Dreams And Delusions

Have you ever noticed, or should I ask; have you ever met someone you already knew??? That person that you know you have not met before, though something in the way they stand, or smile, hold them self… Maybe it is something in the eyes??? The eyes are often the answer… The eyes show far more than people know, you can see love, depth, cruelty, joy, and a universe of other things right there in the eyes…

I went to a CS gathering last night; lots more people than I imagined would be there… Not that I didn’t think there would be people there considering there are a minimum of 10,000 couch surfers in the Portland area… I cannot tell you that I like going to events on my own, where I know, no one… Though that is what I have been trying to do… Break out of my shell, open up a new life…

I have been guided to take notice when it is time to act, and though I do not like crowds, trying to hear over the masses, or introducing myself to strangers… I continue to get hits of things I should do… As well as having been told outright that I need to do things out of my routine…  Last night when I arrived at Kennedy School I drove around the parking lot, that was covered in the ice at least seven times looking for a place to park, absolutely no spaces open… So I told the powers that be, if you would like me to go to this event you will need to open a parking space for me, I will circle one last time no spaces and I will take it as a sign to go home… Seriously, I did not see anyone leave, and as I rounded the corner there was a spot; I parked and went in…

Now what you should know is; I often get to this point and I am not willing to put myself on display, so just before I get to whatever event it is, I turn and run… It is actually quite funny… If you were to ask my friends of my personality they say things like confidence, outgoing, open, warm, etc… And though these things are true they are not my first impression; I begin with shy, people watching, distant, so basically what appears as stuck up… I can see others reactions to me, I can feel the welcome and the triggers… For instance I had just stepped into the bar area and there was a girl that took one look at me and rolled her eyes, only after I spoke with several people around her did she decide she would speak to me, and then she walked off… This type thing always makes me wonder why someone would choose to be that unhappy???

When I went on into where the majority were gathered; it wasn’t but a minute before I met someone from the UK, she was very sweet and genuinely excited to be meeting people… Turns out her parents live very close to where I was living in Darlington… She and I went on to speak with several others over the next hour or so… Which round about brings me back to the being I was speaking of earlier…

The night before this event I was reading the comments of the event, and looking into the profiles of the people who would be attending… There were a few people looking for hosts, while they were here in town… So I looked over the references they had, and decided I would offer to host one of them, had they not found someone to stay with before the event… One particular person, had pictures of himself cable climbing trees, on the trapeze, and labeled permaculture…

I realize how judgmental this sounds, and yet it is my belief that permaculture is simply a hoyty toyty way to be a hippie… While spending time with many who have participated in this program, I have found that it is simply another limiting belief system… I am all for healing the earth, recycling, conscious living… Though as soon as you start to make comment about not enough, or this isn’t good, or that is bad for you, don’t use that, only use this… You have created limitation good or bad limitation is limiting… The universe has all the capabilities of healing, expanding, opening this planet to a place of love and abundance; there is no room for limitation of any kind… *stepping off of my soap box*

Anyway, I had sort of made a judgment *ok I totally did* about him before I got there, yet I was willing to see how the energy felt when I arrived, and if guided to, I would offer to host… This person was easily picked out of the crowd… He has a stance that is unique, and a definite presence in the room, his energy didn’t feel hoyty toyty at all… Which surprised me, the good kind of surprised… At one point he picked up a bunch of coats in order to sit and speak with us; very interesting… He was shortly surrounded by several females vying for his attention… From the sounds of it one said I want you to tell me more about *something*, we have lots in common… I got the energetic hit that he had been trying to step away from that conversation; though not successfully… My conversations ended and I took my leave… I have to say that this person has been on the mind since last night, and has even entered my sleeping dreams… They are telling me this is not done… He is not new, and that he had come to find out more about me… He can see light, and even more he knows what it is… That is very unusual…?

