Dismembered Dreaming

In my dream my little brother seemed like such a grown up. It was like I was re-meeting him. He seemed taller and bigger than I remember him in real life, and blonder. And cleaner.
We were in a filthy filthy filthy house, not dissimilar from ones I'd seen him live in with other artist college boy roommates. There was an air of apprehension permeating, though, there was a sense of violence. I remember feeling like I needed to be close to Brendan. Did I ever say his name in the dream? I don't remember. I can't remember if I wanted to be close to him so I could protect him or if I could feel safe.
I remember body parts somewhere in the dream; in the street? That seems violent enough that it would have tipped me off to it being a dream, but it didn't.
I remember him being very tall, and very blonde, and wanting to be near to him and feeling very anxious when i couldn't see him, and either wanting to feel safe or to protect.
I woke up and I felt shocked after a few breaths when I realized I had been dreaming, and angry that I couldn't tell if it was really Brendan in my dream because it was so far out there.
In the moments before really being able to be awake, when I was suspended in that undefinable world, I thought that I wanted to believe in something, I wanted to BELIEVE in a faith, in a god, that could assure me that one thing or another was real, that something could comfort me and assure me or dissuade me from the uncertainty that that I have a connection with Brendan beyond the cells in my brain that have memory and that grieve so powerfully; powerful to the point of creating illusion. Grasping for that weaker option, for that easy out, made me more angry than the uncertainty.
This never gets easier. We are just accustomed to this pain now. I have trained myself how to breathe and too keep breathing when the wind gets knocked out unexpectedly. I have to remind myself, at times, just how strong I am. After waking up from a dream where there are body parts in the street and all I want to do is be close to my brother, I have to remind myself how much of a survivor I am.

One week from today Brendan would have turned 28.

C&R left early this morning for Mexico...

In the car on the way to the airport I told them about something that happened last night that was horrible and terrifying.  It was resolved, but such a scare left me in a bit of a haze. 
A few hours later I wrote them this email:

"So,

I have the most anxious dreams last night that consist of being late to a choir concert, to my best friends wedding, not having the dress altered, not having make up on, being locked out of the hotel room and when I finally get in finding they have taped over everything in the shower to fix something.
As I'm standing in the kitchen this morning looking at the oil and vinegar next to the stove (irl) I remember that part of the dream was also that you had turned around and come home from the airport because they wouldn't let you check everything that you wanted to.  (In the dream Colleen you were defiantly telling Ridge I'll make that same stuff without all this, you won't even know the difference.)
I'm so glad you weren't actually back home.  Not because I (and the pups of course) don't want you here but because you two of all the folks in the world deserve some sun on your bods and smiles on your faces - 2 things I think you'll be able to find on that Mexican beach.

So.  After one of the weirdest (horrible) nights, feeling such darkness and desperation, albeit briefly, last night, then with those dreams, then when I finally decide to pay attention to things around me and can handle whatever might be in the roll on the coffee table, then I read your note on it Colleen, and then I cry because I don't know what else to do.  Then I unroll Brendan's painting, and it is, and it's different then I remember, but more beautiful then I could ever imagine.

I don't know what planets are shifting or passing or setting, but in a completely weird moment I am so grateful for these dogs, so grateful to be here at this place, and so grateful for you.  (In no particular order.)

I love you,
Ole!
Caitlin"

