cancer – day 813

OMG, I had the BEST dream with Artie last night. I was dying to write it out this morning, but then work just had too many urgent things and now I barely remember the dream.  I wanted to write about it because it would feel good to be able to read it and remember how it felt again later. 

It started out kind of like a nightmare. I was in some kind of shop in The Haight (the hippie district in San Francisco), and this freaky woman came down from some kind of above-shop apartment, and she dragged me upstairs. She had this wild super-long red hair, and she was trying to kill me so I was fighting back. Suddenly I realized that her power was in her long hair, and if I could get the wig off, I could take away her strength and be able to escape. I managed to get the long red-haired wig off the woman’s head, and she withered away, saying I would regret it. Instead of dropping the wig to run away, I seemed enchanted by it, and I could not put it down or stop staring at it. I wanted to put it on and feel the power it possessed flow through me.

Then I saw an ethereal version of Artie (like the ghostly versions of the vampire-guy in the second Twilight movie, when he’s appearing ghost-like to tell her not to be reckless or not to do something where she can get hurt). I looked up from the wig to this ghost-Artie, and he looked back at me. I raised the wig to put it on, and then he spoke: “don’t.” And suddenly it wasn’t ghost-Artie. It wasn’t even guardian-angel-Artie, which I often feel near me when I’m awake or lying in bed at night unable to quiet my mind to sleep. But this Artie was real.

He took a step toward me, in that protective but unhurried way he had of putting himself between me and potential danger, like shifting to walk on the curb-side of me when we turned a corner next to a street, or guiding me gently yet strongly behind him when those freaks picked a fight with him on that New Year’s Eve because he’d told one of them who was staring at me in line to keep his eyes on his own girlfriend or something like that, and somehow he won the fight against five other guys that night, alone, protecting me.

So anyway, the dream. Or not-dream, as it became. I dropped the floor-length wig of red and was enveloped in his arms. Those strong brown arms wrapped all around me as my arms closely encircled his waist and I put my cheek against his shoulder. Which is exactly where I always felt safest. Eventually he leaned back from me just a little, and took my hand and led me to another room in the above-store house. We sat together there and talked way into the night.

This is why I wished I had written it down when I first woke up this morning. Then I still remembered parts of what he said, but it’s all lost now, after five hours of insanely busy work.

In my dream state, I must have gone into a deeper sleep then, because after some quiet darkness, I found myself waking up snuggled into his right side, his sleepy arm around my shoulders, my left hand on his chest. And he was looking at me as I woke up, somehow enjoying it and enjoying just being there in that moment. I opened my eyes to him for a few moments, then he put his other arm around me and snuggled me in closer to his neck and I closed my eyes again, willing the moment not to fade.

We weren’t young. It was now, and he had aged. And it felt completely real to my mind and body. I’ve read that about dreams, that in the brain a dream experience is every bit as “real” as an “awake” experience and essentially the brain can’t tell the difference. That is so true for me. I feel pain or sorrow in dreams as deeply as when I’m awake, and I can’t tell later if my memory of something is a memory of something real or a memory of something I dreamed.

This was so real. I still feel like I woke up snuggled in Artie’s arms this morning, like he’s going to come home tonight from work at the motorcycle shop that he now runs, and be at my side for his sister’s wedding weekend after next.

They say that in a dream state, we can have interactions and experiences with the dead. I have to believe that, because Artie himself has come to me in my dreams, I’m sure of it. But today is different. Today it feels like he’s here because he needs to be near me, not because I need him keeping me safe.

It has me seriously thinking those soul people are right, and that for some of us it’s not just that you’re connected but you’re actually both part of the same soul. It feels really weird. I’m crying.

I wish I could go back to sleep so we could talk more. I wish I could remember what he said last night.

I close my eyes now, tears trickling down my cheeks, and I can feel him holding me from behind, his chest to my shoulder blades and his arms around my neck and hands wrapped to my collarbones. Oh my god, this is insane.

I wish I could learn that meditation stuff where people say they can interact with the dead. I want to go deeper into the spiritual world and find out if we really are one soul, and if that soul will somehow finally, after who knows how many lifetimes of trying to find the fit and balance of completeness, merge back to itself and becomes whole.

I’d rather believe that than think I’m crazy or double-check to make sure I’ve taken all my medicine. Ugh, I’m tired of Tamoxifen and all the rest of it, and having so man stomach aches and never feeling rested or getting a good night’s sleep. I just want to go back to him and let all this mess fade away.

He’s still here, he’s still wrapped around me. I’m a little scared, actually, by how real it feels. But I don’t want to lose it, either.

Whatever it is I’m on this earth to do or be, I wish I would just get on with it so I can learn whatever it is I am supposed to learn and get back to the soul-level and be complete.