Remember the Code

Last night I dreamed I was on a journey:

I was walking and leaving a "place". There was some code I was to remember.  I had keys in my hand.  On the way back to this place, (I had been somewhere) I saw some friends and I was tempted to not stop and connect with them but to continue on to whatever was so important.  But I stopped and chatted for awhile and then continued on my way.  I had forgotten the code. I started jogging to make up for lost time and then it started raining.  I had a way to go so I stuck out my thumb and started hitchhiking.  A few cars passed me by and then one stopped.  There were two men inside.  I had a large box which I put inside the backseat and then panic hit.  I scanned the inside of the back door to see if it was rigged in a way so I couldn't open it from the inside and it looked weird somehow.  There was no way that I was getting in that car.  I thought I'd probably just watched too many scary cop shows and actually said that out loud--then I asked the one who was driving if I was safe with them--he shook his head and said no.  I tried to run away but I was caught in that "secret saboteur" thing that happens in dreams where your legs don't work right you can't move very fast.  I was on the ground. He got out of the car and caught me.  I hoped for another car to come along, to see what was happening and help me.  I remembered my "box" was still in the car and knew I was going to have to abandon if I got away.  The box now actually had someone inside of it, like a small child or my baby self.  I needed to protect it but I was in no position to do so.

I'm contemplating the "self" this morning.  All this "dying" I've been experiencing. It's the death of a self that isn't really me.  Or my mom.  Or...

Of course all these selves need their due, but it's so easy to get lost in the drama of a dream when the real meaning is right there in the code.  I was suppose to remember the code.  I keep forgetting the code.

Sleeping In Their Bed

Well, I must say that there is nothing like a good night's sleep without crazy dreams to give one an attitude adjustment!  I slept so well last night.  I often don't get up to pee but I usually have to at least sit up several times for a drink of water.  Last night I was crashed!

But now I'm reminded of a dream I had almost a week ago that should be written down:

My husband. and I were out at a party with a bunch of people including K. and his wife B.G.  It was very late and we (my husband and I) ended up back at K. and B.G.'s house.  They were going to be out of town for awhile and we had arranged to "housesit" for them.  We were actually heading home to our house but for some reason we were at their house and it was late and I was tired so I told my husband that we should just sleep there in their bed and go home in the morning.  He agreed so that's what we did.
In the morning I was trapped in a hypnopompic transition, both in my dream body, sleeping in K. and B.G.'s bed, as well as in my physical body, sleeping in my own bed.  I was agitated and confused, unsuccessfully trying to wake up while attempting to make sense of why I had decided to sleep in K. and B.G.'s bed.
What were we doing in their bed when they weren't leaving until that night, not the night before?  How could I have been so stupid and confused?  What was I thinking?  Where were K. and B.G. now?  Had they gone to our house to sleep because we were in their bed?  That concerned me because my house, and particularly my bedroom was a mess and I didn't want them to see it because I was afraid they would judge me. My mind was wreaking havoc with me, I was struggling and quite distressed. I finally woke up (in my dream) and went rushing through their house, naked, to find them.
I found them on a blow up air mattress in their family room.  B.G. was sitting up and looking at me somewhat strangely as if to ask why I had been sleeping in their bed.  I tried to explain how confused I had been, and still was, and then she explained how she had come home late, in the dark, took off her clothes and fell into the middle of her bed between me and my husband before realizing we were there.  K. and her were then trying to figure out what to do and she said they should go sleep on the air mattress.  He had asked her very pointedly if she was sure that was okay with her and she affirmed that it was.
I left them and their air mattress feeling extremely out of sorts, trying to make my way back to their bedroom, very aware of my nakedness and feeling vulnerable, with their house now full of various friends as if a party was going on.  When I got to their bed, I told my husband to get up so we could get out of there.  I was embarrassed, confused, and just wanted to go home.  I was extremely unnerved.

