Dream Woman

¡Hola! Everybody...
With the coming of the Christmas comes the now annual whine from the anuses claiming that there’s a plot to do away with Christmas. Please don’t make me embarrass you in this forum -- first bullshite “libruhls and femi-nazis are killing Christmas” post I see I’m going for the jugular. Shoot, I think I’ll do it anyway...

I will be gone all day at a senior staff retreat working on a five-year, organizational-wide strategic plan. It’s not going to be a pretty sight since I intend to rock the boat, think audaciously, and question everything! LOL

I’m only half kidding... ::grin::

I wrote the following a couple of years ago...

* * *

-=[ Goddess ]=-

She emerges from the trees,
the earth,
the rocks beneath my feet.
She is the air I breathe.
The unborn breathe of life.

Why is it I never saw her before?
Was I... so blind?

I am aroused yet humbled
I am satiated yet hungry,
desiring more and
more
and more...

At every turn I am met
with her brilliance.
As of the Earth,
the Clay,
the Rivers and Streams.

Before this journey
I was no one special.
And after,
once more,
I am no one special.

And this, I know, is grace.

* * *

I was saved by a dream.

Literally.

Not a figure of speech. I rarely ever remember my dreams and maybe this is a good thing, considering what the fuck kinda shit dwells in my subconscious. However, there was one unforgotten dream about seven years ago that had a tremendous impact on my life. In fact, after that dream I was never the same person – changed me completely. And, get this, I don’t even remember its details!

Nonsense, you say? Read on…

Several years ago, my life was imploding. Everything that I had worked towards, or valued, seemed to be unraveling before my eyes. My marriage of about seven years was on the rocks. Actually, it was barely breathing, it was waiting for someone to mercifully shoot it. I was in my senior year of my undergraduate studies and I was so burnt out that I couldn’t retain any more information. A straight A student, my grades were plummeting and I was having a hard time finding meaning in it all. To complicate matters, I couldn’t get a job to save my life.

It was a strange time, looking back, because though I realized things were coming to a head on many fronts, it seemed as if I were just floating around there for a bit. As if it were all happening, and I was there witnessing all of this, but unable to do anything about it.

I divorced, barely escaped my senior year, and had to leave graduate school for a job and that’s where it all started. I was working for an East Harlem non-profit as a life skills trainer where I met this young lady. A co-worker, she was half my age, and I really didn’t think she was interested, but eventually she let her feelings known. Actually, what she said was, “Don’t you ever get it?” during dinner once. Yes, I’m dense and sometimes I don’t “get it.” LOL!

Anyway, I’m dating this really young lady and at first, my attraction to her was minimal. I mean, she was pretty, intelligent, and we shared common interests. We spent a lot of time going to museums, discussing poetry, reading books together, taking walks, etc. Still, I never felt any overwhelming feelings of love.

But I digress, I need to make my point!

Well, one thing led to another and she let on that her feelings for me were more than casual. I think the “L” word was mentioned somewhere in there, and though there were red flags and alarms screaming all over the place (too complicated to discuss here), I allowed myself to entertain the possibility that the feelings were mutual. This woman was 25 years old to my 43. And while, yes, age is only a number, the fact was that my priorities and frames of reference were much different from hers. As a result, eventually she “fell out” of love and I was stuck. I had talked myself into love! We split and I was taking it pretty bad. Looking back, I realize now that what I had was an obsession, not love. I mean, I didn’t do anything overly stupid like stalk her, or act out on my compulsions, but I was definitely in a lot of pain.

So, there I was, a cold, rainy Friday night and I go home, just wanting to lay down and pull the covers over my head and sleep forever. And that’s when The Dream happens…

I’m in deep pain and I go to sleep. Maybe it wasn’t just this girl, but the accumulation of everything that had happened over the previous year: divorce, education, not being there with my son everyday – I felt like I was in a boxing match and losing big time. I went to sleep shrouded in a deep, intense sorrow.

I dream. I don’t remember the specifics of the dream, the content, but the feelings – Oh my God! – the feeling of the dream is what I remember. In the dream, there is a woman in my life, I don’t know or remember exactly what she looks like. I remember her eyes and her smile. But that isn’t important. What’s important is that in this dream this woman loved me in a way I have never experienced in my life. The love is so palpable that it infuses me with joy, washing away my sorrow as if it were mere dirt.

I get this very real feeling of being loved so completely, so totally that it seems as if my very being is transformed on a cellular level. In the dream, this woman knows everything about me: from my most insightful thoughts to the most pornographic. She knows it all, the good and the bad, everything, and yet she still loves me completely, without condition. In the dream, I remember hearing her voice because all I remember is that she was walking laughing with some of my friends -- she was walking to meet with me. But I get the real sense that she loves me and I am filled with a total, pure, unconditional love in this dream and I’m ecstatic!

Then I wake up…

But this is the kicker: the feeling in the dream? It’s still there! I’m filled with this incredible sense of being loved that seems to come from the very core of my being. It’s not an over-the-top “gee-I’m-so-happy” type feeling, but rather a calm presence at my center, washing away my fears and doubts. It’s as if the woman in my dream connected me to the very essence of love itself.

I never tried to analyze this dream, but without thinking about it in words, a part of me sensed that that woman in my dream wasn’t someone else, but an aspect of myself.

Really.

I didn’t get this by thinking about it; I sensed it in my body.

At least that’s how I remember experiencing it.

Since that day, yes, I have experienced sadness, anger, disappointment – the full catastrophe of life – but nothing, not even death and loss, has ever taken away this joy at the core of my being. It is truly invincible.

Now I have discovered that I was mistaken about the nature of this dream. It wasn’t an “aspect of myself” that loved me in this powerful way. Not really. The dream was pointing me to a road I needed to travel. It was pointing me to the opening of my heart because the more I open, the stronger this presence is in my life. When I close, I lose contact; when I open, the contact becomes stronger. It’s not about “me.” It’s about the dissolving of the fake wall that separates “me” from you.

Perhaps, in a way, it was about the Woman of my Dreams…

Love,

Eddie