My wise little sister helps me think deeply about what's going on with me now. I told her about the dream I had this morning. I woke at 6:20, refused to allow myself to be awake that early on Christmas, rolled over, put a pillow over my head, and went back to sleep. Normally that would have been a very good thing to do. The extra sleep puts me in a state of restedness that readies me for a busy day like today. However, what happened was that I had a dream about Bill. In this dream he was in some care facility, one that looked like a big comfortable home with several bedrooms that were used to care for the ill. He looked as handsome as he did when we first met. He was sweet and vulnerable. He was being released, and I was there to pick him up. But he wasn't going home with me. There was another woman there to get him. I chatted with her while he was being readied. She was prettier than I, she was perkier, she had more energy, and she had a better personality. She took Bill home. I understood. I had had a slight tinge of ambivalence about taking him home anyway. When I woke up at 7:45, I was sad and lonely. I felt rejected, unworthy, unattractive (on many levels), and isolated. Was that other woman a personification of gambling? Was that the one he had always preferred? The pretty, engaging, seductive addiction? The woman I thought he would never choose if I had forced him to make the choice? Was the house in the dream our home? After Bill left with the other woman in the dream, I saw my dad and Carmi there. I was left with them. Did this dream encapsulate those final weeks before he decided he wanted a divorce?
My sister told me to confront the lie this is. "This is not true about you. Tell yourself you are fun, funny, intelligent, pretty, and desirable. Write two entries in your blog. Call one 'The Lie' and the other 'The Truth'. Don't let this live in your mind. This dream is not the truth. This dream is the lie."
The lie of this dream is that I am deficient. The lie of this dream is that I am all of those things I felt when I awoke. They are not true. I cannot allow myself whether consciously or subconsciously to rewrite the end of this marriage as something that was a judgement of my qualities.
I rarely dream about Bill. I told my sister that there were good things about the marriage, and it's the missing them that causes the sadness and dreams like this: he was a great lover, he sought out my company and always wanted to be with me, would come home from gambling (whether or not I knew he was gambling) to be with me when he knew I was arriving home or when he knew I wanted to be with him, he usually valued my opinions, loved my cooking, wanted me to go everywhere with him (unless he was going gambling because I hated that and refused to go there), and when he got diagnosed with cancer he told the doctor he didn't want a support network; he had Cindy, he said. The change in attitude and the decision to get a divorce flew in the face of all of those things. The inconsistency of that is getting to me; I knew that in time it would. It is the basis for the lie. The inconsistency is what is making my mind wonder if there is something wrong with me. It's not about something being wrong with me; the inconsistency is about mental illness abducting someone's sensibility and ruining the marriage.
There ARE things wrong with me, and I will get to those in 'The Truth'.
No comments:
Post a Comment