Pent-up heart

04 December 2011 07:17 AM Categories: Insomnia | Writing prompts

image by naosuke ii http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4124/5020082786_c1aa6cc68c.jpg

In the moments in between, the spaces between one leg of sleep and another, I dreamt about high school, about too-bright classrooms I’d never seen before, the halls filled with people who no longer talked to or recognized me, who didn’t see me because I blended in or because I was a ghost. These weren’t dreams about being unprepared (though I was late and I didn’t know what was going on). They were dreams about not existing, but having to deal with the realities of the world anyway. I was doomed to walk alone, painfully aware of my lack of being, of the social needs of a self no one else could see.

Last night before going to sleep, I wrote a bit in my journal (so much to say, so little ability to say it clearly right now) and then listed the things I wasn’t going to let myself be woken up by, but maybe I would let enter my sleeping mind because my waking mind is all pent up. OK, self, I wrote, you can have the dreams about loss and guilt and invisibility and other long-term themes. One of us has to confront this stuff, and if it has to be you, my sleeping mind, my subconscious, so be it. If the dreams are important, you may wake us up, but not if you don’t have to. (Write interrupted at minute eight by the boy coming downstairs to tell me he threw up [a common occurrence during his illnesses – apparently he drank some water too quickly; as I type this I hear one of the cats throwing up … another common occurrence], getting him situated on his sick couch, talking with the groggy husband. Now to begin again.)

3:30 a.m. I was up. I was trying to go back to sleep. On with the meditation track, the slow climb of relaxation up my body from toes to scalp (thank you for the CD recommendation, Betsy). Not quite asleep, not quite asleep, and then in came the boy, not as feverish, still a little whispery with whatever imaginary scenario was playing in his head. Somehow we both fell asleep and then my dreams were of driving. He was driving, I was coaching, until I realized that the maneuverings of the car were too complicated for him. So I took over, tried to get out of the parking lot, but was blocked at both exits, so I drove back and forth between them, until the semi moved or the pick-up drove off, and I was going up the ramp too fast and then I woke up again.

The boy had fallen asleep with one of his arms around my back. The soon-to-be toothless cat Nick was howling his angst to the ceiling, and I had dream hangovers, this bereft image of sitting alone in my high school cafeteria, followed by the slight rush of the dream me at the wheel, parenting, taking over. I want to choose the last dream as the one to stay with me, but it’s the other dreams that are more representative of my internal state. I am invisible to myself at the moment.

My heart is compressed. My eyes are dry.

But sometimes my heart opens up. Yesterday early afternoon, I felt it, the blossoming, the sudden access, a reaching out that I can’t explain. I felt the connection, I was in the moment, I enjoyed it while it lasted, this portal to another. The day covered it over, but I know my heart is in there, waiting for me to let down the gates again. I just need a good cry first.

From the prompt "What a loser."

Image by naosuke ii.

Tags: dreams, sick kid, crying, Round Robin, cats, writing prompt, driving, insomnia

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