It really doesn’t matter what day it is, really every day is a good day to be grateful…

Today I am grateful for a very new baby that has grown into a very compassionate man… This child blessed me with the joy of loving someone so instantly for no other reason than he came through me… He was so filled with personality right from the start… He was and has always been clear what he wanted and how to get it, even when the answer was no… I fell in love right from the moment we met… I watched him yawn and stretch and fell in love again and again… I have seen him through the teething, the infections, and the good grades and not so good… Through stiches and road rash incidents, friendships, endings… I have watched him graduate, and become a man…

I am every day proud of the person he has become… I would love to tell you that it was all my doing, though that would not be the truth… He came into this world to be who he is in every day, and though I know I have had an ever present effect in his world… I have absolutely no doubt he would have become this man no matter who raised him…

He is someone I am in awe of every day…He has a huge forgiving heart…  I have seen people treat him truly poorly, I have myself done things I am not at all proud of in my learning to be a mother… I have seen and heard his sisters be what could only be considered cruel, and unkind, in the name of sibling rivalry… and I have heard them ask him for something shortly after this treatment and he is ever willing to be there for them… He has a heart larger than any I know; he loves you so deeply, so truly, and is so easily hurt…

I wish for him a love that not only embraces all that he is in each moment, it receives without question the depth that he brings to it from his heart…

I  really do not like being cold, however I love sunny brisk days!!! They are absolutely refreshing!!! Something about them is different than being cold… Like when it is cold in the house it is not the same cold as outside… The house type cold is stagnating, whereas the outdoors type cold, is where the air is moving and renewing… It is just yummy, and I forget how much I like it until it comes this time of year… I was that girl dancing and singing in the car today, with the windows down…

Do you know what would have made it even better??? Mulled wine… *sigh* …

Might be time to pull out the mittens, scarves, and hats??? Snuggle up by the fire, with some hot cocoa… Whoot!!! Yep that sounds very Yummy indeed… There is something truly special in every season you know??? One of these days I think I will move right into a Thomas Kincaid painting… A whole new fantasy land to play in…

The question, the theme, the conversations seems to be what do you want to do for your birthday??? Apparently sleep doesn’t seem to be a sufficient answer???  Though it is what I would like to do… I was telling someone at work I have been catching up on all that sleep I did not get when my kids were little… lol… I have at least another year to go… Really!!! Ok fine no sleeping… *yawn*… It is the sleepy time of year though in case you were not aware… All the little creatures, even the trees are asleep… Not the Faeries…

The Faeries are wide awake… I want to go to the lights, I love the Holiday lights!!! Every year I say I am going to go and each year I forget, or get too busy, or there is no one to go with… This year I am going to go… There are about a hundred different places with lights around the city… There are even several wooded trails of lights, so you can go for a walk and see all the Faerie lights… Now we are talking my kind of thing!!! I want to go outside, and I do not need a buddy; though if you would like to come along you are of course welcome… Hey, there is even a Santa in Pioneer Square, to tell all your wishes to…

I know that I do not want a party, as much as I love my friends, and I do… Parties make me feel all self-conscious; I would prefer to have a sit down and a chat in some casual way…  So let’s get together over dinner, a beer, a glass of wine, and catch up; how does that sound???

Today I am grateful for a very beautiful sixteen year old girl, dressed in black, with purple hair… She walks with an air of confidence, she pretends that she does not care what others think, and she holds a wall between you and her to keep from being hurt; all the time knowing she will be disappointed… She is strong in her opinions, in her likes and dislikes, though like many she falters, only to stand again; a little taller, and a little surer of herself… She creates her own beauty, with what she finds in this world… She has shown me many times that what I could not imagine could become beautiful… She has been a gift to me, every day that I have known her… She walked into my life as a girl, and I watched her become a woman… A very beautiful woman, I have seen her graduate from High school, and College, fall in love with an amazing man that loves her very much… I would love to tell you I had the chance to see her become a wife, though I was not that lucky… I can tell you I have seen her since her marriage, though only from a distance… She was with her friends and her husband, and they were in the bookstore… I got this pull to go downtown to this store, so I went; I didn’t need a book or even have a book in mind… shortly after arriving, I turned to see her, I was about to go up to her and I was told not to, not right at that moment… In that moment I was to enjoy the beauty of the woman before me, and to let her be with her friends… She was about eight months pregnant at the time, and I had just said to someone how I wished I could see her… This was my wish come true… Today she is full term and will be becoming a mother any moment, she may already be… I wish for her ease in birth, joy in each moment, and the discovery of how quickly your heart can expand as you are handed the gift of a child… She will be a great mother… Every day I surround her in love and light, that she know that even though I am not welcome in her world, she is ever welcome in mine… My true deep gratitude for the gift you are to me Beautiful one, Daughter of my heart…

