Suffocating
I feel like i’m suffocating today. I’m irritable and want nothing more then to crawl into bed and hide and not come out for a year, but at the same time the last thing on earth I want to do is sleep again. The dream might come back, and I don’t think I could take that. It lingers in the build up of tears behind my eyes, and pressure in my head and pain in my chest. I can’t breath for the ache that it brings, its like a stone is sitting on my chest and I can’t move. It takes effort to reach the keyboard, to type, to move, to think.
I don’t normally remember what I dream at all – let alone clearly – so why did THIS one have to stick with me? He came back. Dead since august, suddenly he came back – even he couldn’t explain it, it just was. It was the same as ever, he was laughing and joking and so much The Asshole I always knew and loved. He surprised those here, he took me to work and surprised his boss, everyone welcomed him back with open arms….
…except me. I kept saying “but your DEAD.” and he kept waving it off. And then i was thinking “But what about the Social Security? How will I pay bills?” and he waved that off too, saying he’d go back to work, just before disappearing to play chess with a buddy leaving me to fend for myself, alone, at his work place. So I found my cell phone (which apparently I’d lost, as well as one of my boots…) and kept trying to call TBF but he wasn’t answering and there was no signal, and I kept just trying to figure out why he was back and how, and what I was going to do now. Practicality suggested he couldn’t go back to work because, hello, dead guys don’t have id and such! but everyone was so happy to see him and talk to him and have him there – but all I would think about was “what the hell am I supposed to do NOW? I had just gotten everything figured out! WHY can’t he just STAY GONE?”
And then I woke up – feeling guilty, and angry and in pain. Sigh. I know he’s not coming back. Why do/did I feel so guilty in being the practical one in the dream in demanding answers? Part of me felt i should accept it, the other practical part of me demanded to know how I was going to fix this new bobble in my ‘taking care of me and the kids’ plans.
I was angry too – that he’d come back and fucked everything up. Then I was angry at myself because I couldn’t be happy that he was back, that I couldn’t just accept this as a solution to everything…
I know, it was just a dream, but it’s left me unsettled and off kilter today. I just want to crawl in a hole for a week/month/year or two. All i can do is force myself to move today. To finish some work, to finish hanging some pictures, to just… move.
And i just got OFF the rag – what is this, P(OST)MS? Ugh.
3 Comments
Ugh, what a horrible dream. Maybe there is a part of you that feels guilty for holding it together without him? I don’t know… You are doing an amazing job of caring for your kids and giving them love. Don’t second guess yourself, even in your dreams!
Well. That my cellphone died a horrible death on the 11th -almost- answers the lack of a signal. Had you been spot on with the date…. uncanny.
So I guess here is where I get to yell about same damned number for years, why didn’t you try the house line, etc, etc. *smug smirk* Payback’s a bitch, eh?
*duck*
It’s all part of greif, babe, and under no circumstances does knowing this is a perfectly normal (HA!) occurrence make it suck any less. I know my mom had similar dreams after we lost my dad. I still have the occasional one where he’s back in the picture and the rest of the world continues to function as apparently normal – even though I know it’s truthfully a really fucked up parallel dimension of bitter surreality.
Twisted humor that I’ll openly question myself in those dreams, going so far as to confirm that… yes…. I do realize this is a dream, and I am asleep, I know what’s fact and fiction, and that yes, it’s some sort of sick masochistic streak in me that’s willingly continuing to participate even though I’m more than aware of potentially disastrous backlash once I get around to waking up.
“You… do… realize what you’re doing to yourself?”
“Yep.”
“Allright then, carry on.”
*chuckles*
addition via aim by TBF for later reference:
it just floored you…. don’t think you realized you had those things stirring around in the emotional murk, eh? avoiding sleep is probably trying to pull a Wolf and talentedly avoid facing coming to terms with those feelings, too, cuz everything’s still fresh and you’re still mourning your loss…. so the hell he think he IS coming back and interrupting when you finally thought you were on some path to some horizon of healing or similar bullshit, not to mention it’s hard to be angry at him for answering that deepest desire that you know is just a romantic hope and impossible *chuckles soft* you wanna remember him kinder than that and let the whole fond memory shit blanket your mental scrapbook about the whole thing (the fuck i get THAT metaphor from? *blink*) good memories and that kind’ve stuff, not bitter remorse for any reason… you haven’t healed enough to face the compromise of both good and bad, cuz remembering the good things is what makes the day ache less so you can get through it
least, that’s what my fingers apparently thought you needed to know *just stares as if any of that actually significantly means something worth all those words and not just, like, one phrase… LOL*