Category — true colors

In an valiant effort to defeat my mortal enemy- insomina- I picked up some chamomile tea at the grocery store last week. I was a little skeptical, because Sleepytime tea turned out to be ’stay up all night writing and surfing the innerwebs’ tea. This is the Stash brand, which I’ve heard good things about, and it does give me the yawn and nods.

It also gives me super crazy dreams.

My dreams have always been very vivid, and have never made much sense (when held to the standards, of say, viable fiction or the waking world), but this is getting… ridiculous.

Thursday night, I had a dream that I woke up and there was a cheetah in my living room. It had baby kitten cheetahs. My house cats were carrying baby cheetahs around in their mouths. I was the only one who was bewildered- they were all “yeah, we have a cheetah now, and it has babies. get with it, already.” I fed the house cats, and the cheetah wandered into the kitchen and started head-butting me in the thigh, so I pulled a steak out of the fridge (I don’t generally *keep* steak on hand, but I had one in my dream), and hand-fed her. She rubbed her big cat cheetah muzzle against my hand, and I was worried about what might happen if she served up a love bite, the way the house cats do when they’re being snuzzled on. Before I could find out, I woke up.

Last night? Last night takes the cake.

My Dad stole a baby for me.

I was in bed, fast asleep, when my Dad let himself into my house. He put a baby in my bed, and I tried to question him, and he said we would discuss it when he’d had some sleep. I moved some pillows around, moved to the middle of the bed, and went back to sleep. Holding a baby.

When we woke up in the morning, I asked Daddy if he had anything to feed the baby, and he jumped up.

“Yeah, I stole the diaper bag too. I know about babies. There’s some formula in there.”

“Okay, Dad? Why did you steal me a baby?”

“You said that I couldn’t give you babies, but I figured out how. It’s gonna be great- the Mom looks a lot like you.”

“But, Dad, what I said was that you can’t be the only man I need because I would like to have a family someday. Someday, Dad, with a husband. What the hell am I going to do with a baby? Do you know how hard it’s going to be to raise a baby on my own? And this is going to make dating awkward, to say the very least…”

“Well, you can’t return a stolen baby.”

“Dad, how am I going to afford this kid? Babies need stuff. Tons and tons of stuff, and I have to work, and I can’t take a baby to work.”

“I’ll give you some money, but you can’t return a stolen baby.”

Then I realized the the formula he was talking about had been premixed and sat out in the car all night, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t good anymore. My father then suggested that if I tried hard enough to nurse the baby that “nature would take its course”.

I woke up in a cold sweat.

Part of me wants to stop drinking the tea, and the other part can’t wait to find out what weirdo dream it will give me next.

** there is not even the slightest possibility that I am pregnant. this was suggested to me by a coworker, who now sports a bruise on his shin. **

I am often asked how I dare write the posts I write, how I manage to disclose so much, to be so open in this space. Even (perhaps especially) my close  friends are often shocked by what I’m willing to share with you. A dear friend who has both my respect and admiration told me recently that if he ever dated me, he would expect me not to write about it. Before, during or after.  The wasbund did not appreciate my openness regarding our relationship, and while I believe that his protest had more to do with the harsh reality of my perspective laid out on the page, I consider those posts to be among my mistakes in the marriage. It’s hard enough without an audience. He also said that whoever falls in love with me will fall in love with my writing as well, because it is a real and important part of who I am.

Truthfully, I do not share everything. There are details, facets, situations, realities that I do not reveal in this public space. A girl has to keep some secrets, especially when she’s dating, working for a corporation, and facing the very real possibility of building a business clientele.

Why, then, do I choose to share things others would keep private?

I could tell you that my parents prized honesty above nearly all else. To the extent that my punishments were doubled for lying about my transgressions. I could tell you that sharing helps me to let go, that in telling you these stories I am better able to put them in perspective. I could say that I’m kind of an attention-whore. I might tell you that one of my favorite quotes is: “A story untold could be the one that kills you.” - Pat Conroy. All of those things would be true.

They are all secondary to the biggest truth.

I need to be seen and heard, that I might be understood.

I need to reclaim the pride I have in who I am, what I’ve seen, and where I come from.

If I hide these things from you, from the world, I also hide them from myself.

My three o’ clock in the morning voices tell me that these stories, these hurts, these shames are the reason I will never be truly loved. They whisper that these stories are proof of my unworthiness, of my brokenness, of my failure. They remind me that the people who love and appreciate me do so because they don’t know yet- they haven’t seen me as I am. They convince me that these stories are my fault, my doing, the result of being defective somehow.

So I lay there in the twilight, in the dark darkness and let them torture me. I believe them. I cry and gasp and let myself become convinced that no one could ever love me properly if they really knew me. I take the blame and the shame as my blankets- warm and comforting with their familiar weight. I believe their story, those awful voices, and I cry myself to sleep.

I wake up with puffy red rimmed eyes and an overwhelming urge to construct an insurmountable wall between myself and the world around me. To insulate myself from more disappointment, rejection, pain and sorrow.

There is, for me,  only one way to survive that, to avoid falling down a rabbit hole of anxiety, depression and paranoia.

I have to hold that story up to the light. I have to write it out, write it down, release it to the scrutiny of theme and sensation and narrative. I have to give it to you, to myself, to the collective. Shame can’t survive the light. It dissolves, it melts away. As soon as I hit publish, the shame is gone.

Then you read it, and you comment, you email me, you tweet me, you send me messages on Facebook. You empathize, sympathize, encourage, confess. I kill the shame, and then you fill that space with love, insight, solidarity, support and encouragement.

When I get a little disclosure remorse, which does happen from time to time, I only have to think of one of the emails I’ve received from complete strangers who take a moment out of their own busy and complicated lives to share their feelings, their reactions, their own stories. It mattered to them, and that is worth whatever disadvantage being so open brings.

Thanks for helping me set my secrets free.