man of my nightmares

I had a nightmare last night unlike I have ever known, different not in form so much as in the experience of it. There was violence, danger, frustration. I was only blocks from my McKinney home but couldn't get there. I couldn't rescue friends from impending drawn-out death. Even petty aspects of nightmares, awkward social situations, assailed me. But I felt calm. As long as he was there, I felt calm, beyond the reach of the pain, fear and frustration.

I don't know who he is. In my dreams, people remain faceless, but still I can discern their identity. For instance, though I never saw the details of them, I knew that Kevin and my high school friend Angelica were there. This man's identity was as shadowed as his face, yet I felt more familiar with him than anyone I have ever known. I was as much myself with him as I have ever been alone; no, I was more natural with him than without.

The times in my dream when I could no longer distance myself from the events of the nightmare were when his fingers slipped from mine. When we struggled through the collapsing building to save the wounded woman, he pushed me to safety. Away from danger and without him, in the moments it took for him to follow, I gasped with the most personal fear I've known. The second he touched my fingers again I felt as though no fear had ever existed .

Even though I never saw his face, I felt certain that he was someone I knew, loved and trusted. What's more, I felt the same emotions coming from him in regard to me. I didn't --couldn't-- question his love for me. Even when impediments arose and reason argued for us to part, he didn't leave me. Staying together felt right, like the rational solution to a logical problem.

The moment I woke, the first thought to assail me was the only important question, which had been so ridiculously unimportant while I slept: "who is he?"

I am still certain that he is someone I know, though obviously not in the same capacity as in the dream. Maybe he is a fictional character, perhaps even one of mine, that I know well. I just cannot put my finger on it. I have been trying to reason through all of the hints I have of his identity. He was dark --swarthy-- and well-groomed. His shadowed head bent solicitously over mine, making him 6 to 8 inches taller. He is broader than I, naturally strong through habitual activeness but with a layer of softness, as though disinterested in purposefully sculpting his body. He took commitments seriously and so hesitated to commit. He was almost carelessly loyal, indifferently moral and lazily graceful. I don't know which parts of him were fictionalized by my brain: perhaps his character is real but the figure of my invention, or vice versa. I'm still tied too firmly to the dream: I still feel certain that finding him will make things right.

I am waiting to wake up.

weighty

At the dinosaur museum I played with childlike abandonment in sandboxes and hands-on displays. I wasn't in the proper insecure-adult-female frame of mind when I jumped on the scale without my defenses in place. Due to this, the numbers struck me like a back-handed slap to the face. My jaw dropped. When Dad's turn came, he pronounced the scale accurate. I groaned with disappointment:

I am heavier than I have ever been. I know that it is completely unfeminine to discuss one's weight. So sue me. I weigh 162 lbs. I once vowed never to weigh more than 155 lbs, the weight at which I began my college career. Even 150 makes me cringe when the little red needle on the scale swings that high.

My senior year in high school was a miserable experience by and large. One part of it was the insecurity I felt about my body. I had gained ten pounds the previous summer, and I was just generally awkward. Instead of wrestling my body into submission, I accepted my feelings of inferiority. Part of the reason was Joyce's clandestine bulimia. I couldn't be the victim in a war with my body.

I lost the weight naturally the first semester of my freshman year. The ten pounds faded gradually as I walked around campus daily and as poverty limited my consumption. I've maintained a fairly steady weight with brief fluctuations of up to five pounds as holidays come and go; my body perpetuates the status quo without too much difficulty. I have typically worked on my feet, walked about town and spent little on food.

But now the driving, studying and Cafe Rio of the past six months have added up. The sum: approximately fifteen pounds. I am appalled.

The weight gain is unprecedented, and so must the reaction be. Heaven help me, I will diet and exercise. I commit myself to it here in writing. I give myself to the end of the term, 50 days hence, to lose fifteen pounds. Wait, on second thought let's make it ten: I'm new at this. That comes out to a pound every five days. Is that doable? I don't even know. Physically, I am sure I can make it, if I can discover any shred of self-discipline among my limited virtues. But I am rather interested in the emotional toll. Cognitive dissonance is practically a guarantee. I have prided myself on my amity with my body (see blog entry "self") and now I must focus on disliking my current shape and appearance. I must grant attention to my failures and insecurities. I chose to limit my diet to 50 days for this reason, and I intend to approach the experience as a scientific observation. We'll see how it goes.

