The Reoccurring Dream:
Walking into the same room, through the same door I walked through for many years of my childhood, and many nights in my dreams since then — weekly, even — expecting the same four walls, the same windowpane, the same curtains, and wardrobe with the broken hinges and doors removed. The window usually has spiders living in the corners; they haunted me as a child, and they haunt my dreams still. The wardrobe always has unwashed clothes stacked in a pile, and my bed is always made but unwelcoming, afraid of what’s within the neglected covers, afraid to sleep in.
For years, I’ve dreamed of progress. Specifically, that I would try to clean and tidy the room, that I would at least dust or try to shoo away the spiders. That I would make the bed and organize the wardrobe as best I could in that comatose dream state. I even dreamt many times that I went to the hardware store and picked out paint, a soft pink paint to refresh the walls. I’ve acknowledged the paint is there, and my goal is always to fix this room, to restore it and make it okay for my inner child to feel comfortable in her home. In these dreams, the adjoining room where my sisters slept was always empty. Even when I aspired to restore and inhabit my senior room where I graduated, living in the garage, the principal remained: it’s uncomfortable, it’s uninhabitable, and I'm trying harder and harder with every recurring dream to put all my effort into fixing, fixing, fixing. It’s my responsibility to make this better, for me.
Therapy:
Feelings are involuntary. You can read it again and again and again.
But it’s not until I understood, truly, within me: emotions are involuntary, did it make a difference.
On Monday, I woke up a new person. The universe tested me on every front, and without consciously realizing, I didn’t react. I didn’t feel responsible or the need to fix it. I didn’t feel to blame or the compulsion to spring into action to fix, fix, fix: paint, shoo the spiders, or dust the benches of everyone struggling around me. I believed that my loved ones' emotions were involuntary and that they were not my responsibility. I carried on my day, took photographs of birds, and ate lunch by the estuary in the shade of a quiet white church. I was proud of myself for only nurturing me that day, but I hardly noticed the significance of the emotional test I had passed until we spoke about it in therapy days later. It came organically to let it pass. It was true, and I know I’m healing because it happened naturally. I once lay on this leather couch and figured if I was ever going to be okay, it would have to be so manually constructed. Was it even worth it not to give up completely? But here I lay, so full of hope, because I know how hard I’ve tried, and on Monday, I didn’t try at all. It just was who I was, and I responded how I should, and it was the first day of the rest of my life.
Life is a metaphor for life is a metaphor for life is a metaphor:
"Walking into the same room, through the same door I walked through for many years of my childhood, and many nights in my dreams since then — weekly, even — expecting the same four walls, the same windowpane, the same curtains, and wardrobe with the broken hinges and doors removed. The window usually has spiders living in the corners; they haunted me as a child, and they will haunt my dreams. The wardrobe always has unwashed clothes stacked in a pile, and my bed is always made but unwelcoming, afraid of what’s within the neglected covers, afraid to sleep in."
For years, I’ve dreamed of progress, and I walked into the room where my memories were immortalised in stagnant dreams to find first the floor beneath me completely degraded beyond repair. I can’t fix this. The carpet has rotted through floorboards and cracked foundation, and I’m standing on nothing but leveled terrain. I look up at the walls that I’ve wanted so desperately to paint in my dreams, to fix. But the plasterboard isn’t even there; I can see nothing but steel framing, I can see into the rooms beside me, everything I could feel with my feet and my fingertips is disappearing more and more like ash with each touch, each movement. Forget the spiders in the corner, the clutter in the wardrobe — it’s gone, it’s all gone. Finally, I come to the window, the fly screen, which was never even there to begin with, is ripped and falling off. The glass is smashed, and I know the framing could fall in on itself at any moment. I awake with tears in my eyes. Why, why, why? I wanted to fix this so bad, I thought we were making progress, I thought... I thought.
I, thought... that’s the problem, isn’t it?"
Emotions, they’re involuntary.
I am not meant to fix it, am I?
I think... no, I know... I have to let it go.
I have to let go.
I let go.
I am healed.