Emotions I experienced in this dream:

Embarrassed
Confused
Distressed
Vulnerable
Afraid
Agitated
Unnerved

I Was Frustrated

I just woke up from a dream about MLWIML.  It was morning and we were in bed, waking up together, trying to make love but we kept having interruptions.  We were at my house, and his daughter was there with us--she was about 5 years old.  It was one of those situations where the adults are in bed, cuddling, kissing, really wanting to fuck, but a child keeps asking for attention.  She didn't need much.  She was happy and dressed, entertaining herself with various things but she didn't know my house well, or what she was allowed to play with, so she kept coming in to my bedroom asking very sweetly, a question about this or that, wanting to know if it was okay for her to play with something.  I got out of bed to help her and then came back and we started back up again and then MLWML got a bad pain in his head and I tried rubbing it for him.  He kept talking really softly with his head under the coves and I couldn't understand what he was saying.  There was a radio on making racket and that was annoying.  I wanted to turn it off but I thought leaving it on might be better so his daughter wouldn't hear our lovemaking sounds.  Time after time we'd start kissing, pressing our genitals together, feeling the sexual energy rise and then something would happen to distract us.  I was frustrated.  Happy but sexually frustrated.

My Sister and My Mama and Another Dream

Another dream but first a little background.

My sister was born on my mother's 39th birthday.  Her third and last child.  I remember when she went into labor and my step-dad took her to the hospital.  I was seven years old.  A few days later my mom came home with a baby girl.  There were five of us kids at that point.  My step-brother and step-sister, my brother and me, and now my little half-sister. 

My step-father was a wheeler and a dealer.  A deacon in his church.  He was also a swindler.  He could sweet talk anyone.  Except for me.  I didn't like him from the get go and I think he resented me for that.  I had his number but I paid for it.

My mother once told me that they never paid for groceries throughout the four years of their marriage.  I remember the grocery store and those Saturday afternoon shopping trips with my mom pushing the grocery cart up one isle and down another.  It's a cheap furniture store now.  There was the meat counter where she picked out hamburger, chicken and pork chops.  We eat meat every night and they were big meals with several courses.  She was a good cook.  And we always had dessert too.  It was my job to set the table. I can still see her signing the credit slip for the groceries, never paying cash.   The store owner went to our church and was friends with my step-dad.  At some point, when my mom's relationship with my step-dad had soured, she had a meeting with the owner of the grocery store, requesting that he stop allowing her to charge groceries.  She told him that he would never be paid for the groceries we bought on credit, week after week, year after year--that my step-dad would never make good on the bill.  He told her not to worry, that her husband was a "good boy", that he trusted him whole heartedly.  She felt like she had done her part, she had warned him and he chose not to heed her warning.  She kept charging groceries and he never got paid.  Years later he told her that he wished he had listened to her.  He couldn't believe that my step-dad would cheat him.

My birth father, who I had never met, tried to make contact with me, my brother, and my mother once, a couple years after my mom had married my step-dad.  Knowing that my mother was a church going woman, he called one church after the next in our hometown, looking for us.  When he finally found us, the pastor told him it would be best if he didn't contact us, that my step-father was like a father to us, that we were a happy and a stable family, that my father should leave well enough alone.  I spent my whole childhood yearning for the father I had never met.  My birth father was a wheeler and a dealer who swindled people too.  Interesting, the men my mother chose considering what a kind, upstanding, hardworking, honest man her own father was.

My step-dad would drive our whole family up into the mountains on Sundays to a prison work camp where we would sing gospel songs to the prisoners.  Then he would bring one of the prisoners home with us for Sunday dinner.  I remember my mom complaining that she didn't like it.  She didn't think it was safe.  Another thing we did was read the bible every morning before school.  I think we read for an hour but maybe it was only a half hour.  Each of us kids would sit by ourselves, reading our bibles. We did this when I was eight years old and I remember the passages too, not really by heart but some of them from Genesis and John, "And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters..." and "In the beginning there was the word and the word was with God..."

He was an odd man. Two weeks after my mom and him were married (after two weeks of courtship) he told her that they would no longer have sex, that the time they would normally invest in this pastime, would now be spent in prayer.  That didn't last long but the proclamation disturbed my newlywed mother.

He was also mean.  And abusive.  He beat me with a skinny leather belt when I misbehaved. I misbehaved a lot.  The skinny leather belt wasn't his only method of punishment but it was one of his favorites.  I received the brunt of his physical abuse while my brother received his verbal/emotional put downs which caused him to stutter for many years.  Well, come to think of it, I got a heck of a lot of the verbal/emotional abuse myself.  I remember one night at the dining room table when my step-day chastised me for eating with my mouth open, like an animal.  He said that if I was going to eat like an animal, I should eat where the animals eat and he made me take my dinner plate and eat under the kitchen table. My mom didn't allow me to stay there for long.  I remember her coming in and pulling me up from the floor and sitting me up at the table.