I'm just a little sad that the numbers written across my mirror are counting down in reference to a diet and not for something to which I am looking forward.

ode to joyce

Joyce is home! She arrived back in town yesterday, and I wanted to squeeze her until she popped, which isn't entirely out of the question, given her condition. Her softly rounded tummy is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Unless she think that I love unborn Owen more than her, I'll say my favorite part of having her back is her hugs. It's true, too. Talking to Joyce is never uninteresting. She has a million things to say and most of them are quirky enough that no one else will ever think them, much less say them. It leaves her listeners with the distinct impression that she is irreplaceable. She's tons of fun. She is going to come to the dinosaur museum next week, and she always knows the weirdest movies. She's beautiful too. Her gentle sprinkling of freckles across her face makes her look vulnerable, even when paired with the piercings. Her hair is always the height of fashion, and I have wished before to be as cool as she is; but even if I had the clothes, the makeup and the haircut, I would not know how to use them the way she does. Joyce is a strange combination of punk kid and a mother. This was true even before Owen was a twinkle in her eye. Joyce takes care of people: she brings soup or ice cream as situations dictate. She has always been the mother figure to her weird friends, and I know she shielded me many times as we grew up, though I was the older of the two. She's going to be a wonderful mother come November. She's already making baby blankets and buying onesies. I can't wait to be an aunt. And in the meanwhile, I am very excited to be a sister.

dreams

I have simple daydreams. I envision them again and again as I fall asleep in all their intricate detail, but they are simple. Humble. I do not want palaces. I don’t even picture myself being rich and famous. I don’t want power or prestige or ease.

I imagine children and books, kitchens and gardens, and a husband.

I want to play with my children, skip rope with them, color in coloring books. I will read aloud with all the proper voices, and we will experiment with recipes. I will cuddle them and tell them I love them, and I will panic that I am failing. I want my home to be full of loving chaos: too many faces in and out, too many bicycles on the lawn and too many shoes at the bottom of the stairs. They’ll bring their friends over for rowdy games and family dinner. I want to hear first words amid indecipherable gurgling. I want to smell them after baths. I want to take too many pictures and watch them sleep on nights when I’m restless. I want to teach them to waltz, to take them hiking and to cry at their baptisms, weddings, or graduations. I want to be a mother.

My home will burst at the seams with books. In my lavish dreams, I have a real library with a dark leather sofa and dim lighting except for the lamp. I could retreat there to gorge myself on books. I’d go back again and again to beloved classics, and I will buy books because of their cover art. The room will get a little dusty, but it will be quiet—the only quiet room in the house. Maybe I won’t have a library. Instead, books will pile toward the ceiling, some laying sideways on top of others on random shelves around the house. And I will write my own books, wedging myself in whatever available corners to type out the stories parading in my head. Characters will come alive through my words, words that will likely remain forever in the dark of my personal scribbles. That will be enough for me: knowing these worlds intimately, even if no one else every will.

I want to cook, to make my kitchen a central place for family gathering, not a secreted corner of utility, but a vibrant heart of the home. I will bake. If I am poor, I will discover ever new and ever more-creative uses of pastas and beans. I can make casseroles. I will make sandwiches and cut off crusts. I want to monitor the health of my family and fool them into eating what they need.

I want to dig in the dirt. Weed, water, trim, transplant. Surround myself with life.

I want to marry, to be a wife, to belong to someone. The faceless man I picture in my future is my best friend. He and I talk about things: sad things, happy things, serious lets-make-plans things, and goofy I-overheard-this-today things. We’ll be partners. I want him to value what I do during the day, what I think about the books I read, my opinions on joint decisions. I hope he thinks I am beautiful and sometimes can’t keep his hands off me. Our children will be embarrassed by our kissing. When we fight, I hope I want to be the first to make it up. I want him to be dedicated to God first, me second, the family third—those above all else. I want him to remember little things, just to reassure me. I need reassurance sometimes, and I don’t expect that will change. I want to remind him why I love him. I want to pray together.