It is dulling through time… Though I have spent quite a bit of time trying to use someone else as a bandage for what hurts, or as a way to distract me from what I have not wanted to see… Fortunately and unfortunately it has not worked, there has been no appeasement from the truth of it; this time I have to let it heal… There is no more faking, pretending, or hiding it; it is really healing this time… And like any open wound it stings, and itches and makes itself known in the most inappropriate times… I know in the end of this, we will be done with our journey together; on all of the planes we have traveled… As much as I cannot see me without you, as scary as it is to go forward without you; I know that I will be stronger here, and I will have someone who truly does love all that I am…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBcMKwbMEcQ

Now there is a good question… I feel lost, broken, homesick, replaced, lonely… Can you feel replaced??? Is that a feeling??? Probably not… I have so many crazy little wants, everyone just another little broken piece, with sharp edges that cut… I hear all these words floating about, “you are replaceable”, “you deserve this”, “this is your fault”, “well, we are all on the fence about you”, and “you are a waste of energy”…

I could have taken the easy route; I could have kept what I wanted so desperately to be real, even knowing it wasn’t… I could have lied and pretended… Though it would have only led to misery all the way around… I could have pretended that, everything that happened did not… I could have shoved down everywhere I felt betrayed, hurt, lied to, crushed, used, and as if I were the conciliation prize… I could pretend that none of this is real, put on a happy face and fake it… I have tried, I just can’t do it, no matter how pathetic I look or feel in the moment…

I will get over it, I will let it go, I will heal, and I will feel happy again… There will come a day when returning to my home, no longer feels as though there is something missing… There will be a day when I no longer reach for the phone… There will be a day when I am joyful in simply being, I know it…

I ask you to please hold light for me, hold love for me, as I joyfully do for you…

Once upon a time long long ago, there was a man that I depended on everyday… Nearly every day I would walk into his office, and proceed to vent my frustration upon him… I would say I do not understand??? Why would they continue to do this or that, can’t they see that it blah blah blah or blank each time they do this??? Why do they not simply see*blah blah blah or blank*???” And he in turn would reply to me almost every day “I understand your frustration, and I cannot say you are wrong… I agree that you are being logical, or using your common sense, in fact you are right…” Over these few years that we worked together, this amazing man became my best friend… Not because he agreed with me, but because he also would tell me time and time again *with extreme patience*, despite my refusal to see it, “It is not that they are wrong, it is that they do not think like you…” “You are right treating a person, in a kinder manner, does change how they treat you, not everyone can see this, they simply do not think like you…”

I cannot even tell you how many times he said these words to me, I cannot tell you how many times I have heard them since, whether it was in his voice or someone else’s… Clearly there are things that I just cannot get past… I still catch my words before I say them, considering carefully how they will impact me or someone else to the best of my ability… Not that there are not moments that I do not totally wish I could recall my words before I have even finished issuing them… Not that there are not a million times that I simply look stunned because I cannot find a way to say what must be said in a way that is kind and therefore end up looking as though I am completely void of any feeling whatsoever… There are also many times I ram through realizing I just have to suck it up and let it out… How do you place everyone in the same restrictions as yourself; when you cannot even keep to your own rules???