My step-dad saved the sexual abuse for his own children.  My step-brother who seven years older than me and a strong supporter of keeping it all in the family, passed it down line to me.  At the age of ten, my mother divorced my step-dad.  She was in the hospital recuperating from a hysterectomy after being diagnosed with cervical cancer.  During one of my step-father's visits he informed my mom that he had gotten his secretary pregnant.  Two weeks later my mom had moved me. my brother,  and my little sister out of the house and into the new home she had purchased (with no money down) for 11,000 dollars.  Besides having no money for a down payment, she was also unemployed (she had been working for my step-father in his carpet store).  Things were different back in 1964, but even so, years later when a bank manager was reviewing her loan, he looked at her, shaking his head in disbelief that her loan had ever gone through.   My mom always did what she had to do to take care of herself and her children.  In her own quiet and shy way, she made things happen if they needed to happen.   A while after her divorce, a minister who was a friend of the family, told my mother that my step-father had visited him shortly after their breakup, asking to be castrated, based on the biblical tenant of..."If your right eye offends you, pluck it out..." So there she was, my mom, a forty-two year old, newly single with a pending divorce, freshly out of the hospital,  unemployed, new home owner, with three kids, ages fourteen, ten, and three years, to support. 

We weren't an emotionally close knit family.  My mom worked 8:00 to 5:00, five days a week, came straight home to make us dinner, and took care of her home on the weekends.  We loved each other enough.  I fought with my brother and was a bully at times to my little sister. None of us had much interest in the others but my mom dutifully went to at least some of my brother's Little League games and to our school functions.  My little sister looked and acted like my mom--dark hair, dark skin, shy, and high strung.  She was a mama's girl and the baby of the family.  Matter of fact, my brother was kind of a mama's boy himself, in a different way.  I was not.   I was a rebel.   Although I was also a caretaker in my own right.  After my brother moved out of the house at the at the age of eighteen and then two years later I moved out at the age of sixteen,  my sister had her mommy all to herself and I think she liked that.  I think my mother liked that too.  They were like two peas in a pod and remained that way for years.

A funny (or not so funny) thing is that my eldest daughter and my sister are SO MUCH ALIKE, it's uncanny.  As adults, I could never tell their voices apart on the phone.  There was 15 years between them in age and both of them thought the universe revolved around them.  They never liked each other but my sister set the precedent by never being was kind to my daughter since the time she was a very little girl. She seemed jealous of my daughter's close relationship with HER mother and saw her young niece as an interloper. She didn't appreciate my daughter invading THEIR space.  She didn't appreciate me or any of my children taking any of my mom's attention away from her.  She and my mom were best friends.  I was not best friends with my mom.  She was just my mother and we weren't all that close.  But we weren't not close.  We loved each other and enjoyed a greatly improved relationship once I moved out of the house at sixteen.  I loved my mom and I knew she loved me.  She was a good mom and helped me out a lot.  But my sister was her baby and they were extremely close.   Some might say that my mother was codependent with my sister, always bailing her out of trouble. Not that she never bailed me out, because she did.  That's what moms do.  But it was different.  That seemed to be the nature of their relationship until my mom's Alzheimer's started really kicking in and she couldn't be there for my sister in the ways she had been before.  And even though my sister thanked me profusely, time and again for my role in caring for our mother, I think she ended up feeling very isolated and perhaps annoyed with some of the decisions I made in regard to our mother's care during that time even though I ran everything past her while she still showed some interest in being involved, even at a distance.  I was here in the thick of it, and she wasn't.

This is the point where I'm sure my sister's story diverges greatly from my own.  Well, actually, I suspect there is a great divide with most of my story versus the way my sister would tell it.  But she isn't telling it here.  Well, maybe I won't tell anymore of it either.  Perhaps I've said enough.  For now.  Or  maybe I just don't want to put anymore of this story to print.  It feels private I suppose.  And I notice that I feel protective or her, and of our mother.  Of both of them.  It's just a story after all.  It's my truth but it's not THE truth.

But I will say this.  It's been over a year since my sister has come to visit my mom.  She lives only a little more than two hours away.  And before that, it had been almost a year since she had visited her, when she came for a short visit on the birthday that they share.  I feel sad for my sister.  I feel sad for my mom.    My sister has a child also, my niece, who is eleven years old.  She hasn't seen her grandmother in all this time.  And it's possible that she may never see her again. My sister may never see our mother again.  She will most certainly never see the mother she once knew.  The mother that she abandoned.  I angry about that too.