I don’t know if I will ever have any of these dreams. The crossroad I face at graduation is unrelated to my ultimate hopes. But how can I say aloud what I want next, when saying makes me so vulnerable? I must make plans with the options presented to me .I may get a job, or go to graduate school. I hope to do the latter, to study a subject I continue to love. And I will get fulfillment out of personal growth, while I wait and work to make my real dreams come true.

letting go

I read a line in a book once that went something like this: it is not comfortable being a bridge. (Ten points to Ted if he can name the book!)

Human beings were not designed to be bridges. We cannot live in two worlds at once. We cannot believe two contradictory truths. Sometimes we have to choose, and then we have to let go.

Often this comes with inevitable mourning. We would rather tear ourselves in two then let go of what we've long held: it amounts to the same thing.

I imagine it's how I'll feel if Brad and Angelina ever break up.

Nothing remains in the end. Especially not if we don't make a conscious effort to carry it with us.

I have had to let go of many things in my life. Difficult things. Sometimes it required a paradigm shift, of which I was only capable after many years of work. Letting go of anger hurts like that. Long-held hurt feels good in a way, and removing it is like amputating a limb. It saves your life, you're better without it, but damn it is painful!

Letting go of love is harder. I've lost friends and romance. The times that I struggled to let go were infused with self-narcotization and despair. For a time, about four months in duration, I slept too much, ate too little and prayed in tears. I never wrote about it in my blog. Those months are relatively bare, and looking back the emptiness strikes me first. It reduces me to tears, although the words are not sad. I simply remember how I felt then, why I didn't -couldn't- write. I realize that I received a reprieve, and I understand if you think that means I had it easy. But never during a single moment did I foresee that respite, that clemency. For me, the darkness of the moment was real, and I can sympathize.

I know what it is to cling to the past like a breath, knowing that to turn my back on it would be to suffocate myself. I have deleted phone numbers from speed-dial,and destroyed letters at various times in my life. But it's not the release that hurts; it's the constant tug of war that comes before, like trying to bridge two ever-dividing shores.

I know that in the future I will again be forced to let go, and the mere prospect leaves me clinging tighter to those things I love. I would rather be stretched beyond my endurance, drawn until there is no semblance of form anymore; I would rather do that than to systematically cut away a piece of myself. Perhaps that is only because I lack inurement and proper foresight.

We were meant to be whole, not divided. So, be whole.

hatred

Last Saturday I woke up feeling angry, bitter that the sun should be shining and displaying no sympathy for me. In books and movies, the weather always reflects the mood of the protagonist in a satisfying symmetry. Perhaps I am not the protagonist of my story. Perhaps I am the villain. That is certainly how I felt Saturday, and that may explain why my designs were thwarted. Protagonists never get thwarted. But that's not this story.

I sat at my computer in the library, glaring at the screen and mentally demanding my paper write itself. I felt grumpy, the kind of grumpy where I have nothing good to say and I just want to be around others who accept that grumpiness and cater to it. Grumpy and entitled.

I looked to Facebook chat for friendly sympathy, but all I saw were the people to whom I usually talked, the people with whom I spend all of my time. My friends, for all intents and purposes. Right away I felt an overwhelming loathing for them. The idea of talking to a single one left me squirming with boiling anger. A chat popped up on my screen and I instantly killed it, like slamming a door in my petulance. I blinked a little at the intriguing reaction. Then I called Emilie.

I had only seen Emilie a couple of times since I moved back here. There's really no excuse for it. Sure, I was busy and she was busy, but I managed to hang out with other people once or twice a week. Somehow, I just never thought about any of my old friends. Moving back felt more like starting at a new place. It just never occurred to me to resume my old life.

But on Saturday I spend hours with her and Caitie. And they were wonderful! I never knew so many comfort foods existed until the sisters heaped them in dishes for me. We talked and caught up and commiserated over our recent misfortunes. When Emilie asked me about my friends in my new ward, I answered: I hate them. She met them that night as we played croquet and ate marshmallows up in the canyon, and she says she can see why I don't like them.

I guess what I really got thinking about is the nature of hatred, and the things with which we (generalized we) fill our lives.

Hatred and love are not opposites. You've heard this a thousand time. Apathy is the opposite of any emotion. You have to care about things in order to hate them. Yet love and hate cannot occupy the same point at the same time. Something may be stippled with both, allowing for general ambivalence of feeling, but somewhere, in some microscopic place, there is a line drawn. The way red and purple can flow into each other, but at some point the color ceases to be red.