This beautiful man, this wonderful friend of mine, this amazingly patient being, he passed away a week before I was to leave for another position, that he had helped me secure… He did not even know what he meant to me, he did not know he was my best friend because I could not bring myself to tell him… He did not know in how many ways I had changed who I would become simply from his words… When he died, I was so crushed, so broken, completely devastated; honestly I cried for three months, I mean for three months tears fell down my cheeks, often I did not even know… Someone would ask why I was crying??? I could not answer… My heart broke, I would go to tell him something and I would realize he was not going to be at the other end of the line, email, or at work… I was not successful at this new job, and basically everything in my world fell apart… My relationship of six years ended, I left my home of several years, my only familiar was my children, and that summer they were away most of the time… I just had not lost someone so very close to me before this, and I not know how to cope… I have since lost my dad and many friends, not that it is easy but it has not been the shock it was then… Like anyone that leaves this life, you reach for them out of habit, only to realize they are gone…

For me it is very easy to see I was simply grieving the loss of a friend, my confidant, someone I knew would not judge me when I was being thick headed and refusing to see what was right in front of me… It is something hardly anyone cannot understand and forgive, on some level… Death is a factor of this world, this life, it is the nature of the game, someone will start and someone must end… None of us get to take this body with us… So when you are crying, venting, hurting, and just outright being vulnerable from the death of a friend or family member it takes very little for another being to nod in understanding, and somehow find the patience to tolerate you…

So with all this said, what do you do when you have lost a friend that has not died??? A friend that would pick up the phone though would prefer not to… What do you do when no one understands that you have lost the one you told everything to??? That person, you called to tell exciting little stuff, crappy day stuff, amazing big stuff??? What do you say when everyone thinks you must have been a terrible friend and that is why this person no longer talks to you??? How do you recover when you have not done anything wrong other than being who you are??? How do you grieve a friend who left not because they were angry, they simply found another friend, who doesn’t allow both friendships??? The response is “this person is not worth it, their loss, clearly they weren’t your friend if they could do that, and a hundred other cliché’ type things… These are all the typical comments, and yet it does not change the habits, or reactions… Every day I go to share and every day I have to stop myself from calling, texting, emailing some little thing that reminds of this person… Like I saw a bumper sticker or I am now working in this place and you won’t believe what I am doing, I nearly fell out of my chair when someone said… So many things happen and though I know they are getting fewer and fewer, they still happen every day… Its much harder when you know you could call, and talk, but you are not welcome…  I think; how could it be true that anyone is not worth it??? How could I have been so wrong??? How is it I could give my friendship or my love to someone who would choose this??? How could anyone just throw you away, just stop talking to you, or replace you??? How could it be that I have found another person who has contingencies for love or friendship??? I thought when you love; you love because you can, not because you fulfilled some expectation of another??? Here is where I hear those words again, “not everyone thinks the way you do…” If you listen really closely you can hear my screaming frustrated words “Why Not???” Why can’t we just love??? Why can’t we just be kind??? Why can’t we just be friends??? Why is it that we have to pay for loving someone, with our hearts???

I go into my dad’s old house it is the same as it was years ago, on the first level… It is incomplete just raw two by fours and plywood… There was a laundry space down there and the water heater, as well as that is where he stored all his tools… He was a plumber… So there were pipes, toilets, wrenches, and so on…

I walk upstairs to the second floor, and there is this lounge space with all this oversized puffy furniture making it a circular room… There is a huge TV dropping from the ceiling in the center of the room as well as a huge coffee table, covered in stuff… Old food, remotes, dishes, etc…

I am thinking about living here and can I live here???

