Jumped ship, escaping. Fuck this shit, I'm out. Swept away in a deep, deceptive current, struck and stuck against sloping rocks. Thick blankets, useless now, soaked and cold and burdensome and onerously heavy, dragged out painstakingly and laid flat to dry. Night falling. Small fire, no food. Unexpected, unwelcome, unhelpful company. Will not be hushed. What will find us in the night if she will not hush? Jackals. Pitch black ones, ears perked. Slow and steady and menacing and coming straight for us through the dusk. There's a shotgun at hand, but it's old and empty, and cocking and firing for show of strength produces only the faintest click, a sound so inconsequential as to be simultaneously insulting and intensely embarrassing. Strike out feebly with the blunt end. Give the alpha a mild headache, at best. Prepare to have your face eaten.
Or maybe just wake up.
Showing posts with label nightmares. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nightmares. Show all posts
October 16, 2012
November 16, 2010
bad dream
I had a dream the other morning, which set an unpleasant precedent for my day. I have been trying to avoid remembering the details, honestly, but I think now perhaps I will try to get them out... Even though doing so will likely steal most of my words away.
It started with me walking up to my grandparents' house on Glenning St. It was still painted red. I knew my mother and sister were inside, and I was coming to meet them and my grandma for some stupid girls only get-together; but I did not expect to see, outside in the driveway, the crocodile, covered in grease, working on an old car. My stomach dropped. He did not even look up, and I hurried past, into the house. Once inside, I was furious. I went up to the room where my sister and mother and grandmother were hanging out, and they acted like they were glad to see me for about 5 seconds, and then completely ignored me.
As I was sitting there, bored and resentful, I could hear the crocodile clanking around outside and I got so angry, finally I couldn't contain myself any longer. I went up to my grandma and said, "Why is he here? How can you still let him come around? Do I have to remind you that he is a child molester? A CHILD MOLESTER!! You know what he did. You know. So WHY is he HERE?"
As I was speaking, my voice rose and rose, in hopes that he would be able to hear me outside the window, and my grandmother's body became very tense. She was smiling so hard that it looked like a death-grimace, frozen on her face, and her eyes got very big and then crossed and then slid into eachother in a really disturbing way, and her hands were clasped so tightly in her lap that they began to melt and fuse into one another. When I finished my short tirade she said, in a reproachful voice, "What do you want me to do?"
"Don't let him come around!" I answered, exasperated.
"I can't do that," she said, frowning now, her hands still melted together.
"Then you won't see me anymore," I said. And I walked out of the room, and out of that house, forever.
----------
I walked for a long time, until I was in some part of a city I didn't recognize. It was kind of post-apocolyptic. There were tumbled down buildings, great slabs of concrete sticking up at odd angles, patches of scraggly grass... and no people. I was very relieved to have found this place. It was as if I had been looking for it all along, and only knew it once I had arrived. I walked around a particular slab of jutting concrete and made my way up broken stairs and twisted paths to a sheltered place, high up. There I lay down what I had been carrying.
It was a body, a woman's body, in a long and flowy white dress. She was clean, and pretty -- and dead; or as good as dead. She was not overweight, but she was heavy, and my arms and back were very tired from carrying her. I was relieved when I was able to lay her there. I did not feel afraid, or even sad; I was just doing what I needed to do. I stood looking at her for a few minutes, as if to be sure she would be okay; then I turned around and climbed back down the way I had come, and walked all the way around the structure, and came to the steep incline of a huge dirt mound. I walked slowly and painstakingly up the mound, and arrived back where I had started, at the base of the concrete slab. I sighed.
I went up the broken stairs again, checked on the body, climbed back down, walked around the building, and arrived at the dirt mound once more. This time, the dirt had some grass growing on it, here and there.
I did this loop over and over again. Each time I arrived at the hill, it had a little more vegetation on it. Eventually there were even tall flowers growing, and the only dirt left was the path I had worn as I walked up over and over. I had the sense of a lot of time passing, as if every time I came around that corner, I was pushing time forward ahead of me, and somehow causing the grass and flowers to grow through sheer force of will. It gave me energy, to think that, and each time I made the loop now, I got a little faster. But just when I was feeling comfortable in this pattern, feeling that I had figured it out, I got to the sheltered place and found that the body I had been keeping vigil with was gone. Gone. I stared at the empty place for awhile, and then staggered back down to finish the loop. Even though I knew deep in my heart that she was gone forever, I didn't know what else to do. When I arrived at the hill this time, other people had appeared, walking on the path and sitting among the flowers, talking and laughing even as sudden clouds roiled virulently overhead. When I got to the top of the hill, my mother was standing there, waiting. She had found me.