Avoiding hatred requires only a blank indifference, and if there is one thing humanity is good at, it's indifference. But soon, proximity requires attention. You cannot see someone every day without eventually taking notice. Eventually, you will form an attachment, and then an opinion. Some things you can live with an exceptionally long time before you take notice. And then you begin to hate.

There are all sorts of reasons to hate something, though I am a bad Christian for saying so. But the reason I have found most satisfying for hating something is that it is similar to the thing I love and yet not near enough; the way hate is similar to love; the way red is similar to purple. That almost-ness wears on me, a little trickle at the time until a chasm opens up and roars for its devouring. The thing I hate most is disappointment. Dissatisfaction.

I hate movies and books that are wonderful the whole way through and then end badly. I hate spending time with people who mean nothing to me. I hate the things in my life that ought to be wonderful and are only mediocre. Those things that were born to be merely adequate, remain innocuously beneath my recognition, and I continue to take no notice. They fulfill their purpose, and in that way deserve infinitesimal love.

So why do I fill my life with these things? Because they are better than the alternative, which is having nothing. At first I even believe I can remain indifferent or come to love these situations. I certainly came to love Texas. New things take time. But sometimes the time grates without me noticing. And once I notice the abrasion, I am too attached to let it go. I have come to care about it. And then I always wonder if fighting back will make it better or worse.

I sort of talked about these things with Emilie. And I talked about them with Ted when I went hiking with him yesterday and then with Tarythe tonight. They think I lack assertiveness, which magical quality serves to dissolve hatred, returning it to unimportance or transforming it into love. In essence, it means not settling for the in-between. I am certain they are right about my passivity. But I hope they also understand my fear of inconsequentiality.

I was once asked if I would rather, after I died, be hated or forgotten.

I would rather be hated.

hades and persephone

Persephone in lighted meadows bred
Fair daughter of the Harvest Queen above
Lord Hades, midst the darkness of the dead,
On seeing good Persephone he loved.
Abducted from her world of golden light,
She feared the dark and Hades love denied.
He offered her his kingdom of the night,
With fruits of love wooed her to be his bride.
Redeemed from hell, she sat in fields of bloom
And tasted fruits devoid of nectar sweet,
While Hades, hunched upon his throne of gloom,
Found darkness for the first time incomplete.
Twixt Lord and Maid, a cherished wish: ere freed
Persephone had eaten every seed.

giant

Giant, above the crownéd temples stand,
Across thy brow flies Helios’ flamed chair,
Prometheus hath laid his flown torch there.
Bowed Atlas is not mighty as thy hand,
Which reins desire and wants no reprimand.
Avoid Pandora’s pain, and patience bear.
Thy valor, champion of virtue fair,
In battles win renown of Ares’ band.
Adonis and Apollo stand apart:
No demigod Olympians need I
When Paris’ gilded apple falls to thee.
Good Giant, pardon me my mortal heart,
If it like Icarus aspires too high,
Or waits like banishéd Persephone.

jerk-sitting

The other night, I sat up to ridiculously late hours commiserating with a friend on his recent girl trouble. I was magnanimous, as even he would attest. I let it slide when he made gender stereotypes and when he said I couldn't understand the depth of his pain because I was too young. I was the best sympathetic friend anybody could ask for. And how did he repay me? By going on to delineate why he didn't want to date me. I know he doesn't want me, else he would have persistently asked me out by now; and heaven knows my heart has not wept for him; but still! still you don't tell a girl how little you get excited about her. I don't know if I can make excuses for him. Sure, maybe it was the late hour, or his melancholy disposition, or the pain of recent rejection. Or maybe, he's just an arrogant jerk, who really does think only in terms of himself. Thank goodness I have a sense of humor about these things.

between times

Through winter semester I devoted myself wholly to school. My mind aimed at finishing a perfect semester, at proving that I could do this and do it well. I felt powerful determination not to let anything drop before the end. But then I reached the end and I felt like it marked the completion of my goal. I should have been finished! I surpassed my hopes or expectations for the semester. However, I have until December before school is over, and my true goal is still at a distance. Unfortunately, I already surfaced and broke the single-mindedness of my task.

