this dream...

last night i had the worst school dream i think i've ever had.  i was myself but i was also a kid and i was not my kids' mom anymore but their sister.  and we had decided to go to school.  we had never been to school before and we were nervous.  but in my mind somewhere i knew that i had been to school before but i knew i wasn't really me anymore.  i was sitting at a table with pam horton and mary montgomery and all the other people around me were people from high school, but i couldn't tell you who exactly now.  there was a test being passed out and we had to share the question sheet.  i kept reading it and trying to understand what it was asking but i couldn't and i asked mary and pam and they said they couldn't talk.  i tried answering it on my paper and couldn't write.  i started panicking.  i kept trying to understand the question and talking it out but then the teacher came and we all got in trouble.  mary and pam were so mad at me.  everyone was mad at me and they were all looking at me and talking about me and how stupid i was.  i started to cry but held it back.  and then my chest started hurting.  i left the classroom.  i started leaving and as i was leaving i found samuel and he was leaving too. and then sadie was leaving.  we passed silas and he was playing with some kids and wasn't upset at all, but he left with us anyway.  my chest kept hurting and i finally started crying and it kept hurting until i fell on the ground and couldn't breathe and it just hurt so bad.  i was able to eventually get up and we kept walking home.  we came to a river with a bridge over it.  the bus was coming and it wasn't going to stop for us and kids were pointing at us from the bus.  so we went to the river and looked down.  and then we all jumped in.  i remember being worried about sadie, but then we were okay and we swam across and it took forever to get to the other side.  and then we went home and i was hurting so bad that i could feel i was starting to wake up from it.  when we got home, MY mom was our mom and that startled me so much that i woke up.  and my chest still hurt.  and i still feel like i can't take a really good deep breath.

i woke to find a wonderful text from my friend jana.  just a beautiful affirmation kind of out of the blue text.  it helped me to wake up from the freakiness of that dream and i wrote back to simply say thanks but found myself in a halfsleep telling her about what i've been feeling:  "i have been in a very isolated space lately and most everything i do right now is obligation.  i am trying to heal something deep and learning to take the time to do it is hard.  i am blessed with amazing women like you in my life who accept me for just me.  trying not to feel like i have to be more than that is hard. thank you for reminding me of what IS."  the thing is, nothing about my life right now is hard, but there are things that i try to work through while also navigating this amazing, very full and happy life and that can be daunting.

i can't help but feel that this dream was telling me that i am on the right path...no matter how hard it is.  i am trying to walk away from ways that no longer serve me.  a few years ago i got sort of shell shocked by someone and it caused me to build a callous, to lose my carefreeness and to be more cynical than i have ever been in my life.  so i started reading about taoism again, this has helped me start to unearth my authentic pooh-like self.  i know that i have let go of a lot of that old hurt, but in many ways i still carry it around and it is terribly heavy.  a weight in my chest.  it skewed my vision of everyone around me and i lost a lot of the progress i had made towards embracing friendship after so many years of pushing it away.

wow, i can take a deep breath now.  that feels really good.Share