"You'll have to come with us, now," she said.
----------
Then I was in a car with my mother and my sister. My sister was driving (but on the right-hand side of the car, which was odd), and my mom and I were in the back. And my mom would not shut up. Every word she said was causing me physical pain, like handfuls of rocks being flung at me. She kept talking and talking, and I kept interrupting her to say, "Could you please stop? Just stop. Just stop talking." But she would not take a hint. And after a while I finally screamed, almost crying, "SHUT UP! SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP. STOP TALKING. PLEASE, PLEASE, STOP TALKING!"
And she looked all sad and pathetic, like I'd hurt her feelings; but it shut her up all right. Except my sister was staring at us now, instead of driving, and when I asked her to turn around and please watch the road, she just got defiant and did this slow-blink thing at me that she used to do when she was little and I had to take care of her all the time. It meant: I hear you, and you know it, but I'm still not going to do what you said. So I got pissed then and climbed into the front of the car, where there was a second steering wheel and pedals and everything. I thought, Fine, I'll drive. It's probably the only way I'm ever actually going to get home anyway.
We were coming up on an intersection, and I almost couldn't stop the car in time, but thankfully it was a deserted country road and there was no one else around anyway. "You have got to get these brakes checked," I said to my mom, even though I knew she wasn't listening, because she was too busy being offended. (Ironically, I remembered even in my dream that my parents' cars always had 'brake problems'.)
I took a minute to adjust the mirrors before I started driving again. The rearview mirror had been pointed squarely at my mother; it was grey and very dirty, but I still moved it so I could see out the back window as best I could. My side-mirror was fairly easy to fix. Then I tried to move the one on my sister's side (which was partly shattered), but it wouldn't go where I wanted it, and I thought she was touching it and getting in my way, so I yelled at her and she yelled back and then she put her hands in the air to prove she wasn't touching it. I tried again to adjust it but every time I got it in a place where I could see pretty well, it snapped right back to its original position. So I decided it was just broken, and not her fault after all, and I apologized and left it at that. Then I started driving again.
After putting on an air of injured innocence for quite awhile (which my sister and I simply ignored), my mom suddenly opened her door and jumped out of the car, in an attempt to get us to freak out and feel sorry for her. I could see her out the rearview mirror, sitting in the middle of the road, waiting expectantly for us to stop the car and and turn around and come back for her. We didn't, though.
My sister got kind of upset, but I just muttered "Good riddance," and kept on driving.
So. It wasn't graphic or anything (for me, anyway) but I woke up very unhappy and angry, for a lot of reasons, and my whole body hurt for the rest of the day. Since I don't often remember my dreams in such detail, I figured I better record it. So I did.
PS: Goodness, Karolyn... Have you ever heard anything like it?!
It started with me walking up to my grandparents' house on Glenning St. It was still painted red. I knew my mother and sister were inside, and I was coming to meet them and my grandma for some stupid girls only get-together; but I did not expect to see, outside in the driveway, the crocodile, covered in grease, working on an old car. My stomach dropped. He did not even look up, and I hurried past, into the house. Once inside, I was furious. I went up to the room where my sister and mother and grandmother were hanging out, and they acted like they were glad to see me for about 5 seconds, and then completely ignored me.
As I was sitting there, bored and resentful, I could hear the crocodile clanking around outside and I got so angry, finally I couldn't contain myself any longer. I went up to my grandma and said, "Why is he here? How can you still let him come around? Do I have to remind you that he is a child molester? A CHILD MOLESTER!! You know what he did. You know. So WHY is he HERE?"
As I was speaking, my voice rose and rose, in hopes that he would be able to hear me outside the window, and my grandmother's body became very tense. She was smiling so hard that it looked like a death-grimace, frozen on her face, and her eyes got very big and then crossed and then slid into eachother in a really disturbing way, and her hands were clasped so tightly in her lap that they began to melt and fuse into one another. When I finished my short tirade she said, in a reproachful voice, "What do you want me to do?"
