myself, and then I started saying "Om." I kept saying it, over and over again, and then the other people on the elevator were saying it, too. We were smiling and creating this beautiful, vibrating space, resonating inside and out and between all of us. They were strangers, but I knew them perfectly, and they knew me. They were glad I'd started it. It was weird.

It reminded me of my new toy, the Junky's Wives Club. We're starting a step study over there. I'm excited. I wish that club was a place. I'd get out of bed to go there.

Dream.

Oh, you're dead now. Now you've gone and died and made a mess. How am I going to clean you up? Am I supposed to call the doctor? Do I call the police? Goddamn it.

I'd found his body on our couch, stiff and blue. It made me furious. Furious! He was calcified and cracked and it was a great, big mess, and I was going to have to clean the whole thing up by myself like always. I tried to lift him up, and he was too heavy, and his skin kept peeling off and getting all over me. There were stains where he'd leaked on the couch.

The couch is going to be no good after this!

I finally figure out how to hoist him up, and I kind of fold him over my shoulder, slide him in half, and fit him into a duffel bag. I notice that he's ripped apart at the seams, and he's filled with lasagna.

You got sauce on me!

I take him outside and try to get him into the trunk of the car, and he's too heavy. An old acquaintance from college happens to be walking his dog as I'm hefting my husband onto my shoulder. "I need help!" I shout, imperiously.

"Ok." He starts trying to help me lift the bag. The dog is curious about the lasagna.

We finally get him in the trunk of the car, and the guy asks me, "Don't you think you should have called the police before you cut him up like that? You might be a suspect..."

"I didn't do anything!"

I'm really fuming now, and I realize it's time to get to the airport. I'm on my way to Rome.

And I'm in a hotel in Rome, and I'm on the phone with the accountant in my office. I'm explaining to her that I won't be in the office for awhile because I had to go to Rome for vacation because I'm really tired. I explain to her that I can see St. Peter's from my window, and I can see it from every angle, no matter where I look. I keep talking to her, telling her how tired I am, how awful it's been lately, how much I need vacation, and suddenly, I realize that my husband is dead.

I realize it, and I'm paralyzed. I start trying to tell her that I'm really, really sad because my husband is dead, and that I've been wrong all along...it's not a reason to be so angry. It's really, really sad. I can hardly breathe. I'm trying to tell my mother that my lover has died, and she's not listening to me one bit. She's telling me he was a good for nothing junky and that I'm better off without him, and I can feel my heart beating. I can't breathe. I can see my heart beating, bluer, because he's died, and I don't know what's happening. I don't know how I'm going to be able to open my eyes anymore. I don't know why nobody can hear me.

Swoop.

I'm up at an unfortunate hour tonight because I had a terrible dream:

Look! he shouts at me. We are getting out of my car and approaching the house I lived in when I was in high school. It's a house that always makes me feel unsafe. I look at him, and he's pointing up in the trees.

My eyes aren't adjusting. I can't quite open them. It's suddenly too dark, and I can't see what he's so excited about. He seems afraid, but also interested. "Look!"

I hear feathers and rustling and feel something swooping down on us. He grabs me and pulls me to the ground, and my vision adjusts just enough to see an owl attacking us. He's covering me, but the owl is coming down, and it's going to get him, and then I know it will get me because I can't see it well enough to fight it.

It's a graceful metaphor: the bird of prey, looming; his fascination with it, and my inability to see it coming and fear of being unable to ward it off.

Spider Dream.

Dream:

We were having a picnic. It's beautiful weather, and the food is nice, and there's a blanket. He's lying down, and he's kind of withdrawn, but it's ok. I'm enjoying the sun, the food, being together. We're talking a little.

I notice a large, black spider walking across the blanket, and I point it out to him. I'm laughing, and he's not listening. I'm remembering our first apartment, the giant spiders that we had, how he'd catch them and take them outside. He's not really listening.

Soon I realize there are more spiders. There are lots and lots of them...endless spiders. They're all over the blanket, and then I see that they are all over me. Everywhere. I am afraid to move because they might bite me. I am kind of frozen, looking down at my foot. I can see a really big one with its fangs extended, preparing to bite me. I want him to help me. I'm afraid to ask. He's not paying attention. I whisper, "Please help me. I'm afraid. Please, please help me."

He just keeps lying there, dozing.

Powerlessness Is Scary.

