I woke up at about 5am this morning from a dream that my dad died. I can't remember the circumstances in the dream or what prompted it (watching Cloverfield right before bed?) but I dreamt it so fiercely. I can only remember this insanely dark and consuming sadness right in the middle of my dream. When I woke up I didn't even have a huge sense of relief because that huge sadness was stuck to me like I'd walked through a spider's web. When I think about my dad I feel like I have an aster in my chest. You know those lion's mane orange and yellow flowers? It's like that except it feels pride and love and gratefulness that he's my dad. My family has never been huge on sharing emotion (shocking, right?) but I hope I tell him sometime soon how good of a dad he is and I hope he can postpone his embarrassment long enough to know I'm serious. And I can't do it on Father's Day.
The other thing is that today is a day of loss. I told myself that I'd do a one-week detox starting June 1st. And the damn date decided to show up. Way easier to think about these sorts of things rather than actually doing them. But, here goes nothing. There's no alcohol, wheat, dairy, sugar, chocolate (what!), or excessive caffeine for one week (limited to one cup of coffee in with breakfast). Today hasn't been too bad, except my beer-lonely hands at the Storm Game. (I decided to actually watch the game and occupy them with clapping.) We had a good breakfast of hashbrowns and eggs (cooked in olive oil) with cantaloupe (without a man, like my mom always said.) Lunch was a salad with oil and vinegar dressing and canned black bean soup (had an aftertaste like a wet ashtray). And dinner was a crock pot surprise of polenta and enchilada-like stuff. I feel fairly ravenous right now but, it's only six more days and anyone can do anything for six days. I just drank some green tea (only herbal and green allowed) and shoved some unsalted almonds and an apricot in my face. I will get wasted at Molly's cabin to make up for this.
1 comment:
I know what you mean about the dreams, and how palpable the heaviness is even when you wake up.
Granted, my dreams are in reverse, I dream Sam is there and wake up to find that he isn't, but the punch-you-in-the-gut nature of reality is the same.
I wake up sometimes with no memory of the dream, just a lingering sense that I just saw my brother. Its funny how your brain is divided into so many parts, where intellectually and consciously, I never forget that he is gone, but I can hang on to the feelings of closeness when I wake up without recognizing the counterintuitive nature of those two simultaneous thoughts.
It will be later, on a run or in the shower, that the two thoughts will clash and repel with intense volatility: that he is gone, and that I just saw him, because both are true and neither make any sense. It is momentarily disarming.
Did you dream about your dad because you watched Clover Field? Maybe, maybe not. But that thought is the same reason that I loathe Dexter.
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