Monday, October 6, 2008

A doozie...

I woke up this morning crying from a horrible dream I'd had. In the dream, I asked Sam if he wanted to break up. He shrugged.

"Well, do you?" I screeched. I wanted to break up. For all the usual reasons.

"I want to do whatever makes you happy."

But I could see it. The love was gone from his eyes. The sparkle wasn't there. His expression was dull. It looked familiar. It looked gone. It looked like...

"Wait," I paused, losing some of my steam. "Have you met someone?"

He didn't say anything.

I grabbed a handfull of his shirt, suddenly panicked and no longer wanting to break up.

"You have!"

He looked straight into my eyes, yanked his shirt free of my grip and said, "Yeah."

I spent the rest of the dream trying to get him back. Willing to do anything. Humiliating and degrading myself as he just laughed at me.

Then, later, while I was shopping with a friend, I asked her if she could ever be attracted to Sam. She said, "You don't want me to answer that."

My heart fell into my stomach. So, that's who he's seeing.

It was horrible, horrible, horrible!

And it haunted me all day. I couldn't help but be extra accomodating to him as though at any minute he was going to turn and find that blank expression. Those empty eyes.

I made an AWESOME gratin and it actually worked this time. Not too soupy, not too dry and not at all eggy like the last one *eye roll* And I made a big green salad with fresh vinagrette and pressed garlic. We wiped our plates clean with our home made bread. And I had almost forgotten all about the dream when that Pascale Picard song "Gate 22" (I don't know if it's popular in the States but it is here) came on the TV. I said, "I don't really like this song as much as I thought I did. It sounds better on TV than it does on the radio strangely enough."

"Yeah, you only like in on the TV cuz you think she's cute," he says.

"No! That's not it. I don't think she's cute. Not really. It's that our TV's sound is muffled and she sounds better coming from it than the clearer version of the radio."

"I think she's cute," he says.

Gulp.

He had just ruined the song for me. For the rest of the day, whenever it came on (which is like twice an hour, y'all) visions of my nightmare came back and haunted me.


Around 9 or 9:30, my internet went out. I figured it was a Fate trying to get me to work, so I did. I had started the "birth" chapter of my adoption memoir last night but found myself too tired to go past page two. So, with no internet, I opened my Word file and started writing. An hour and a half later, I had written 19 more pages. The birth was done. I looked at the end of the chapter for a second and burst into tears. With my face in my hands, I sobbed like a child.

It's not a sad story at all. It's a story of triumph and survival and great purpose. It's a very very happy story. But I have been waiting nearly fourteen years to put it all down on "paper." And there it was before me. Done. Of course the book still has a good 5 or ten chapters to go. A little more at the end and a few supplemental chapters that need to be added to fill in holes in the middle... Things I forgot and just remembered. And of course, I haven't yet written the "goodbye" part yet, which will almost certainly be just as/harder than the "birth" chapter. But I felt like I had just been purged. At the end of this chapter, I felt like I had laid down a huge boulder I had been carrying for years.

And get this, yesterday afternoon, I found my old journal. The one I kept for the last six weeks of my pregnancy and the few weeks following the birth. I didn't want to read it until I had gotten down as much as I could from memory. But after I wrote the birth chapter, I figured I deserved a reward. So, I started reading the journal. It was heartbreaking. And the sadness had nothing to do with the pregnancy. It had to do with how weak and needy and empty and searching and pitiful I was back then. I wanted to reach through the journal and hug the old me. I wanted to pet her head like the child she was. In my memory, she was so strong, so resourceful. But reading her words, the words she wrote while she was feeling what she was feeling and seeing and experiencing... I didn't recognize that person as myself.

I tried to tell Sam about it later as I was peeling carrots for dinner, but I couldn't find words and ended up crying so hard I nearly cut my own finger off.

Yep, it's been a doozie today.

And then, when Sam got home and somehow fixed the internet, I waited until chores were done to go check my email. When I did sit down to check, I did it as though it was my birthday and I was going to open my Inbox and "surprise" there would be a kazillion emails because I had been "gone" for a whole day. Checked all my accounts and almost all junk mail. You mean the world didn't shut down in my absence? The ego, yo.

BTW... I just finished an AWESOME book by Laurie Halse Anderson called Fever 1793 a young adult historical fiction set in Philadelphia during the epidemic of Yellow Fever. It sped by it was so good. I started Fan Boy and Goth Girl by Barry Lyga last night, but I'm having a hard time getting sucked in. I'll try again tonight.

I started getting ideas for my November venture. I'm not going to say much because it's all still brewing and you never know what's going to happen in October, but I think it might be set in Arkansas of all places. And of course, as usual, the main character will be sexually ambiguous. It'll be YA and it might be a mystery. Hmmm.

Now for today's picture installment:

How a gratin should look:



Saturday's breakfast (bakeries still hold the magic wand when it comes to petits pains:



Preciousness:


More birds:


Playing with my camera:


Frosty, foggy mountains (in Haute Savoie):

3 comments:

Rachel said...

The food looks DELICIOUS!!!! Miss ya!

Erica said...

AHHH, those dreams! I hate the ones that stick and give you the willies all day. I had one the other night that I hooked up with an ex and spent the night making out with him. All day I felt like I had really cheated!

Unknown said...

That gratin, yo! Me: *kissing fingers*
Oooh, I hate those dreams...Erica I have those realistic dreams of cheating too. Yick.