It's a dream:

We're in the car together, and he's driving. We're heading to one of the studios where he used to work, the first one. We've not been there in a long time, and we're both excited. He's going to finish a piece he started, and it's going to be really beautiful.

He's driving. I don't like it, but I'm trying to ignore that I don't like it because things are so pleasant. I think that I should just let him drive. The sun is setting. I look out the window and try to enjoy it.

The studio is over a hill. I notice some traffic cones and flashing lights. " I think we're not supposed to go this way," I tell him. I'm trying to relax. He keeps going. There are workers waving their flags at us. People are shouting, "Don't go that way!" I am getting more and more upset, but I'm also trying to watch the sunset and trying to relax. I'm trying to let him drive. I'm trying not to take the wheel.

Suddenly, we're falling. He's driven into a huge pit. We're falling, and it's taking a long time. I'm hoping that we won't die. I don't know how anyone will ever rescue us. I look over at him, and I want to touch him. I notice that he's nodding.

A Dream.

Last night I dreamed that my pit bull had been skinned like one of the people at BodyWorlds, but she was still alive. Her tail was wagging and her eyes were kind of popping out of her head like the corpses we saw when we went, and her tongue was hanging out of her macabre little mouth. She wanted to be petted just like in real life, but she was all wet and unpleasant to touch.

I asked him, "Where is the dog's skin?" but I knew he'd skinned her and was selling her fur on the internet. He got all crazy and addicty-worked-up, and replied, "WHERE DO YOU THINK!?"

Oh man, I can't wait until I get that unconscious mental real estate back. My mind is on fire!

Heroin Dream.

Ahh, yes. I had a really exciting dream last night. I have felt for a long time like I am much too empathetic. It's damned near pathological. I feel, and I feel, and I FEEL other people's mess.

So last night, I dreamed that we were looking for people to come over and help us with our new house. We needed a carpenter and an electrician, and I was trying to find these people on the blog. We found this wonderful carpenter who always posted these lovely comments, and he knew that I was also a heroin addict. It was a big secret, and this wonderful carpenter pulled it out of me, and made an announcement to the world that I, too was a heroin addict, and I needed help.

Immediately, when he said it, I knew it was true, and I felt my body wracked by withdrawal. Pain and agony and misery and thirst and hunger and stomach and mess, mess mess....

And my mother was very mad at me. And I was still in law school, some how, and I needed to get my work done, even though I knew I didn't want to be a lawyer and I was going to drop out. I was a miserable heroin addict law student.

It is funny to me because my best friend is struggling to get her law papers done. My husband is the miserable heroin addict. I'm just fine, but my unconscious mind insists on fighting other people's battles for them. Strange stuff.

Now He's Dreaming...

He dreamed last night that we were having sex, really hot sweaty sex, and that he fell asleep in the midst of it (insult!), and when he woke up, he was all tied up and trapped in yarn (I knit), and that the yarn was everywhere, hanging from the ceiling, strung across the room from the bedposts and the windowsills, as if I'd gone yarn-spider insane, and he's tied up and trapped, and I'm about to plug the whole device in, which he knows will be terribly dangerous for him, so he shouts for me to stop, but I plug it in and he's shaking all over, and he realizes that if he's going down, I'm coming with him, so he lunges for me, and we're both shaking and frying and getting electrocuted in all this yarn...and then we wake up, and somehow it's come unplugged, and there are two people looking at us, all bedraggled and fried and naked, and they're saying, "Wow...those people have crazy sex." And he wakes up fully, knowing that I'm going to realize it was just a silly episode and let him get up, but instead, I smile menacingly and go to plug the yarn device back in...this time I'm free...so he starts explaining to me that I don't really want to hurt him, that we could just get naked and have sex, and that it was just an episode and we're over it, we're past it, we're going to grow, and I agree, and we start having sex again...

Simple Dream

A very black apple, single and fascinating, in my fruit basket.

Weird Dreams, Again.

I had another strange, strange dream last night. This time, I was walking down a busy street. It was summer time, and I was hot, and there were lots of street cafes, so it was kind of annoying because of the heat and the traffic on the sidewalk and having to step around the street cafes. I'm walking and kind of grumbling to myself, when thr road starts to angle upwards, steeply, and suddenly there are all these bikers...not like cool bros on Harleys...like Frenchified bicycle riding hippies.