The First Cut

We met in high school, dated, and I cried in the cafeteria when we broke up.  It took him a few years to apologize and by that point I was in college and he was off in the military; he came to visit me in my dorm room and we went to his parents house and made out but I had to stop because I felt mildly repulsed at anything sexual between us.  Not because I didn't care about him, but I think because I knew how much he wanted to. 
Fast forward about a year, and he (we'll call him G) was back in town on leave for about a month.  I was living in an apartment on campus with six (yes, 6, in one apartment) other women.  (Girls, really, we were all of 19.)  I think I saw him once or twice while he was around but he had his friends and I had my I'm-a-little-too-busy-and-over-you stuff going on so it wasn't anything special.  He moved to Camp LeJeune and called to give me his new contact info, you know, just in case.
I surprised myself as much as I surprised him when I actually decided to call him a few days later.  It just seemed like a nice thing to do.  What was even more surprising was that I kept calling, and looking forward to his phone calls.  This was in the fall and by winter break we were speaking every day, and instead of repulsed I felt intensely attracted to him with a rawness and need that reflects youth and inexperience.  The kind of attraction that consumes most of your waking thoughts and some of your sleeping ones, where you feel like you will actually ignite when that person finally touches you.
I was so young and still really didn't know what I was doing, or what needed to be done, in bed, and we had never gone much beyond second base so there was the mystery element present... he is still the only person I've ever hit home base with over the phone before we got there in person.
In early February G's best friend was going to be home on leave after graduating from boot camp.  G decided that he should come home and surprise him.  I was very much in favor of this, as at this point it would be ridiculous to think (especially being so much less cynical and critical than I am now) that he wouldn't spend every possible minute with me.  He came, he surprised, and he did spend every possible minute with me.  I think we had a total of maybe 48 hours together, after he drove to Madison, WI from Jacksonville, NC non-stop with a buddy.  Then they drove back.
The next week was Valentine's Day.  It was on a Wednesday.  He sent roses, then he asked if he could come back the next weekend.  I said yes, he did, and that was it.

How to explain what happened next?  We fell in love.  I had no doubts.  I look back now and I see such purity, such faith, such trust.  Not before or since have I felt with such certainty that this person was on my side - that we were on a team regardless of what fell around us.  I never considered cheating and it never felt like a sacrifice even though I saw him at the most once a month and usually for a rushed expensive weekend.  I don't regret any of it.  We loved each others families, and they loved us.  (Still do actually - his sister is about to have her first child and I will be Aunt Caitlin, and I see the other sister and usually the Mom and Dad every time I'm home.  It's been more than five and a half years since I've seen him.)

When it dawned on me that if I didn't study abroad in college I would forever regret it I realized that it would be a challenge for G and I, but I always believed we'd be one of the the couples honest and strong enough to make it through a semester.  We weren't.  I still believe that as soon as I made the decision to go, he felt I was moving away from him rather than moving forward in my life.  I didn't think the two had to go together.  The 9 hour flight to Europe changed us irrevocably.  It took two months to break up, three more months for him to try to get back together with me, then five months and a war for me to ask him to be with me again.  He said yes, then realized he didn't, then broke my heart to equal his.

WTF

My ex and I haven't spoken for more than a year, on purpose by my choice, and we have very few mutual friends at this point (he burned a lot of bridges on his way out).  Other than a couple blurbs through the grapevine and one drunken and curious episode where night I looked at his family's photos on facebook, I haven't thought about him much.  However, twice in the last two weeks I have dreamed about him, both dreams them involving him, his wife, and their baby son. 

The most weird scene of both of them was when in one, I was in charge of holding the baby when a whole bunch of family was around (I'm pretty sure it was his, hers, and some weird combination of my family).  I adored this child, thought it was the most cherubic thing ever.

From both dreams, I woke up feeling weirdly neutral.  I've written before about how powerful dreams can be, but not in this case.  I just felt really curious.  If anybody has any theories as to why I would have these dreams or what they mean, I would love to hear it.  Seriously.

Today

We are so busy that I am not sure when the next time I'll take a day off. Soon it's harvest, then the holiday season (which in my world translates to shipping department season).

Even though I drank too much, stayed out too late last night, and had to get up much too early to work a farmers market, it was a beautiful day. I think this is what must be Indian Summer. The highlights were driving into town with my auntie to run an errand in the Galaxy convertible, and since the pups hopped in we decided to take them for a ride. Their doggy faces said "Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" as they strained to keep their eyes open in the breeze.

After I'd concentrated on as much as I possibly could for the day, I grabbed a blanket, pillow, and the book that I am so close to finishing, and headed for the outdoor bed that's in an ideal spot under the mini birch tree grove that is at the top corner of the lawn, looking out over the pond and rest of the property. I lay there for almost three hours, sleeping, daydreaming, and nodding off. At one point the puppy ran some laps around me and Colleen brought out a pizza she'd just pulled out of the brick oven, to test the new dough recipe she's tweaking. I got up and came inside when I realized the sky was pink and the buzzes around my head were mosquitoes.

This week has been filled with anxious anticipation as we try to embrace the already quite full calender ahead of us, but in spite of that I received quite the glorious treat of this day.

This is Django the puppy...









This is Boswell, older and wiser...