Since then, I have been living in half-lives. The first is this Provo existence, my Here. I am now involved, socially, and have a superficial semblance of a real life. I cannot be fully invested in this place and time, however, because my mind, through my entire submersion, has been on my end goal, on another place in the vague future: my There. It is the aim of my work here, the reward for my labor. I think about There often because of my premature feeling of accomplishment and entitlement. I’m ready for my prize. But it still sits at a distance.

I bridge these two worlds and find little satisfaction in either. One is transient and, often, annoying. The other is imaginary. I need to re-submerge myself in academia, the only real link, like the Wardrobe, between the activities of my real life and the dreams I hold for the future.

Give me hours of blissful productivity in which to feel alive, so that I can end this semi-reality! Let me come closer to my goals and not squander time on trivial things! Help me to hold my breath a little longer, so that the eventual release will bring reward and pleasure. I don’t want to settle for the Here and Now. I want my prize.

falling over emails

I felt rather nostalgic this evening and spent an hour perusing old emails. Just reading the words sent over two years ago makes me smile. I floated afterward, just as I did when I first received them. It's wonderful the way memories and emotions can be recalled and relived. And it's amazing how badly I fall each time I indulge in them. These emails are a treasure I cherish.

I only wish I were allowed to express these feelings, but I feel like there is a taboo placed over the words. There are no norms or mores to guide my behavior in my current situation, so I have to rely on the outmoded ones which restrict expressions of affection to the level of formal commitment. Otherwise I would send emails often where I spoke candidly. Especially tonight I want to send one in gratitude for all of the ones that have come before: I still fall in love with you through your writing. But I can't say it.

In that way, rereading these old communications may have been a good thing: at that time too I was hampered in what I could say explicitly. But every day, I implied it, and he knew. So, I will work on my subtleness once more and recapture that elusive honesty and playful affinity, that I may look back in later years and enjoy them as much as I did their predecessors tonight.

recent loneliness

Sometimes I am lonely. It doesn’t happen often; I am usually too busy to notice. But it happens sometimes, when my energy level is low, and my defenses are down. A friend turning away when a prettier girl walks up, or when someone in a social circle begins to say something intelligent, personal or relatable and then is cut off by a repetitive mundane semi-humorous quip at which every laughs raucously. These things can spark it. Laughing has its place, but sometimes a small laugh suffices. Sometimes I just want to give a wry smile or a shrug or a tear. Crying has its place too.

Quantities of people have nothing to do with loneliness. I have many almost-friends, with whom to pass the time. I am involved and socially active. And I don’t think they know one thing about me. Not really. I have now mentioned Kevin’s name three times to one or another of these almost-friends. I wonder that it should take five months for the biggest part of my life to surface. I don’t want to talk about him with them. I don’t want the conversation to turn into another riotous orgy of joke-telling and half-meant innuendos. I am tired of innuendos. I think I would be less put off if these people pulled any of the tricks they suggest. I am tired of hints becoming the substance of a person.

Hope brings on loneliness. I feel it most often when I want to be real-friends with these my almost-friends. Many of them know the lurid stories of my family life, and I feel like their knowledge is my blessing, like a burden lifted from me. But still my life is not real to them. My parents are a running gag, and my sister the tale of caution. We are like celebrities in a tabloid. I can tell them anything shocking and they will accept it, but I cannot tell them anything real. I feel like I am stretching for something just out of reach. I am sad to think how close we come to being friends before the chances wane.

Sometimes I get angry with the revelers and I want to slap their laughing faces. But most of the time I just want to know what they are thinking. Who are they, and why am I seeing only the lurid exteriors instead of the human substance? I am sure I could love them, but we don’t give ourselves that chance.

These are the times when I am desperate for the Friends I know well and love best. I fear the ring of my phone almost as much as I fear its perpetual silence. I hate hearing my obnoxious ring only to see the screen light up with an unknown number. My hopes mock me just a little. I cannot reach out and make my Friends a part of my life right now, because I am busy spending time with the laughing almost-friends. My filthy hypocrisy leads to my loneliness, and the fact that I feel almost overwhelmed by the thought of lengthy narrative phone calls, in which lives are recounted not experienced together.

I guess I am wishing for three things: I wish that my almost-friends and I could become real friends; I wish I were back in any place where I had real friends with whom to be real; I wish that I could talk more with my best friend, that he were here.