Blah blah blah. Everything I’ve thought to write about today can best be summed up as “there’s a bunch of stupid shit going on and people are getting hurt.” I just can’t bear to write about it. I’m in a funk and surrounded by this cloud of sadness. I keep walking into it, like a spot of too-warm water in the pool.
I have this dream that a short woman speaks a language I don’t know–which doesn’t matter because I can’t hear her anyway in my dream–and she’s trying to tell me something to tell… I don’t know… someone and I can’t understand her and she can’t make herself understood and it makes both of us weepy. So, I don’t know.
The God thing continues to be an issue this lovely visit from my parents because my dad is convinced that his life is so great right now because he’s being repaid for being a faithful servant of his god. We were driving from Christmas party to Christmas party talking about the new house and I was saying how funny I found it that folks have asked me if I have any regrets about buying the house, as if being frozen in regret is just a natural thing that happens in the first couple of months after you buy a house and my Dad is all “You should have used that as a chance to tell them that you didn’t have any regrets because you know God led you to that house.”
I should fight with him about this, but I’ve lost as fire for it lately. I mean, he knows what my beliefs are. He knows how much I hated and resented being roped into supporting his ministry while he was still active. And yet, here we are, back again at this place where his assumptions about who I am and how the world works are just the defacto truth.
I don’t know. I could go on about it, but it doesn’t do any good. I just want to be seen by the people that love me as myself. And the Butcher drives me crazy, but he’s the only one who does see me, I think.
I just really don’t want to do God’s work. I don’t want to hear about Him creeping around my life rearranging things behind the scenes to work out in whatever way depending on His mood at the moment. I want to be left alone. I want things to be where I left them.
Anyway, the word is that my nephew’s mom is divorcing his abusive asshole stepdad. I hope it actually happens. This is, of course, proof that God answers prayers. No word on why God would stick a defenseless kid in a house unprotected from a guy who beats the shit out of him and his mom, but I guess there’s always some reason–the nephew will do something later in life for which God is already punishing him; the kid would have been doing some really crappy stuff right this minute if God had not stuck him with these trials; whatever. God has his reasons; God is good; so it’s all His fault, but not really, please don’t be mad at us, God, but anyway, there’s nothing we can do.
My brother still does not know for sure where his other kid is. But we have to trust that God will keep him safe.
To bring this back to full-circle, I feel kind of lost lately, like the stars to navigate by are too dim and the paths I’m most familiar with take me places I can’t stand to go again.
In other news, here’s an owl. (courtesy of Chris Clarke)
Tiny Cat Pants 
I should fight with him about this
Why? There are somethings so not worth fighting about.
Or you could tell him what I had to tell my father once, in a sort of opposite situation. Which was, “if you’d like to have a long, serious talk about religion some time, I’d be glad to. But otherwise, please stop ascribing your positions to me. It’s disrespectful of what you know about me.” It was enough of a shock to my father that it worked.
dolphin: It really depends on who you are. For me, I dislike having someone insist that I believe their way, even if it’s someone close to me. This is doubly so when it’s something that I’ve worked hard for, dedicated lots of time and effort and thought too which is being placed at God’s feet. A god who’s worshipers insist that you can only do good things by worshiping him, and that if you don’t you’ll suffer.
That is, unless you’re not suffering, and that’s God’s will too, because he’s showing mercy. Unlike the people in their congregation who are suffering even though they do worship that God, whom he’s just testing and helping to grow.
AuntB, I just so happened to have kept a dream journal for seven years and studied Carl Jung, and let me say some part of me has to think you know who the lady in teh dream is because your post tells the other half of what she was trying to tell you. Or maybe Jung was right, that some symbols are just so archetypal that sometimes their meaning drips into our conscious self without us knowing.
In my seven years of journaling, I came across this same woman. Sometimes she is in the woods, but most of the time she was in a house where the rooms and floors where not square and flowed almost organically. Like yours, she had something to share that would not translate… until some years passed.
I suspect I eventually started understanding her because of the very process of journaling. Writing in a journal takes every bit of your conscious waking language to recall. The more you use that part of your brain to recollect the dream, the more of your dreams you eventually remember. Not to belabor the point, but here is the progression through the years for me:
First, I wouldn’t remember anything and ended up with a sentence or two, then I’d remember part of the dream, then parts of two dream. Eventually it was the full dreams, and usually about three story lines. At the end I was able to recount the connection between the dreams. It got downright scarey… but it told me something about myself.
The more you use your conscious waking self to recollect the subconscious, the more you invite your conscious self into your dream world because that part of you knows to remember the dream… eventually your waking self goes on quite a journey that ends up back to the lady with the strange language…
She eventually starts making sense. Maybe it’s the chasm between the waking and dreaming self that is eventually bridged in some part of the brain that knows it will recount what is happening that then applies meaning to the nonesense said. I don’t know… but if you journal your dreams, you will eventually understand what she is trying to tell you.
Can I tell you what she has to say? No. Your life experience will unlock that if you want to apply the journaling discipline. Was it worth it to me to understand this? Yes. But I’ll save why I stopped and gladly compare notes with you in seven years :)
>I just want to be seen by the people that love me as myself.
Wow. That really struck me. I’m not dealing with religious issues, but my sister and I had a blow-up recently. After our argument, I realized that the reason I was so angry is that she demonstrated that she doesn’t know anything about me. I had to confront the fact that our relationship is one of friendly acquaintances instead of what I’d thought we had. It hurt.
We’ve made up since then, because friendly acquaintances is better than nothing. But I still grieve for the imaginary relationship we never actually had in the first place.
polerin, You’re right. As soon as I hit submit I knew I should have added some “to me” or “I know in my life” disclaimer to the comment. Ah well, ’tis life.
One time my midget lady wanted the Taco Bell.
B,
It seems to me that no one ever sees anyone else as they see themselves. I understand how crazy making it can be to have an overbearing father pronouncing on how things are, but look at it this way. So what? You get to believe what you like. And eventually your view will prevail because you will be alive and he will be dead. Sounds mean and sad, but it’s not meant to be.
Yeah, true enough.