The next floor is a yellowish coloring and very frumpy, it is minimalist in furnishings, and there is a sitting space with a coffee table, the table is covered in patterns *light brown dress patterns*, not in blue prints??? And his bed is also here…

Up one more floor, is a huge living room with a lovely view, he had a great view… The space is empty… There are two bedrooms as well on this floor, they are also empty… One is very large, and the other is average bedroom size… The large one I decide will be mine, and the smaller one my daughters… The coloring of these rooms is light blues, though the small bedroom has flashing blue and silver wallpaper, I believe it had words on it… The words or the silver part would flash, almost like sun was shimmering on it, yet you knew it was a feature you could turn off…

I decide I will ask him if I can move in, and I find him in the empty living room, gazing out the front window… I ask “can I move in, now that my niece has moved out???” He replies “well, I don’t know if that is a good idea or not??? Though living in those month to month hotels is difficult isn’t it???”… “Yes, it is…” I say… “We need a place to live that is inexpensive and is comfortable”… He never really says yes, though there is a feeling of reluctance, and inevitability, as though he is simply going to make me work for it… We start to leave the house, walking back down to the third floor and his room, and then to the second floor, where the lounge space is, and the TV is on… I look for the remote to shut it off and he finds it and says “If you are going to live here, you should know how to turn all this off”… Then we leave and I wake up…

Here are some points to note… First, my dad passed away about eight years ago… Second, my daughter is grown, and has not lived with me, for about four years… Third, the house we are speaking about, though it was indeed four stories, above the first floor it looked nothing like the dream, it was unfinished throughout and it remained that way until it burned to the ground, approximately twenty years ago…

Weird stuff dreams… I am not really sure how to interpret this dream??? I can say home has been at the fore front of my mind for quite some time… I have moved a lot in this lifetime, and I have been continuously moving over the last few years… I have found a sweet little place for the moment, and after only a month it is clear I will not be here for long… It is a lovely, mostly private space in a quiet neighborhood…

I had a dream last night I was in this house that was being remodeled… This house was in England, and it turns out to be the Ludworth house, which I housesat/rented in my first visit…

While in this house I am noticing all the workers and the work they are doing it is really beautiful, I start talking to one of the men working there, and he tells me about the house… That is when I realize it is this house where I lived; of course it looks nothing like the house I rented, for one it is enormous with high ceilings and amazing details such as hand carved crown moldings… He tells me he took down the walls and opened it back up to the original form *mind you it was truly a tiny little duplex in its original form*… I am saying things like I wondered what had been on the other side of that wall, and telling him that I had lived there, he replies “really when???” I go on to tell him that I had house sat for the man that owns it, for about six months… He says “I don’t think so, I am the man that owns it”… I tell him the man’s name and he tells me that he had been a renter there though he had never owned it… That I must have been there illegally subletting… I did not argue this point; I simply shrugged it off and went about snooping… I ask if I can see the rest of it and he says “no, it isn’t safe to go beyond this point”, they are still working on it and he doesn’t want the liability… So I go off to speak with the other workers asking questions about what is happening, and what does it look like beyond this point… I start to convince a few of them to show me around, when the man comes back and tells them to get to work…

*In the tradition of dreaming* I leave with no idea how and end up on a side street walking after dark *also in England*… I see this pasture that does not have cows or horses in it; instead it has four tigers… I see the tigers and think I should walk slowly back where I have come from before one of them sees me, when one of them does see me and starts to walk towards me, like I am lunch… I think I should run but all I can do is back away, there is a fence beside me and I consider jumping over it knowing there is a chance this will slow me down and he will get me sooner, he comes about 25 feet away and I think that instead of jumping the fence or running, I will just wake up; so I do…

Interpretations;

The part in the house; I spent a lot of time in the Ludworth house crying, and learning who I am as an individual… It was the first time I had ever lived alone… I had to be self-sufficient and I had to ask for help… That there were many people working on this remodel feels as though many have been guiding my expansion, *making me the house*… It is comforting that the work on the house was being done really beautifully… There is also an air that I am not allowed to see all of it, because it isn’t finished there is still expansion being done… The things that will be revealed when it is right…

The part with the tigers; it felt terrifying and calm at the same time… It felt like though there was fear, I had the choice to stay or go… It was interesting that the tiger walked, he just steadily walked to me with intent…