After the MS 150 ride weekend, I had a night of anxiety nightmares. I dreamt I was in my “cocoon” as I called in the NO Magazine article and someone was trying to get in and I knew my alarm wasn’t set properly. So I got up in the dark and the flashing red light that tells me it is set was weak and I was trying to reset it. But it wouldn’t reset. And I became frantic to get it reset.
I’ve had these transparent dreams my whole life – the metaphors and symbols are so obvious to what is going on with me emotionally that I wonder if indeed I am such a simple creature that my story can be told so plainly. I had let the Mesmerizer come into my cocoon and made myself vulnerable – sensing I might be vulnerable again, in my dreams I became anxious and protective.
Last night, my mother had called to say my sister wanted a tee shirt from Arizona. So breathing the desert air, I dreamt of my family, with my father as King Lear and all of us, my siblings and my mother so dependent on him. And then the army came to take over the castle and my father lay on the living room floor – accepting the vulnerability – while all of us scrambled to escape. My sister was with a group of people headed down a ravine in back and I was doing my own thing – the independent as S named it yesterday – as I climbed and tunnelled and sought refuge, I saw my sister’s group confronted by some of the men flanking the side. And it was my sister who went forward, bravely, when they told the group to stop. The men killed two of the group who tried to escape and my sister stood there defiant. I was off to the side, half under cover, half not, watching. When one of the men took her and pushed her down towards a small group of soldiers and said, “Take care of her,” I ran shouting, “NO, that’s my sister. Leave her alone.” The man leading the small army, handed me a long bic lighter as if I would be my sister’s executioner and I threw it at him and turned to run towards her.
It’s the guilt that overwhelms your night time activity. A sister who I cannot get close to, whose very mental makeup is so much like mine and yet not, but whose vulnerability right now due to her RSD constantly eats away at me – because in truth I always see her as the woman who would stand up to an army without flinching.