Teetering on exile

I kept falling back to sleep in lots of dreams, most of which were probably depressing, none of which I can now seem to remember. Let me see. Oh. The big one. I am in this place with my dog and there are multiple floors. Everybody knows him and loves him. I am so afraid to lose him, as I would be, in a big place he doesn’t know very well, so I carry him around everywhere. But he meets a big dog and they are happily getting along. Then there is a meal I didn’t eat and I pick up and oh I forgot they put bacon bits on it, I can’t eat it. My mother is going to drive me somewhere but instead of driving her own car she has decided to steal a bus. We are on Fairlawn Street where the closest convenience store used to be, and a bluish car hits us towards the back on the right side but the reason is she doesn’t know how to drive a bus. She turns right onto Main Street as though she has no intention of stopping but just outrunning the police or whoever might try to stop us. I try to tell her we’re probably already going to be arrested for the stolen bus, not there is an accident, too… I do not know why she stole the bus, and thought she could drive it.

And then life was over for me because they were going to record me being cute on this hay ride (the bus turned into a tractor or something?) but ‘I’ screwed it up and it’s a sinning shame because instead if seeing how cute and adorable I am people are going to see me as awful. Somehow. Because I was in this stolen bus and everything, even though it wasn’t my fault.

For some reason this reminds me at the hospital of the time when my roommate kept teasing me that he was going to take my ‘girl’, and yes, they kept messing with my mind into believing that I had such a thing as a girl, too. I did not know if they were hanging out though every time I didn’t go to meals and he kept letting me know he wasn’t a food person, he had bad intentions and she was little more than an object to him and he’d take away her innocence. I did not know what was actually happening and had no space to think about how likely various scenarios were but I was so terrified she would be too trusting of someone who intended to hurt her… and it seemed in one way ir another no one cared about that, and I lost my mind, thinking about what could happen to her. I was just sooo worried about someone and as they were probably taking 100 pages of notes on me a minute (which the first hospital said they were already doing, maybe just to intimidate me, when nothing was actually happening there) they probably framed me as some jealous lunatic and this kid probably for sure wanted to get me all riled up but nobody was ever going to see it wasn’t jealousy but concern and… I am oretty sure now I don’t have to worry, people can take care if themselves, but the idea of someone I loved being naive and letting herself be taken advantage of by my own roommate who admits his bad intentions, it is all too much, it all made me lose my mind, but it wasn’t jealousy but the idea of someone getting hurt like that that I couldn’t handle a bit… and none of the ways these places framed me revealed my real heart. Now it is so hard to even convince myself I am a good person, wo many sad ideas about myself were put into me at these places… they wanted me to see myself as the worst kind of monster and criminal and I don’t know what it takes to get over that.

One of the best but saddest dreams I have had lately was outside of this family gathering place which seemed to be pegged up or something, a kind of high entrance. Otis and I were just walking past this building and to the woods on the other side and… he was running and leaping as fast as he possibly could but I had no trouble keeping up with him because I was flying, and like moon jumps kept pushing myself into the air and it was so fluid and wonderful to be with my dogdog in this happy way. (Innactual reality people can’t even have a basic conversation with me about if ai have a dog without it beinging up trauma.)

Last night, too, or just a little while ago, I dreamed I was at this place I used to go to retreats. Oh, and I saw Donald Trump go by sitting at the very front of a bus. For some reason, I waved. I don’t remember much about the dream but when I woke up I felt really hopeless, like I never want to wake up again, there’s just no point, and with the coolwr weather coming it is so nice to get warm under blankets. The other day when I called this place someone with an accent answered and said, oh, we haven’t talked before, I am new, and after they hung up I started to think maybe it was a prank and the whole place just wanted to make fun if me, they were not going to get back to me about a follow-up meeting at all. And somehow so much of the story of who I am is wrapped up in this place I have had so many issues with but somehow I started to feel really lost, like I’d never be able to find out who I am again, if they also exiled me completely like everybody else (meaning in particular one other place) seems to have done. I don’t know if I need them to get clarity on my life but more and more I am wondering, what if I do, what if I need to resolve my complex feelings about that place, what if it’s there that I need to tell my story to make sense of it? I was feeling like another response from them was never going to happen when I woke up, checked my email, and saw that they were planning on scheduling something with me later this month. Does that mean I can trust them? Not necessarily, it just means the whole world hasn’t completely exiled me yet, in practicality anyway, though they might have in spirit. Maybe if I do not expect them to be more than they are, and have good boundaries, and don’t expect anyone to have time for me when a retreat is over, it might be a good thing. I don’t want to burn bridges anyway. I don’t know whether to feel hopeful because I still do not know if I can trust them and being allowed back in a place that used to feel like a home does not mean it ever will again; and if it turns out the experience would be unsettling or ungrounding because they are not really there for me would not be a good thing.

I am grateful, maybe I do not have to find completely confusing attempts at closure on my own, but a community I once trusted can help me find my life again. I don’t know. I do not have high hopes and yet if I was not allowed back there that might feel like a loss I can’t make up. I don’t know if there is much here worth saving or that can be saved (as far as me) but having a chance, at least, is a good thing, and maybe I’ll feel a little less like the whole world has exiled me. Maybe even if it is an illusion that they have my back that will give me enough of what I need to get to other places that do. But if I am totally cut off from so much of my past… I just don’t know, it is hard either way, but I was actually surprised they were willing to email me.

Now my host, just as I am starting to get up, says ‘why don’t you get your act together’, which might be his way of chastising me for staying in bed so long, and told me he wants me to paint today. Like I am living in his house so today I am going to paint… and if too much of this kind of thing happens it is not exactly good for my creativity or my mindset which relies of kind of being able to count on knowing what my day is like and not always never knowing if my time is going to be taken up by something else. I painted a gate a few days ago. I don’t mind painting. I do not really like not knowing when I am going to be asked to do a job and not knowing when I am going to slfor sure have time to myself. It’s usually an hour or two at most at a time but still…

Oooh what if I were to get a car soon… I’d like to go to South America but I am so itching to drive and explore and feel a little bit free…