At Least the Bridge Won't Break

I was shaken awake at at 4-something this morning very confused. I very rarely wake up in the middle of a deep sleep, which it was, and if I do it's because something in my dream or a very loud noise wakes me up. In this case, I didn't hear the noise I just was awake and realized that I had felt shaken from far away.

In my mostly-asleep confused state it dawned on my that I was probably just awoken by an earthquake. I mean why the hell else would one be jostled awake at o-dark-hundred in the morning in Northern California wine country in the middle of September? Certainly not a thunderstorm, right? Wrong. Moments after calmly thinking I was in the middle of an earthquake in the middle of my bed, I saw a flash of light from the lightening that was also happening - part of a larger thunderstorm rolling through. It was a loud earth-shaking thunder roll that woke me from my slumber, and while I'm thrilled to know I'd be so calm waking up to an earthquake, I am disappointed that I missed it. I miss those summer thunderstorms that shake the ground, and here I was in the middle of one considering taking shelter under the doorframe.

I fell right back asleep and woke up at a more reasonable hour to gray skies, raindrop marks on the windshield, and a feeling that autumn (and harvest) is just around the corner.

Dreamsharer/Go With It

I love telling people about my dreams.

I especially love telling people when they played a role it the dream. In fact, I wish I knew more about me showing up in other peoples dreams. I can't remember the last time that anybody told me about one. In fact, I can't remember the last time anybody told me about a dream period.

Is sharing your dreams with people a social faux pas? I know your own dreams are never as interesting to someone else as they are to yourself, but I just find them fascinating. A glimpse into our unconsciousness that's unavailable through any other avenue. Why not share?

I feel like my dreams have gotten closer and closer to my waking thoughts in the last couple of years. I used to have dreams that had characters in them that were ostensibly people I knew in real life but were so ludicrous and physically impossible that they wouldn't really affect me much beyond thinking I had a funny dream.

My anxiety dreams alwas used to be about calculus. Usually centering around not knowing where a final was or having a final and not having opened the book nor attending a class all semester. (By the way I haven't been in a math class since first semester freshman year in college. So, almost a decade.) These days I dream about things that have concrete connections to my real life. For example, my sister and I spent many hours planning a 40th wedding anniversary party for my parents last month. In the week before I flew home, I had a very vivid dream that I was in my parents house as I realized not only was our entire neighborhood starting to burn, but that our house was on fire. The only thing I could think was that I had to save my parents wedding photo album.

I've found also that my dreams have a weird way of being a reality check for me. That house burning dream forced me to admit, although not out loud, that I was really stressing out about the planning and worried about all the things that could go wrong. I tend to dream about men that I'm attracted to, whether or not there is actual sexual content in the dream, and I wake up having to own up to it to myself. Which is a good thing actually, but can be really frustrating when in the dream I was cuddled up to a man-friend but when I wake it's a teddy bear.

This is not to say that I think my unconscious thoughts are truths that I need to face up to. I had a dream that involved my ex, who in real life just had a baby with his new wife, and his mother and me, and I really wanted to tell him how much I cared about him and was happy for him. In real life, while I wish him no harm, I certainly don't have anything I need to say to him.

I know I've considered more seriously dreams since Brendan died, which from what I understand is pretty standard in grief. Dreams took on a new meaning for me last summer, when things were still so sharp and so very painful, and I had some dreams with and about Brendan. In the dreams I felt him alive, and that of course made it that much more difficult to wake up. The one I remember most vividly was one night before I was traveling home for a weekend. In the dream it was present tense, we were walking around I think Chicago, and I was explaining to Brendan what had happened and why he'd been gone for a few months. I skipped the part about him dying, because he couldn't have, because I was talking to him. At the end of the dream we were just sitting somewhere and I really had to pee. I told him, "I'm not going to go. I'll hold it. I'll stay asleep, so don't go anywhere. I'm staying asleep." That was the hardest dream to wake up from.

One of the better words of advice and comfort I've received from anyone was from one of my grief counselors. I was telling her about this dream and saying how badly, how desperately I wanted it to really be Brendan, how much I felt that this was him somehow but I didn't know if it was or if it felt like it was because I wanted it to be so badly. Her response? "Who cares?" I hadn't thought about it like that. She pointed out that whatever it was, why question it? Why diagnose and analyze it? It felt real, it felt good, so go with it.

It felt real, it felt good, so go with it.