"Don't let him come around!" I answered, exasperated.
"I can't do that," she said, frowning now, her hands still melted together.
"Then you won't see me anymore," I said. And I walked out of the room, and out of that house, forever.
----------
I walked for a long time, until I was in some part of a city I didn't recognize. It was kind of post-apocolyptic. There were tumbled down buildings, great slabs of concrete sticking up at odd angles, patches of scraggly grass... and no people. I was very relieved to have found this place. It was as if I had been looking for it all along, and only knew it once I had arrived. I walked around a particular slab of jutting concrete and made my way up broken stairs and twisted paths to a sheltered place, high up. There I lay down what I had been carrying.
It was a body, a woman's body, in a long and flowy white dress. She was clean, and pretty -- and dead; or as good as dead. She was not overweight, but she was heavy, and my arms and back were very tired from carrying her. I was relieved when I was able to lay her there. I did not feel afraid, or even sad; I was just doing what I needed to do. I stood looking at her for a few minutes, as if to be sure she would be okay; then I turned around and climbed back down the way I had come, and walked all the way around the structure, and came to the steep incline of a huge dirt mound. I walked slowly and painstakingly up the mound, and arrived back where I had started, at the base of the concrete slab. I sighed.
I went up the broken stairs again, checked on the body, climbed back down, walked around the building, and arrived at the dirt mound once more. This time, the dirt had some grass growing on it, here and there.
I did this loop over and over again. Each time I arrived at the hill, it had a little more vegetation on it. Eventually there were even tall flowers growing, and the only dirt left was the path I had worn as I walked up over and over. I had the sense of a lot of time passing, as if every time I came around that corner, I was pushing time forward ahead of me, and somehow causing the grass and flowers to grow through sheer force of will. It gave me energy, to think that, and each time I made the loop now, I got a little faster. But just when I was feeling comfortable in this pattern, feeling that I had figured it out, I got to the sheltered place and found that the body I had been keeping vigil with was gone. Gone. I stared at the empty place for awhile, and then staggered back down to finish the loop. Even though I knew deep in my heart that she was gone forever, I didn't know what else to do. When I arrived at the hill this time, other people had appeared, walking on the path and sitting among the flowers, talking and laughing even as sudden clouds roiled virulently overhead. When I got to the top of the hill, my mother was standing there, waiting. She had found me.
"You'll have to come with us, now," she said.
----------
Then I was in a car with my mother and my sister. My sister was driving (but on the right-hand side of the car, which was odd), and my mom and I were in the back. And my mom would not shut up. Every word she said was causing me physical pain, like handfuls of rocks being flung at me. She kept talking and talking, and I kept interrupting her to say, "Could you please stop? Just stop. Just stop talking." But she would not take a hint. And after a while I finally screamed, almost crying, "SHUT UP! SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP. STOP TALKING. PLEASE, PLEASE, STOP TALKING!"
And she looked all sad and pathetic, like I'd hurt her feelings; but it shut her up all right. Except my sister was staring at us now, instead of driving, and when I asked her to turn around and please watch the road, she just got defiant and did this slow-blink thing at me that she used to do when she was little and I had to take care of her all the time. It meant: I hear you, and you know it, but I'm still not going to do what you said. So I got pissed then and climbed into the front of the car, where there was a second steering wheel and pedals and everything. I thought, Fine, I'll drive. It's probably the only way I'm ever actually going to get home anyway.
We were coming up on an intersection, and I almost couldn't stop the car in time, but thankfully it was a deserted country road and there was no one else around anyway. "You have got to get these brakes checked," I said to my mom, even though I knew she wasn't listening, because she was too busy being offended. (Ironically, I remembered even in my dream that my parents' cars always had 'brake problems'.)
I took a minute to adjust the mirrors before I started driving again. The rearview mirror had been pointed squarely at my mother; it was grey and very dirty, but I still moved it so I could see out the back window as best I could. My side-mirror was fairly easy to fix. Then I tried to move the one on my sister's side (which was partly shattered), but it wouldn't go where I wanted it, and I thought she was touching it and getting in my way, so I yelled at her and she yelled back and then she put her hands in the air to prove she wasn't touching it. I tried again to adjust it but every time I got it in a place where I could see pretty well, it snapped right back to its original position. So I decided it was just broken, and not her fault after all, and I apologized and left it at that. Then I started driving again.
