Dreaming reality

Blue skies and sunshine are dancing on a cold breeze outside my window - I want to go out and soak it all in, except that it's cold out there and I'm pretty warm and cozy right here, with my peppermint mocha coffee and my space heater and my yoga pants. 

I dreamed last night that I had dead bamboo in vases all over my house.  I didn't realize it was dead, though - someone came over, a stranger, and I saw my home through their eyes and then I spent the rest of their visit trying to use my body to shield their view of the dried up brown stalks.  So I got up and cleaned the kitchen mess from where Jimi spent the day yesterday roasting tomatoes and peppers and making chili, and then I moved some furniture in the living room and vacuumed.  And I really do have a stalk of dead bamboo in a vase, so I guess I'm going to throw that out today, too. 

I dreamed also of my ex-husband, and it was a very realistic, very lifelike scene - it felt like I was in the room with him again, having that final conversation.  His hair seemed shaggier, but the height of him, the gravity of him, it was right.  I don't dream about Bob; there's very little from our marriage that I mourned when it was lost, and it's not uncommon for me now to go days or weeks without thinking of that period in my life.  Last night, though, we were in that awkward place where we've called it quits but we're still together because it takes time to undo what you promised you'd make last forever.  We were separating the details of our life together, tying up the final loose ends - and I wanted break-up sex.  He turned me down, a few times, and my feelings were hurt in a way I remember so familiarly; he turned down sex a lot during our marriage.  I asked, in my dream, if there was someone else - he said, "There wasn't before, but there is now."  Oh.  And then he was gone, and I was confused because I was sad and I missed him.

As I was waking, I focused on that confusion - what I remember mostly feeling when he told me he wanted out was relief.  This wasn't going to be my life forever!  I'd spent years walking on eggshells, not knowing what the right move would be to please him, to make him happy, to make him look at me in favor, to make him not say no and push me away when I moved in for a kiss or more.  I was sad when my marriage ended, and I was scared of what that fact meant about me.  But I was mostly relieved. 

Six years later, and I'm realizing in my bad times, my dark cloudy days, I make Jimi walk on those same eggshells.  I punish him for the madness inside my mind.  I let him cajole and plead with me to cheer up and not let the small things ruin the whole day, but I turn my back to him and fall into my tears and think bad thoughts about him because because his efforts only make me feel worse because they don't make me feel better. 

He never does that to me.  I would hate it and be miserable if he did that to me.  Why in the world am I being so fucking mean? 

I may not be able to fully control the crazy in my head, but I can control the way I express it.  I can control the way I treat others, even if I have to fake the funk to get through until I can be crazy by myself for a while.