Unexpected emotion this morning. When I woke I thought, “I’m not going to work today.” Instantly, I remember saying to a co-worker yesterday, “For some reason it feels like Friday.” At the time I was thinking that maybe I wouldn’t be at work the next day but I pushed the thought out of my mind. Crazy that I had perceived my own future like that!

So I am working from home today, avoiding people and sitting with this morning’s experience. Maybe something will come of it, maybe not. Whatever the case, I am in the midst of another purge. Not sure how long it will last this time around.

Dream: TX to AK Transplant

This dream is mixed up a bit. There were images and memories from my two different lives merging into one.

I was talking to someone about writing a new blog. The main focus of the conversation was what to call it. The new blog was about my time in Alaska. I went through several names but finally came up with Texas to Alaska Transplant. This part of the dream was much longer but memory of it is mostly me mulling over what to write with images of paragraphs of words, some highlighted in blue. I focused on the words and read some, but can’t recall them now, of course.

The dream shifted at some point, probably while I was reading what I wrote. I had moved to Alaska with my husband (ex). It was mid-summer and I remember turning to him to tell him I couldn’t face another winter there. I was very serious and sad. The pain from that time in my life was evident. There is vague memory of being inside a car or train and seeing the landscape through the window, a blur of color as it passed by.

Then I was inside a dark room. All I recall are faces here. Some were faces from my present life – my sister-in-law was one of them, my mother another. I heard my husband mention that he was living with his cousin (likely my sister’s situation bleeding through here). I saw a visual of him standing next to my SIL, his half-sister (so not his cousin). With them was another woman, another family member, I couldn’t place. I knew we were all getting up there in years and that the reason for living with family was to help one another in our old age. This is likely a bleed-through from my current life. My mother-in-law’s siblings all live together in their childhood home, all except her that is.

Still, firm on my decision to leave, I turned toward the south. In front of and under me was a giant map of U.S. I was positioned over Alaska and my focus was on the southeastern U.S. I knew I was 60 years old. I felt my real family calling me and that is where I intended to go. In my mind I was sad that it had taken so long for the call to come through. At the same time I was thinking, “At least I get this time with him. It’s better than nothing.” The time felt very short but I didn’t care.

Then I was standing in front of a counter discussing Alaska with a woman. I saw in my mind the weather forecast. There was a map of AK and the entire state had rain (sadness, crying). In the northwest were blobs of white where it was freezing (frozen emotion). I remember thinking it was not good to have so much rain when the temperatures were dropping. It would make the roads very icy. I decided not to go wherever it was I had planned to go.

The woman and I were talking about something very serious. I was upset, the emotion just under the surface. She offered me a large, oblong, violet purple (compassion, kindness) pill (healing). She said, “I have to warn you about the side-effects. It will make your butt (struggle with some situation) and knees (feeling inadequate, weak, emotional and in need of support) hurt.” I said apathetically, “My butt already hurts all the time.” I put the pill in my mouth. The woman said, “It’s a gray area. Some people don’t experience any side-effects.” I responded with, “Knowing me, I will have them all.”

Memories all tumbled one upon the other then along with a sense of time stretching out endlessly with no reprieve in sight. As I viewed the life I had lived I was very disappointed. The feelings were the most difficult to swallow. I felt so dead inside, so numb despite the upheaval I had gone through. It felt like my life was never my own. I knew I could do so much better. I heard a man say to me, “It was a good life.”

Sudden Emotion

When I woke I was crying. The emotions I was feeling were there but they seemed hollow, like they weren’t even mine. I allowed them, crying in heaving sobs. Some of the thoughts I was having was about how unfair life was. Specifically, I was thinking about how, when I finally found my Home, I could not have it. Home felt to be a person, but that person didn’t want me. It seemed like my dream was suggesting a time would come when I could go Home, but it wasn’t until my 60th year. Being that is so, so far in the future, I agonized over the wait, sure I would not be able to last that long. I agonized at the loss of my youth as well.

I remember hearing a male voice say, “You remember…..” in response to the agony I was feeling. So much was going on inside that it is hard to know what exactly I was crying about. Some of it seemed to be recalling my time in Alaska, the extreme loneliness and wishing for death I had at that time. Some of it seemed to be my current life circumstances. And then some seemed to be a return to the decimated feeling of loss I experienced the end of in 2016.

A song was going through my head on repeat. The words, “Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead….”

I wonder now if the song is a reflection of the hurt my ex-husband felt after I left? Maybe I was experiencing his pain, not mine, in that regard? He did not want a divorce. He told me when I left that he would never love anyone else like he loved me. For years after we divorced he would call me out of the blue, often in the middle of the the night, sometimes drunk, sometimes in tears (or both). He did this despite being newly remarried.

One time, my current husband and I met up with him in Dallas. He got to meet my two oldest children. My middle son was a toddler at the time. I remember saying to him, “I never thought I would see you again.” I felt completely fine seeing him, no upset or regret. He looked the same, just sadder. He told me later he needed that closure and he was happy I was happy, that I got the family I wanted. I haven’t heard from him in four years.

With the above consideration I felt guilt. Guilt for choosing to walk that path with my ex while knowing all along it would not result in anything substantial. I lied to myself and suffered for it. I lied to him and he suffered for it. All for the sake of security. Fear does that.

That was my first life. It doesn’t even feel like mine now.

As for this current life, it feels similar in some ways. I am not as bad off as I was when in Alaska, thankfully. But I still feel the loneliness. It is a deep ache that originates at my core made worse for knowing that the antidote exists and is within my reach. Only I can’t have it yet because it is linked to another and they have to want it as much as I do for it to work.

So yeah, sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead. I hear, “Sometimes it hurts in love and sometimes it hurts instead.” Double the hurt for me. What goes around comes around.

As I write this the emotion continues. So glad I chose to stay home from work. It’s gonna be a long day.