Tears. Absolute floods of tears. Silent and wet running down my face when I least expect them. Inopportune and in senseless places. What in the hell is wrong with me? Sleep is not even a sanctuary now. I cannot escape. My psyche is kicking my ass for something. Horrid nightmares. Not those anxiety inducing ones that come every now and then. I have adjusted to those and can actually go back to sleep. The panic passes and I am okay. These are making me cry even in my sleep.
It's the same dream every time. I hear him, yelling at me to get up. It's dark in the room and all I can hear is him progressively getting more and more angry but he won't come in the room. When I drag myself from the bed, moving like I'm planted in molasses, he tells me, "You didn't pack? We have to be gone today." Suddenly I am in the kitchen of my home, packing seemingly endless dishes, glasses, pots and pans. He's behind me yelling again, "How could you wait this long?" The only words I can utter through my tears come out choked, "I'm sorry baby. I didn't know."
I wake up on a wet pillow every time. I am actually crying in my sleep. My son has heard my sobbing. He has awoken me from naps and from a dead sleep in the middle of the night. We have discussed that day at length. Gone over it minute by minute. Put all the pieces together and hashed out everything. All of it is on the table. We love each other. He says it's time for me to lean on him. He says I did everything I could do. He says I have to let it all go. That my time of strength is at an end. But if I let it go, who will remember him? Is there a time when ones strength reservoir is simply exhausted?
I have been researching what's wrong. All of the dream interpretations say that the yelling is repressed anger within me. I have never allowed myself to be angry. I've never screamed at his headstone, "How could you leave me like this?" I've never thrown things in a fit of rage at him. I have grieved privately and alone. I have kept my dignity out of respect for his memory. I have borne the scorn and whispers. I have never responded. Simply because I know the truth. Simply because it is beneath me to address such things. Simply because it is not in my character. Leaving me was not his choice. It's not something he would have ever done willingly. My son says he would never have survived losing me. He loved me with everything in his being. So whom is it exactly that I should be angry with about being alone?
According to the research I've been doing, the packing is change. There is some great change happening in my life. I need to pack up my past and put it behind me. I need to move through my life, not just knock around in the space I used to inhabit. But how do I do this in a life that is not of my own making? The life I constructed with my own two hands no longer exists. I am not who I was when that day dawned. Everything I dreamed of and planned is gone. Is this where the anger comes in? Well don't cue the violins because I'm not buying it. Wallowing in misery is over for me.
Maybe I have held my grief a little too close to my chest. My pain has and will remain private. I will not bleed on command. For as much as I have shed my Appalachian heritage, somethings remain ingrained in me. A strength. An honor. Those are the qualities I chose to keep. But evidently my psyche thinks I need to share. That I need to vent. If I won't participate in my recovery, it will drag me to hell until I do as it asks. I simply cannot wage war with myself any longer it seems. So I am working on the anger issue. I must do something constructive with it. I must not have done all of this in vain.
As much as the dream-scape I am inhabiting is only in my head. The results are very much not there. The stress is quite literally manifesting physically. I really don't know how this is going to play out in real life. I have a friend who has a degree in psychology who is helping me. We are going to sift through my feelings until we find this baseball bat of a problem that I evidently can't even see. She tells me that it's there but I just have to dig deep enough in the dusty boxes of my broken life to locate the damned thing. So I'm heading upstairs now to look through the rubble. I have on my protective goggles and my yellow playtex gloves. Maybe a flame thrower and a whip. But whatever is in my head will not beat me any longer. If I don't come down in a reasonable amount of time, call the marines. Tell me to come rescue me in my nightmares and dream-scapes.