Actually, I think I will put a little more of my story to print...As we've grown older, I've also grown to appreciate my brother and my sister more.  Up to a point, before this current great divide with my sister.  The feelings were mutual too.  At least I think they were.  My brother and I have become good friends over the years and we enjoy one another's company.  It's not that we are super close and see each other all the time, but there is a mutual respect and we do visit fairly frequently and don't let too much time go by before we connect with a phone call.  We've spent most Christmas Eves together over the last thirty years, along with some graduations, weddings, and a few other holidays and birthdays sprinkled in.  He usually makes a point to come and visit me when he comes to town to visit our mother. We genuinely like, as well as love each other.

I've had good times with my sister also. When she lived in San Francisco and other parts of the bay area, we visited her often for many years and she always put us up.  We also connected during her frequent visits with our mother and there were many shared, sweet moments and laughter.  It warmed my heart getting closer with her over those years.  I miss her.

So, this morning I had a dream.  After my husband left for work, instead of getting myself up and ready for work,  I fell back asleep and dreamed about my sister.

I was in a big city with someone.  I don't know who.  It wasn't my husband.  It might have been my boyfriend.  It seems as if he was there in the dream somewhere.  We were in a room in a run down hotel and I was somewhat afraid.  For whatever reason, I didn't feel safe. 

Then I was walking, maybe with him.  I don't know were I was going.  Maybe I was going to visit my mom--then I was walking by her house, the one that she bought in 1964 for 11,000 dollars.  This was our family home that I grew up in, that she sold in 2007.  I looked up into the drive way and there was my sister, sitting outside with a group of people who turned out to be her children.  She was there, at my mom's house with seven or eight beautiful, gorgeous, lovely children.  She was stunningly beautiful herself.  And graceful.  I was so touched.  My heart was so happy to see her.  I went up to her.  I didn't hug her but I was just over the top pleased and amazed to see her and her incredible children.  So that's what she had been doing all this time, in her absence--giving birth and raising these exceptional kids.  I just couldn't get over it.  She, on the other hand, was not happy to see me.  And these children who had never met me, only knew me through their mother, my sister, and her stories of me--whatever they were,   I knew they were not nice stories that held me in a good light.  My sister was angry with me.  Hostile, in a mellow, but intensely energetic sort of way.  But I noticed her beauty just  the same.  And our mother's house was intact, still full of her belongings.  And there were two men there, gay men it seemed, who were the caretakers of my mother's home and all of her belongings and they weren't overjoyed to see me either, but they were friendly enough, and accommodating in a mildly territorial sort of way.  They were aware of their places ultimately, and knew better than to act in a way to usurp me. 

Some of my sister's children I did know after all.  A few of them had light complexions, with blonde hair and blue eyes.  They were familiar to me and we had met before (even though I didn't know my sister had any children).  They recognized me also and were excited to see me also (but not showing it too overtly).  The other children had dark hair and swarthy complexions, dark eyes with long eyelashes and they were very exotic looking.  I just couldn't get over their beauty and I was just totally in love with every single one of them.  They were fairly standoffish to me.  Nice enough.  But not really.  They were being protective of their mother.

I left my mother's home and crossed the street to another hotel/motel type place where I was going to stay.  As it turns out, my sister was staying there with her kids also and I saw one of them as I was walking by one of the rooms.  The door was open and there he was, this beautiful young man in his late teens or early twenties, very striking and I spoke to him, still so excited over their existence and that they were my nephews and nieces.  He said something back to me, something along the lines of, "Cant you just let it go and leave us alone."  It was almost as if I was sort of stalking them.  At one point he stood up to me, as if I was a bully of sorts and he was rallying for his mother's cause.  I spoke back strongly to him, in protection of myself to make him back down, which he did.  I was just so amazed at his beauty.  I think my boyfriend might have still been with me, or was with me for the first time at this point...

I woke up so tired, almost paralyzed.  It was an intense dream.

I Dreamed My Mama Died

It was almost like an assisted euthanasia.  It was time for her to go.  We were in water, a large pool like area in a creek.  But the water was low and I was allowing it to fill up like in a bath tub or swimming pool until it would take her under and I would let her die.  And I was going to stay with her and hold her hand as she went under the water and drowned.

