Monday Night

God was a beautiful woman in a dream I had last night.  I woke up several times throughout the night, I have not been sleeping particularly well lately and wake up anywhere between 3 to 11 times on average.  Last night was especially dire and was mixed with strong feelings of fear, desperation and self-destructive desires.  I recall staring up at the ceiling and then at (but not out) the window and then at the wall in front of my bed.  I wondered if there was someone else in my room with me.  The air conditioner was loud and making a strange rattling noise, possibly broken somewhere.  The album Amarantine by Enya was on repeat and coming out of my computer speakers at volume 9 out of 100.  I felt like crying and screaming but for some reason could do neither.  The older man who lives below me – usually noisy – was silent and this also frightened me.  I pulled a pillow over my head and tried to imagine I was somewhere else, somewhere familiar with water crashing against waves and the sky painted always in a sunset.  Yet I continued to be pulled back and my stomach tied itself in knots and my palms began to sweat just as my mouth grew dry.  I think I said someone’s name but I cannot remember who (though I have several guesses). 

Perhaps I was taken out of my room at some point and made to dance naked in a room of blinding white light where large black eyes stared at me.  Certainly, I was screaming at that point and trying to close my own eyes but being denied this simplest of comforts.  Voices in my head asked how they could calm me down and all I could think of was Marina.  Thousands of images were flashing through my mind all at once: my hands being impaled on jagged splinters of wood, the color blue swirling into a red hole, my first kiss with a woman I met who was selling fruit on the sidewalk, something being placed in my eye and I can see it inside my head, a man with slicked back hair and long teeth telling me his name though I don’t hear it because I’m only staring at his red eyes and the protrusions coming out of his back, there are people screaming their hatred of me and wishing me dead and stabbing me and I’m falling – first down and then up – and there are deer and white owls wherever I go and a tiger at the foot of my bed and they all stare at me and they all laugh while I panic and my reality is irreparably fractured….and I still tell them to show me Marina and for one second – maybe two – I can see her and the shrieking horror in my brain subsides just slightly and then she’s gone and I’m back in the white room and I can’t speak or think and any semblance of the old me is being stripped away and my voice rises higher as my vocal chords tear at the strain.

At once I slip from this reality and I’m in a dream and I am asking for forgiveness and strength even though I know that I deserve neither.  There is music from Meredith Andrews playing around 5 hours in the past and I can almost hear it.  It is comforting music and I will listen to it on the way to work in the morning. 

She looks familiar – she looks like several women I have known.  I remember seeing her once in a sterile office environment where she was willing and happy to walk amongst us.  Her hair coal black and her hands gentle and welcoming.  I saw her again in a park on a sunny day and she was cradling a baby in her arms.  I questioned repeatedly where she was at the point of my birth, knowing she was there in the room and wondering if I had been able to see her or reach out and touch her.  And I wondered where she will be at the scene of my death and if she will welcome me into those arms.  I see her again and I’m meeting her by accident for the first time like I’ve done a thousand times before and I apologize for my clumsiness but she smiles and tells me it’s okay and I believe her.  Much later on when my words fail me and my actions prove meaningless I reach out my hand, not feeling worthy, and she hugs me instead.  I close my eyes and try to make that one moment stretch into an eternity. 

And now, then, she is dressed in blue, her lips are red and her eyes gentle caring.  She tells me once more that it’s okay and once more I believe her.  She’s far away and I want to go to her and fall at her feet and touch the dress she is wearing – a fabric I’ve never seen before – but I am unable to move.  However, I no longer feel scared and there is sun and water around her.  She is an embodiment of passion and comfort and she tells me that she knows I can be strong and that she will help.  She blows me a kiss from her red lips and the feeling is euphoria.

There were clouds in the sky all day today and the rain rarely ceased.  I think she made that for me.