Now, I don't have anything against bikers in my waking life, but in my dream, I found them to be horribly annoying. I had some kind of attitude about them being hippies or something...like they were annoying to me because they thought they were better than me or smarter than me or healthier than me, and I was especially annoyed that they had all these bicycles spread out everywhere, all in the street, and it was hard enough to walk up this freakin' mountain without bicycles and people being everywhere. They had on their annoying biker suits, the tight clothes and the weinie helmets, and they had water bottles, and the whole thing was REALLY annoying.

I'm on my way to work or somewhere I need to reach urgently, and my thighs start burning, and I'm climbing and stepping through this mass of bicycles. Eventually, the bicycles are really stacked right on top of each other, and the road is quite high, so it's precarious to walk around. Soon it stops being bicycles and starts being bicycles in disassembly, but a kind of organized disassembly...like a hardware store filled with bicycle equipment, bicycle parts, bicycle ratchets and screws and chains and things, all organized very nicely in these metal crates. It is nearly impossible to walk, but I keep going, digligently, until I get past the crowd and finally reach the top of the mountain.

At the top, I look down, and all I can see is an extremely steep, extremely snowy slope. I can't ski. I don't even have skis. There are a few people skiing, but it seems exceptionally dangerous, as they are really sort of flying off. I can hear a phone conversation between two mothers. Neither of these mothers is my mother. But they are mothers, and they are saying, "She'll just have to ski with the rest of the young people. They're all skiing, so she can to."

I consider my options: ski, or walk back through the bikes.

Now what the hell does this all mean? Something about working hard, trudging along, and getting to nowhere good? Or something about pushing against an obvious mechanism of escape (climbing uphill on foot when I'm surrounded by, completely encumbered by, bicycles?)?

Should I buy a bicycle? Were my thighs just sore from the gym?

Another Dream

Last night I dreamed that I was at the beach and there were these kittens...there were many I could pick from, and I narrowed my selection down to 2. One was a durable, canvas-textured, blue kitten. It felt just like a canvas bag, like you would take to the grocery store. The other was a total beautiful bundle of fluff. I liked the canvas one, and it was blue, which was kind of special, but I chose the fluffy one.

I was very excited about having a new kitten. I held it and loved it and scratched it, as one would do with a new kitten. Soon I found myself putting it into a jar and filling the jar with water. I think I was trying to clean the kitten, but I left it in the jar for too long, and it started coming all apart, like it was made of tissue paper.

I think the two kittens were my two husbands, and I chose the fluffly, falling apart one instead of the sturdy, reliable one. Hah.

I think I'm going to get a kitten.

Tsunami Dreams

Throughout my life, I've dreamed about getting swallowed up in the ocean. I think the dreams started because as a child, my parents had this trailer in a trailer park at the beach that we'd go to on the weekends. There was this huge gazebo that I'd play on and under, and I'd often dream about being on that gazebo and watching the water get higher and higher until it finally overwhelmed me. Or took away my things, or endangered my family.

I've been having that dream again and again lately. I guess it's a pretty transparent metaphor for feeling overwhelmed. The first time I had it recently, I was with my mother and sister and my sister's little girl. It had become my responsibility to protect my niece, and the water was getting higher and higher, and my niece was very concerned about her doll getting lost in the water. I was very anxious about not losing my flip flops, not getting out towel wet, not losting my niece's doll, and finally not losing my niece as the water and waves climbed higher and higher, higher and higher. Finally before I woke up, my mother and sister were running and I was slogging through waist-deep water holding my niece above my head while trying to escape from a giant wave that was approaching quickly, ominously.

Imagine--I'm feeling overwhelmed and feeling terrified because I'm responsible for a child-like person. I wonder what that can mean?

I had it again last night, but this time I was with Jeni, who is one of my closest girlfriends. We were having a nice time at the beach, and we walked across the gazebo to find that the water was way, way way too far inland. In this dream, I was anxious about the environment--the water seemed to be much further inland than it ever was in my childhood, and I explained to Jeni that it must be because of global warming. Then the waves become higher and higher, and Jeni and I are in danger of getting swallowed, but we hold each other's arms and struggle to get away.

I like this dream better. I'm scared, and I'm still overwhelmed, but I'm depending on my girlfriends to help me make it through.

In these dreams, I never get swallowed, but it's always close and so very dire. All the tsunami business in the news feels personal. What a terrifying thing to experience in real life!