Pages

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

I need help...

...as in Psychiatric help. For the past three nights I've had very disturbing dreams/nightmares. I've had weird dreams as long as I can remember but this most recent saga has stuck with me throughout the day and is making me, for lack of a more elaborate description, freak the hell out.

Dream 1, The Baby Farm. So I went into this convention center/church/concert hall to see three large rows of machines. They had gigantic pink glass bulbs with electric beams shooting around inside them. It looked like something straight off the X Files. And then, DING! Out pops a row of newly manufactured babies! Suddenly people appear. They're my parents informing me that the last group had successfully been reincarnated and they're baaa-aaack. I look over a row and dinging machines inform me that slightly larger humans are 'done'. Third row, full-sized adults are being produced.
Okay, yeah, this is weird and freaky, right? Wait it gets worse.
My "parents" escort me to the adjacent human holding area where about a hundred people are lying on a raised platform covered in blankets and wearing diapers. I'm informed that these people are waiting to die and be reincarnated into the pink bulb dinging machines. I look closer and realize there are nurses, Dr. Kavorkian-style, bustling about comforting the willing martyrs. I look even closer and see my parents lying there awaiting their fate.
I blow up. I'm outraged! I yell and scream and throw things and tell them to get up. They calmly inform me not to worry. They'll be back in 15 minutes. There's something wrong with this logic.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, however you wanna see it) I didn't see the end. I woke up.
Dream 2, Freezer Burn. I've come down with a cough and I'm convinced I'm going to die. (again with the dying. What is wrong with me?) I find out about a quick and painless way to die instead of waiting out the inevitable stressful hospital stays and hospice care and months of grieving family. And good news! There's a session I can join right away! Several others and I file down what can only be described as a college campus, pick up our canoes, and head downstairs to the campus freezer. One by one, the other fatally ill participants slide their canoes into the freezer and lay down in them. Then (and only then!) I decide I might stand back and see how the process is done before I submit to the guillotine. I watch each one struggle with the feeling of freezing to death before my eyes until eventually, they are gone. Deceased. I'm confused. Didn't they get some sort of sedative? Nope. Wasn't it painless? Apparently not, after watching them squirm and moan. I'm thinking maybe a cough isn't so bad after all.
Dream 3, The Unthinkable. The beginning details are fuzzy, but the rest are clear. Something tragic happened and Shea and Jace were the culprits. They were somehow involved in a murder. And Jace, at the ripe age of four, is put in jail. Sounds funny enough, except I felt what a mother would feel if her baby was ripped away from her. He was in a different cell and given a few toys and a personal caretaker that came in to talk to him for only a few minutes a day. He was terrified and distraught. I was only allowed to visit him for five minutes a week. We spent our five minutes cuddling and telling him it would be okay. He cried and cried. My heart was broken. It still feels broken this morning, even in complete consciousness. There's more, but it all seems like trivial details. A weird clown car that had a stick shift, which I can't drive, that was my only transportation to go see Jace. Shea being on trial himself but he didn't have to stay in jail.
I woke this morning feeling that angst, that dread of a mother separated from her child. I finally reassured myself - he wouldn't be in jail, he'd be in juvee. Wait, he's not in either, he's in his bed! Phew!
With all three dreams they felt so real! Relief didn't come when I woke up. I kept feeling them throughout the rest of the day. I felt my parents dying. I felt the people in their canoes dying. I felt my son's fear and abandonment. It. Was. Awful.
I thought maybe by writing them down I would have some epiphany as to their meanings or that maybe I could just forget them altogether. To me, writing is cathartic, my own personal therapist. But these aren't feelings one forgets willy nilly.
Oh well. Here's to happy thoughts. Rainbows and unicorns. Macaroni and cheese. Cheech and Chong. ANYTHING besides the nonsense I've been dreaming about!!

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Avoidance

I have figured something out about myself. Okay, I figured out a long time ago, but finally have the plums to admit it. You know that old childhood hide and seek tactic that if you close your eyes and stand really still the 'seeker' can't find you? For some reason, I still think that works.
Bills on the counter? Look away! They're not really there. Laundry piling up? It's an illusion, I tell you. And most recently, the scale in the bathroom. If I pretend it doesn't exist, I won't have to step on it for it to tell me I've gained weight. There. Problem solved.
Except my pants are getting tighter and my fat girl undies are fitting again. Blast.
I've noticed this problem before. Like, everyone that knows me assumes I watch American Idol because it was once my dream of being a singer. And you would think, given my cheerleading background, that I would revel in watching shows like Bring It On 1 thru 9. But no. Both of those shows just make me sad. Sad that I didn't follow through with my dream to become a famous country star with a mean Herky. So I avoid it. I turn the channel. Look away. I can't see it, so it's not there.
I realize this is a piss poor way to deal with problems. It's not dealing at all, really. I certainly don't see any results from this method, other than late notices and something I like to call Mt. Laundree'. But what's the alternative? Actually doing something about it? Pshaw!
Okay, okay. I know, I know. Sometimes I have to remind myself I'm an adult and biting the bullet and doing things I don't want to do because they have to be done is part of being the A word. Thank the Lord I'm married to a very responsible, bill-paying adult who has a knack for knocking out loads of laundry in 29 minutes flat. (Seriously, how does he do that?) But all too often he feels the burden and reminds me that I need to step up my game. And I always view this as "constructive criticism". Ha! Pshaw times seven.
Anyway, I guess if I were in a 12-step program, I would be completing step 1. "Hi, my name is Carli and I avoid things I don't like." So what's step 2? Well, in my ongoing weight battle, I locked horns with the scale and told it to kiss my chubby buns. Then I did P90X. But the other areas of my life? Well, I still have to work on them.
But I see them. They are there. No more hiding.