So much to answer for
In the dream this morning, I thought, “why not invite him over to dinner?” The house was empty now and I was trying to piece everything together, my life, the grocery store trips, how much food to allow my household of one. My old dormant crush, the man I now know only in my dreams but who could still hold a place in my heart (diminished by knowledge and years and age, jammed in between the other things from my twenties that I regret), was coming to dinner.
Before he made it (in the omniscience of dreams, I saw him walking along the sidewalk, this Yorkshireman – never underestimate the power of an accent – with his wiry climber's build and surprisingly grey hair), I woke up. 4:44 a.m.
I was relieved to wake up so late. Last night, restless after a day at home with a sick boy and a never-ending stream of movies, I was having a hard time getting to sleep. I had to bring out the Buddhist Scotsman with his gentle, almost sexy whisper-voice (“and now allow the muscles of your thighs to soften”) in order to get my spastic mind to quiet itself, to take that internal tension, so automatic at times, and smooth it out. I soothed myself with images of a night of extended sleep, expecting all the while that I would wake up at 2:30 or 3:00. But I made it to almost 5:00 a.m. and that was good enough for me.
I don’t have enough to do, enough to feed on. Don’t envy me. I’ll be envying myself in six months. Or, really, I have things to do but I am having a hard time getting interested in them. Oh, there’s the usual cleaning, the stuff sorting, the life organizing, But I could also be exploring and writing and entering life more. I have to structure my time and make myself a life and I am just realizing now that I don’t have to stay in the house as a form of atonement, a way of showing that I am not a layabout wasting time (as I waste it). There are wonderful things about controlling my days, but not if I let them slip away.
Don’t laugh at me or roll your eyes – or, at the very least, don’t tell me that you are doing so, and I'll pretend that you aren't – but I think I am holding on to this emptiness as a penance, that the structure I set up against myself is a form of payment for my sins. I am not a religious person. I was not raised in an environment of structured guilt. But I carry around guilt anyway and I cling to her, the old me, the one who was alone, who took her anger and directed it inward. I’ve mentioned at least once here the idea that my thoughts could kill. In a recent tearful conversation about my first child's birth/death, one therapist nailed it when she asked me if I thought that I killed that child with my anger and hate. I had a lot of that at the time, a lot of adolescent resentment. I was sixteen and on my own. I knew then – and know now – that killing with thought and emotion is impossible. I know and I don’t know. It’s so hard to shake, this feeling of responsibility. I hated and wished for release and then he died. It's a twisted logic, a spurious connection between a, b, and c.
My second son's birth was a trigger. Not that my life before parenthood was some sort of free romp, but it was much less self-constrained. Then the boy who got to live arrived, along with the overwhelming reminder of what I was capable of, my dark powers. I’ve been trying to make it up to the ones I’ve wounded, the ones who are no longer here, including the adolescent me who was stuck with the responsibility, the burden of someone else's death.
I used to have dreams about the baby I forgot. There he was in the antiquated crib in the high-ceiling room with the wispy curtains floating in the breeze. By the time I remembered – to get food, to change a diaper, to check in – he would be dead. I haven’t had those dreams for years, thank goodness. That’s part of the healing process, the joy of having a child now and doing right by him.
I am grateful for my ability to pick apart my emotions, for finding the why. Once I know the why, I can deal with it, and I am, ever so slowly. This new discovery of my self-imposed prison both as penance and as a way to hold on to the girl that was, is useful. I can cry over her and then allow myself the freedom to live.
So why the dream visit from the Yorkshireman, the occasional Mancunian? He used to represent freedom to me, freedom and desire, the world of art and living on the edge. He’s an outdated symbol (nothing personal Mr. H/C/T) who was showing up for the final supper, our last meal together.
It’s been a long leave-taking from my caged life, but I am halfway there. The second half, which is all action and forward movement, is going to be the most difficult. It will take willpower and a sense of direction without knowing my ultimate destination. I can do it, though I may be writing about it ad nauseam until I get further along the path.
A note on the title: "So much to answer for" is a line from the Smiths song Suffer Little Children, which is about the 1960s Moors Murders. It fits Manchester, my dreams, and guilt.
Image: Me, last night, verging on sleep.