After putting on an air of injured innocence for quite awhile (which my sister and I simply ignored), my mom suddenly opened her door and jumped out of the car, in an attempt to get us to freak out and feel sorry for her. I could see her out the rearview mirror, sitting in the middle of the road, waiting expectantly for us to stop the car and and turn around and come back for her. We didn't, though.
My sister got kind of upset, but I just muttered "Good riddance," and kept on driving.
So. It wasn't graphic or anything (for me, anyway) but I woke up very unhappy and angry, for a lot of reasons, and my whole body hurt for the rest of the day. Since I don't often remember my dreams in such detail, I figured I better record it. So I did.
PS: Goodness, Karolyn... Have you ever heard anything like it?!
October 6, 2010
livid
One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter. --James Earl Jones
I've been having really awful dreams. Vile nightmares, about the disgusting rat bastard that was my father, and the things he used to do. In the dreams, I am also trying (and failing) to protect my sister from either knowing what is happening to me, or from being hurt herself. I wake up feeling dirty, frustrated, and ashamed, composing hate-mail in my mind.
My response is appropriate. Those feelings are normal and I was not allowed to feel them for many years. And if they are coming up now, it's because some part of me wants to process it and get it out. Some part of me thinks I'm ready. But the rest of me doesn't. The rest of me thinks I will never be ready because this stuff is the ugliest and most repulsive stuff on the planet and I'd rather just pretend it's not there, that it was never there. But I know that it is.
Perhaps I should give in. No one wants to be miserable, so this is a difficult decision to make. But. Right now, I don't have a lot of serious commitments. I work a shitty retail job where I am, as per usual, underappreciated. I'm not back in school yet. I'm not married. This is as good a time as any to fall apart for awhile. To be gentle with myself, not expect too much. Because. You know. After all.
I am so sick of this cycle, though. I always think I've made some progress, I feel good for a little while, and then... and then the dreams come back. I can only hope that the nightmares and the nausea and the helpless rage will become less and less frequent as time goes by, and I allow it to surface and leave me.
April 30, 2010
night terrors
I had an awful dream last night. I could feel it coming, and in my head, before what I knew was going to happen could happen, I changed it a little. Just a little. Just enough so that I was in control, and the things that followed were not quite as bad as they would have been. But it was horrifying, still.
I woke up with my heart pounding erratically and my breath coming in flutters and gasps. In a panic, squirming fitfully under the covers, I couldn't decide if it was worse to open my eyes or keep them closed. After a minute or so I found the wherewithall to turn on the light, and tried to calm down. How could I have thought that was better? I wondered. And then I realized: it's what I've been doing my whole life. Growing up, I would look at the things that happened to me, and I'd tell myself, at least it's not like this. It's not that bad.
But it was that bad. And sometimes it was worse.
I woke up with my heart pounding erratically and my breath coming in flutters and gasps. In a panic, squirming fitfully under the covers, I couldn't decide if it was worse to open my eyes or keep them closed. After a minute or so I found the wherewithall to turn on the light, and tried to calm down. How could I have thought that was better? I wondered. And then I realized: it's what I've been doing my whole life. Growing up, I would look at the things that happened to me, and I'd tell myself, at least it's not like this. It's not that bad.
But it was that bad. And sometimes it was worse.
December 27, 2009
nightmare
I had a horrible dream this morning. I dreamed I was at the house where I grew up, and my dad walked in, so I immediately attacked him. He grabbed me and I was going to bite his hand, but then I had the stomach-turning thought that he might actually like that, so I didn't. I hit his stupid face, and kicked him and beat at his chest as hard as I could and screamed. And all the while he just held me off at arm's length, and looked pitying, and said infuriating things like "There, there," and "I know," as if he could soothe me. As if he were a good parent and I was a child throwing a silly tantrum, and when my temper was spent he would forgive me for my tiresome behavior and we would all go on as usual. And no matter how I kept screaming and hitting, and getting more angry instead of less, his face never changed and he never understood that I wanted him dead, dead, dead, and things would never be the same again.
I woke up thrashing and crying and mad. I hate him so much - but it hurts me, instead of him. It's so unfair.
I woke up thrashing and crying and mad. I hate him so much - but it hurts me, instead of him. It's so unfair.
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