But all of a sudden the water was deep and had taken her when my back was turned and I wasn't holding her and she was gone.  And the water was rough and murky and I couldn't see under the surface and I was walking around, reaching down in the water with my hands searching for her but not whole heartedly because  I was afraid to find her, floating underwater dead.  But then I stepped down, into another pool of water on a lower level and the water was clear there.  It was like another room in a house and I saw her lying there under the water, convulsing and bleeding in this spot on the gravel floor, almost as if she was lying in front of the hearth in a living room--a sacrifice on the altar of her watery grave.

The sight of her scared me at first, seeing her moving, struggling, still alive with her blood swirling in the water above her head like a spiraling halo.   I turned and slipped back behind a corner so I wouldn't have to witness her death, but then immediately returned and went to her.  I couldn't let her die alone.  I leaned down and took her hand and she flinched  like I had hurt her, being too rough as I tried to crawl between her and the hearth and lie next to her.  It's not so easy, trying to lie on the rocky bottom of a creek, underwater, holding on to someone as they die.

But I managed to situate myself,  and I held her hands and she looked at me.  Our eyes met and I told her "I found you mama, I am here." It's not easy to speak underwater.  I took her head in my hands and kissed her as she died.  My mama died.

I woke up from the dream and gasped as I realized how intense it was.  I told my husband that I dreamed my mother died and that I was with her.  I wondered if she had really died and had come to me, to say goodbye and I sat up to look at the time.  The clock said 2:07.  I wondered if the call from her assisted care home would come soon, when one of her caregivers went in to check on her and found her there in bed, dead.  I hoped not.  I knew the call could still could be coming.  It will come eventually.  Or maybe I will be with her when she dies.  I hope I will be with her.  I pray that I will be with her.  I need to be there for my mama when she dies.

I kept going over the dream, reliving it in my mind, over and over, trying to remember every nuance.  I didn't want to forget a thing. I decided to write it out so I wouldn't forget it.  I opened my computer and saw my youngest son on face book.  Two-thirty in the morning and there he was.  I told him about my dream and he was glad it was only a dream.  Only a dream.  For now.

Get Your Mind (and relationship) Outta The Box

"You know, if there was an argument to be made for monogamy, not having to schlep an inordinate amount of stuff between 2 houses would be it."--Twitter post from Mistress Matisse 4 hours ago.

A recent dream:

I was driving a BIG car. It was a really long, older Cadillac or something like that. At first, some passengers were in the car with me, I think they were Jerry and Ren. But then they got out of the car and were walking behind as I was driving slowly into a lot to park. We were all going inside a store to shop. But the brakes wouldn't work and I couldn't stop the car. I was driving through the lot trying to steer carefully so I didn't hit anyone. There were a couple of small children that I was worried about as I drove pass them too close and too fast. I drove out of the parking lot and into an alley, pumping the brakes to no avail. I knew that soon I would have no choice but to crash the car to stop it and was contemplating the best choice of objects to collide with. There was a brick house directly in front of me, another house off to the right, and a wooden fence. But all of a sudden from out of nowhere, I noticed a fairly wide turnaround spot that I was actually able to maneuver the car around and stop it, only running over a few flowers in the process. I was relieved, got of the car and left it there.

Interpretation of my dream--just a few thoughts off the top of my head:

My car=my body. It also represents by journey in life--taking me where I want to go. I'm afraid because I'm not in control-- it's more like I'm along for the ride. I leave the two people that I love and are my close traveling companions, behind with no explanation (I'm not really leaving them but I have no way of communicating, explaining to them what's happening.) I don't know how to stop the vehicle I'm traveling and I fear the obvious impending accident. And yet it turns out that I handle everything just find...I don't crash and burn. I am saved by grace. All is good.
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What's been up for me? I'm bleeding again. And I was PMSing. But just for one day. Monday evening I was sitting in the hot tub with Lover Who Is My Lover and another friend when the north wind starting blowing. The wind, the sky, the energy in the atmosphere felt magical to me. But by Tuesday it was a full on wind storm that blew some crazies my way. I had a knot in my solar plexus and felt exceedingly vulnerable all day. I knew that power and control (my lack of) issues were up for me so I just breathed and concentrated on feeling my stuff. By late Tuesday night the small of my back was really hurting and I had a painful kink in my neck. Jerry gave me an intense massage and I fell asleep. On Wednesday morning I woke up to pee and I found that I had started my period. I bled all day and night and then all day again and now I'm here in bed next to my sleeping husband. He gave me another massage before he put his face mask on and left me to my blogging.
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I've been thinking about polyamory and the different relationship styles people create to express their love. I've been thinking about how controlling we tend to be, how we try to manipulate everything, keeping ourselves and others in neatly organized boxes. But the nature of life is messy! It's chaotic and free and not so easily contained.

