An International Movement for Incest and Child Sexual Abuse Recovery
The Yin and the Yang of it
I woke this morning after having sweet dreams about not having to do any work, no gardening, no housecleaning, no bookkeeping, and no errands to run. I was in a park with two dogs of mine running around the grass, smelling the flowers and spending a pleasant time talking to two elderly ladies. There was no negative emotion in me or in anyone. It didn’t exist. My arthritis was gone; the sore hip had no pain. I bounced through the universe as if it were a different place. Then I woke up to go to the bathroom. When I went back to sleep the dream continued only this time I was with a girlfriend as we planned a fun evening. We had just had our hair done, our nails done, a massage and were decked out in new outfits. We had dinner at a swanky restaurant ordering meals we only had dreamed about. Afterwards we met a lot of other friends to go to a new showing of the latest movie. Life was weightless, life was joyful. That’s all it contained. I was in heaven. Then I woke up.
I went to take a shower and after getting all soaped up found the water disappearing. Quickly I scrambled to rinse what I could while hollering for my husband that there was no water. I was back to reality.
My husband came in all excited about an irrigation project he completed and how he had done it in a way no one could have thought of but he pulled it off. No, it had nothing to do with the water. He brought me a large jug of emergency water we kept on hand so I could rinse the rest of my body off. I listened with half an ear while he eagerly talked about the pipe and the fittings and the u joints and the……….well you get it. He was excitedly into male language, a course I didn’t take in high school. Besides I was busy thinking about the wonderful dreams I had and how could I have more. I muttered belated congratulations as he had me check out what he had done. Then he went out to check the water and found out it had something to do with what he was working on. He fixed the problem saying the people who put the irrigation project in must have changed the water access as well. Then, he showed me where he had dug the hole and the genius of getting the right thigamagig into the watchamacolick and how he had managed to pull off finding the solution to the large problem we had. I struggled to remember what the problem was while I continued to smell the roses in the first dream and enjoyed an instant replay of the gourmet meal from the second dream. My state of mind and my emotional level sunk slowly. How could Tom be so excited about a problem he had resolved so brilliantly when I was bordering on acute depression for want of getting back into my dream?
As we sat in the living room later, Tom again swung into male speak while I strived to find a middle ground between that and the lala land I had been living in. While Tom spoke of the satisfaction he had derived from his work that morning I tried to tell him about my dreams and how I was worn out from all the responsibilities of a 15 room, 3 story house and 5 acres, at least half of which was kept beautiful only by our 10 to 12 hours of gardening a week. He spoke of the satisfaction he had derived from a job well done. I moved into the source of where my dreams were coming from. Our 25 year old grandson had been killed in a motorcycle accident in February and one month after his death I had relived it all with such despair and anger that all I could do was cry continuously and beg Michael to tell me where he was and was he all right. That night I had my first dream of heaven. I wandered through a world of joy and euphoria as I ran into people I hadn’t seen in a long time. I experienced no bodily pain, no anxiety about other loved ones and no negative emotions. All was peace and tranquility. I wanted all of that now.
The yin and the yang swung in. Tom was all practicality, no neurosis, no fear. Life was good. He played on the Internet, getting lost in the super highway of the world. When he accomplished tasks in his guy world it made him feel like he’d conquered battles with major beasts. He loved me, he enjoyed my company, I was fun. This was his world. This was our world.
Our grandson and his girlfriend as well as a friend from England had just spent the weekend. It was a weekend of such fun, such diverse interests. We live in a beautiful area, full of deep red canyons, flowing streams that converse into other streams, mountainous regions that take your breath away, topped off with finding a rattlesnake coiled to Tom’s left as we hiked a cliff above the Verde River. We ended it with a BBQ and chats into the night. When they got up to leave I felt anxiety return. I had just lost one grandson and didn’t want to lose another. They had an 8 hour drive through the night back to LA. I was grateful when morning came and I knew they were back home safe.
Despite five years of recovery, my world is filled with anxieties, fears of losing loved ones, fears of disagreements with people I love, fears of old age, fears of cost of living going up and medicare going down. I have moments when I shut them all off and enjoy my day but they always lurk in those locked rooms in my mind along with all the horrors of my childhood, my continual battles with hyper-vigilance.
Tom’s biggest fear is the Internet shutting down. He grew up in a stable home, an only child with a wonderful mother and father. The worst thing that ever happened to him was when he was little he got a spanking for saying the word “back end” (Texas Baptists came be pretty tough).
We are different. Thank God we are different. Survival without a stable, practical minded, non-neurotic mate would be tough. I give him love. He gives me gratitude. Between the two of us we can lick the world. And I will have to save my dreams for after I drop my body or for whatever choice moments I can have in my nightly visions. When God took the rib from Adam and made Eve he made the Yin and the Yang. I’m not supposed to understand male speak and he’s not supposed to understand dreams of a world without responsibilities, pain or anxieties.
