Dream Lesson

Have you ever had a dream that upon waking made reality seem absurd?

I asked him how long he’d loved her and he looked me in the eye and said, “I’ve loved her for the thirty-six years she’s been on this earth. It’s just that I hadn’t met her until a year ago.”

I asked him why and this is what he told me:

“You comfort me. She distracts me.”

“You satisfy me. She leaves me wanting more.”

“You wear your intelligence on your sleeve. She’s so beautiful that she doesn’t have to be intelligent, yet she’s always seeking to learn something new.”

“You’d lay out a four-course dinner – perfect in every aspect. She makes just enough to prove that she can put together a competent meal.”

I asked him if he was willing to throw away all we had together. He looked at me and said, “I have but one life to live. Why should I not be happy living it?”

I awoke from the dream, not believing reality. I sat with the words and how honestly he expressed them. I sat with the feeling of frailty and rejection. I sat with my sadness without shedding tears.

I rolled the words around my tongue like meltless ice cubes. Juggling them between my teeth and gums. Repeating, regurgitating, tasting their bitterness and their permanence.

I replayed the scene of me trying to call her with the last two digits of her phone number missing and I cloaked myself in the fabric of despair; tightening the belt of agony around my abdomen. Squeezing, squeezing.

But I did not cry.

I sat with my sorrow.
Then I sat with the lesson for myself.

I am a reformed giver. I am learning to give enough but to leave enough for me, too. I am learning to give to my heart’s content, but not to my heart’s end. I am learning that just like alcohol or drugs – self-sacrifice is also a form of addiction. I am learning to deal with mine. To not revel in the sick joy that leaves me drawn and quartered in the name of motherhood, marriage or community. I am becoming comfortable with the healthy selfishness of a fulfilled woman.

And I like it!