I have a friend who is contemplating a change to the structure of her relationship. Her partner is resisting this change. She's afraid he will leave her if she insists. They have created a sweet little life together that has been safe, comforting and enjoyable. But she also wants something different that their relationship isn't providing for her. All things change. Everything evolves. What is the risk when we refuse to adapt to the changes that life (or our partner) demand? Will we listen to the music and deal the the actualities that are placed before us? What happens when our ideas and preconceived concepts, our grand schemes and neatly designed roles, just don't fit anymore but we refuse to switch gears and go with a more natural flow--the organic unfolding of our life?

I'm reminded of a three way love affair I was involved in back when. It was a rare and special opportunity. It was sweet and juicy and alive. But we were all inexperienced and fairly clueless as to how to handle the actualities that were before us. On one hand I adored and truly appreciated the relationship and what it offered me. The love and sexual energy in my life was up big! I accepted what was transpiring as a huge blessing. On the other hand, it wasn't the exact type of relationship I thought I was looking for. It wasn't the perfect match to my preconceived dream. I've written before about how people have the tendency to create the perfect relationships in their minds but then they get involved and fall in love with real people who don't go along with their exact plans. At least they don't go along easily, sometimes kicking and screaming all the way. People have ideas and dreams of their own before they hook up with a new partner. They don't come into a relationship as a blank slate saying, "Mold me to thy will. Your will is my command!" The attraction is there and the love may grow--the love is growing and the juice is flowing but all the "ideas, preconceived concepts, grand schemes, and neatly designed roles start getting in the way of dealing with the actualities of the real relationship they are living. Here is a real, warm, flesh and blood, person standing in front of me, sleeping in my bed, sharing my bodily fluids and by golly getting in the way of my actual dream coming true! Damn I hate that--can't you just go away so I can have my fantasy back?! Ha. But not funny.

So the question is...Are we going to keep our heart open to this person and continue loving them as their authenticity reveals itself to us? Will we adjust our preconceived ideas of who they are (and who we think they should be) and what our relationship with them should look like to match the reality of the real person? Are we willing to love unconditionally as the relationship grows and unfolds differently than how we originally thought it would? Can we let go of our minds and our fears and be with what is? Can we give ourselves to love?

I've noticed people struggle with their controlling nature within new monogamous relationships. They are yearning for a relationship and then meet someone they really like and start dating. Then, even though they are enjoying getting to know this person on many levels, they have all these preconceived ideas about who and what their perfect, one and only, "fantasy" partner will be and because this "real" person doesn't match the long list of required qualities, they break off the relationship. Of course it's fine to want what we want but it also seems very limiting when someone insists on pre-picking a mate from a list preconceived attributes that they believe will somehow magically make them a suitable partner. So what if this person doesn't match up to our ideas of the perfect mate? If we love them, or even just like them a lot...er, um, friends are good to have. And if the sex is good, even better.

Polyamorous people do this all the time too. Couples look for a specific gender when they want to add another partner--rather than simply being open to fall in love with another who might actually make a great fit with them in a committed triad--they are looking specifically for a man and a woman just won't do. Or vise versa. A woman is looking for a secondary partner because she already has a primary. A man is looking for a primary partner because he has a secondary and even though in his heart of hearts he would prefer being a primary to her, she already has a primary so that spot is filled. Egads! I mean, I get why we do this stuff but it limits love.

One of the reasons we get on this creatively controlling track is because not only do we want what we want, but also because although there may be no limit to the amount of love a person may have to share, there is still only so much time and energy to spare and if you already have a primary partner it makes logical sense to carefully assess your life and come up with the notion for instance-- that a secondary partner would fit in, just perfectly, right here, into these little available slots! But while this preplanning may be valuable to some extent, the bottom line is that love is not logical or practical. It doesn't always make it easy. It likes to have it's way with us and enjoys throwing curve balls when we least expect them. The more particulars we demand of love, the more limited the access it has in our lives.

So while there is something to be said for the practicality of trying to create relationships that fit into neatly organized little boxes--love springs forth out of freedom and it's fit to be tied when one tries to structure it in some unnatural way. Love will show you the way it wants to grow and express itself and practical or not, these are the actualites of our love lives that must be dealt with as they arise.

Love and relationships need the freedom to take on a life on their own, separate from what your ego thinks it needs. Let love come to you and reveal itself. You might desperately want a primary relationship in your life but if you try to force an otherwise healthy secondary relationship into a primary position, you'll be asking for trouble. Likewise, if the fact that you already have a primary partner encourages you to contain a relationship into a secondary role that is more naturally trying to grow into a primary role, you'll be asking for trouble. Sometimes love wants us to be alone. Sometimes it wants us to have two primary partners, or two secondary partners with no primary. Finding peace and balance between the practicalities and actualities of a relationship are challenging but one should not be sacrificed for the other.

Where there is love, there is a way. But we must be willing to stop stuffing the person we love into a predetermined role and the relationship with that person into a preconceived box.

An Illiterate Stalker

I had anxiety dreams last night and I woke up feeling really agitated. Yesterday was a surprise vacation day as I hadn't realized that it was Veteran's Day and that I didn't need to go into work at the college. I discovered my opportunity late in the day on Monday so I hadn't scheduled clients or any other appointments that I normally would have, had I known. I love those days that I get paid for staying home and sleeping in. My plan was to stay home and clean house (I'm decluttering again) most of the day and then head out and visit my mom and another friend I haven't hung out with in awhile.


Well, my morning went as planned but my cell phone's display disappeared so I headed over to the Sprint store to see if they could fix it. Sucess! I then headed over to visit with my mother at her assisted care home and she really enjoyed the big slice of Key Lime Pie I took to her. Also, she was happy and we had a wonderful visit besides the fact that she thought I was her sister most of the time (which really doesn't bother me and didn't impinge on our visit at all.) But it comforted my heart to see her doing so well. I've recently agreed, begrudgingly, to allow those in charge of her care to increase her antipsychotic meds so maybe, just maybe, the little cocktails they are mixing up for her will work better. I'm am leery of placing my hope in that direction but it sure looked that way yesterday. Let's say I'm being an open-minded skeptic about it all. I don't trust pharmaceutical drugs in most situations much but I'm certainly willing to have them do their job. Especially if they improve the quality of the last years of my mother's life. So we shall we.


As for the cell phone, by the time I was done visiting with my mother it was not working again so I went back to the Sprint store to buy a new phone. That ordeal ended up taking the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening. It was a crazy situation all around but in the end, I had a new BlackBerry. I don't know how that happened. It just did. I've never even thought twice about having a BlackBerry. I figured I'd get myself an iPhone at some point once the service was no longer restricted to AT&T. They look like a lot of fun and I'm a big Apple fan so I just figured that's the direction I would eventually move in. But no, I am now the, not so proud owner of an almost $600.00 BlackBerry. I did not pay the full price for this smart alec phone. My son is on my plan and out of our 3 family lines he is the one who was eligible for a huge discount on that particular phone, so part of the hassle of the day was picking him up and bringing him back to the Sprint store with me so they could activate and then change lines and then deactivate, and reactivate them all again. Some crazy ass thing they had to do to make it all work so that in the end I paid $200. for the phone. I had to increase the cost of my phone service also, as I didn't have Internet access before but whatever, now I have a phone that is smarter than I am and I can barely figure out how to make a phone call with the darn thing.


And I swear, the first thing that came to my mind when I first held my new BlackBerry in my hand was, "Oh look, I'm copying Mistress Matisse. Yes, Matisse has a BlackBerry and she blogged all about it when she was contemplating which smart phone she should purchase and now she's always downloading pictures and making Twitter updates to her blog from her BlackBerry and I'm sure I'll be doing the exact same thing soon. I'm kinda embarrassed really. And I also just set up a Twitter Account. Well, actually I've had a Twitter Account that I was unaware of. It just so happened that Gillette, one of my most favorite bloggers in the whole blogosphere started Twittering and then I got this notice that Jenny Block was following my
twitters. Excuse me, I don't twitter, I said to myself in a rather snobbish, uppity tone. And even though I find myself always reading Matisses's Twitter updates when I'm reading her blog, I've held some disdain for the whole activity. It strikes me as vain and odd and, oh I don't know, somehow presumptuously egregious. But I followed a link to the Twitter site and found myself trying to sign up for an account but my handle, intendit, was already taken. Wait a minute, I thought, that name belongs to moi, who took it?! Then I thought, I wonder if I did? So I typed in the password I figured I would have used and, well yes, as a matter of fact, it was me. OK, so I'm twittering now too. And, like Matisse, I can even twitter from my new BlackBerry if I ever figure out how to use the darn thing.

So back to my anxiety dreams. I actually was dreaming about Matisse and my BlackBerry. In my dream I had emailed her from my BlackBerry and although I thought my 2 emails to her were very witty and creative, showing off my intelligence and charm, well she didn't take them that way. She took me as more of a stalker personality. And if you read the Mistress, you'll know that when she in one of her moods, she has a penchant for belittling the most ridiculous and ignorant of those who contact her via email with the silly things they say. She also does this with the off the wall phone calls she gets. Well this is what she chose to do with my emails to her, she published them on her blog along with her snarky comments full of contempt for me. Not only that, she didn't keep my name confidential so there I was, exposed to the world as the illiterate stalker of Mistress Matisse. The illiterate part comes in obviously because I think Matisse writes very well and she has a real issue when people butcher the English language, which I fear I have a tendency to do at times. I don't consider myself a great writer by any stretch of the imagination (although I know I get by and the more I write the better I get) and one of my great weaknesses is that I just don't really have a very good handle on all the rules. One of my goals is to take more English classes and learn some of the very basic stuff that I somehow missed out on. Anyway, she was also making fun of my skills as a writer. Come on Mistress, give a girl a break, I'm not even your submissive.

Remember people, this is a dream. But this was the anxiety that I was dealing with when I woke up this morning. Isn't that funny and strange?!

A friend got Jerry and me tickets to go see Ozomatli with her tonight. They are a great band and it's just down the street from our house so we can walk there after Thai food. I'm stoked!

Workshop Hell

I was trying to sleep in this morning but was forced to pull myself out of bed and my workshop hell nightmare. I guess it was actually a morningmare. I was caught in this cycle of dreaming and waking myself from this horrible situation I kept drifting back into. When I finally got out of bed I was in a stupor, stumbling about half asleep with a sore throat and puffy eyes. Very weird. I had been dreaming that I was a workshop facilitator, totally unprepared and on my own. It seems I had about 20 or so people who had shown up for this workshop and I didn't have a clue as to what I was going to do with them. I was searching for these certain books that held ideas for activities etc. but I kept gathering them and then just as quickly would misplace them again. Many of the participants had brought their children and were depending on them minding their manners and entertaining themselves peacefully and out of the way for the day. They weren't. My workshop space was not in order and I didn't even had a sign in sheet or system to check them in. People had been milling about for a couple of hours and time was wasting away. I was trying to pull them together into an opening circle but they weren't cooperating. They kept leaving to go to the bathroom or deal with a child. One man complained to me about another bringing alcohol. The majority of the participants were men. I was feeling overwhelmed and frantic and I started raising my voice at them in frustration and then doing this little whining crying thing. I wondered what the fuck I was going to do with them for the day. I finally decided that if I could ever get them seated I was first going to have them be silent and meditate for 5 minutes to check in with themselves. Then I decided to do dyad communication with them. It was the only thing I could think of to save the day.

Feelings in dream:

frustrated
anxious
worried
angry
inadequate
annoyed
distressed
impatient
embarrassed
exasperated
irritated
afraid

Let me go with the pseudo feelings in my dream, my perceptions and victim voice of what I thought others were doing to me. I thought I was being overpowered, ignored, disrespected, pressured, diminished, intimidated, unsupported...

I'll be doing some dream work on this one as it's leaving me feeling somewhat baffled.

Please God, Let Me Stop

Speeding backwards, out of control, I watch in the rear view mirror, fearing what collision might lie ahead. Pressing on the brake to no avail, I desperately pray to stop. My prayer is answered, simply to find myself turning around and heading in the same direction. Still filled with trepidation, I know at least now I'm facing my future rather than going into it ass backwards.

2000

She and I

We came together in a dream dance, almost as friends.
But then she started in again, clouding my mind with the toxic smoke of her thoughts.
I opened the windows and doors to clear the air of her ways.
And I told her, "This is not OK."

She laid there, writing on the floor in pain.
Bleeding out my life force.
My rich and vital juices, wasting on her nonsense.
I voiced my disgust to her. "What are you thinking?" I said.
And so it goes with us, my pathetic self and I.

1999