Hide & Seek

Journal Entry: Sunday, November 22, 2009 - I just woke up to another bad dream. It was about you. Seldom are my dreams about you any good anymore. You are always hurting me, always in opposition to me. Often you'll have beautiful women all around you and you 'll mock me. This morning's dream was about you and your family. I cut across a beautiful green yard full of  flowers, and opened a screen door to a stranger's home, a home full of your family members. Your sister, your mom, and a room full of various, blurred-faced relatives in the background. Your mother seemed shocked to see me there. And I, with my chin held high in the air, pretending to be 100% resilient, attempted to have a civil conversation with her. But you were the most difficult to deal with – all arrogance and indifference, you wouldn't even look me in the eye or sit down to have a conversation with me.  Instead you just snarled and reminded me how worthless I was to you.  You were being so cruel that I couldn't take it any longer.  Out the door and across the yard I ran.  Breathless, I looked to my side and there you were again, driving behind the wheel of a dark, windowless van, calling me names through the driver’s side window, verbally attacking me the whole way down the road. My heart beat faster and hot angry tears rimmed my eyes.  I grit my teeth and tried to run faster, fighting the panic that was rising up inside of me.  Then I woke up...

Damnit!  I used to have bad dreams about my ex-boyfriend long into my relationship with you. But he rarely shows up in my dreams anymore, that monster. And when he does, he doesn't scare me at all. His looming body, his dark eyebrows, his villainous face… Now when he appears in my dreams, I just look at him with disgust and say "get lost!", and then POOF! In an instant he's gone. He doesn't frighten me anymore; he doesn't have that control over me. You still do. And I'm tired of facing you. I'm tired of struggling to be courageous!

It's like playing Hide & Seek, and then Tag. I run and hide while a monster counts out loud, and I know it's only a matter of time before he will find me.  I always think I’ve found a good hiding place, but he creeps up behind me, whacks me hard on the back and yells "TAG! YOU'RE IT!" I am so tired of this game already...

When I was born, I weighed only 3 lbs, 15 ounces, and had a hole in my heart.  The doctors were uncertain that I would survive.  They waited out the operation as long as they could, and for days and weeks they were indecisive about me.  Everyone talked about me like I was already gone, but babies can pick up on these things and I know I must have been scared shitless.  Torn away from my twin sister at birth and put inside of an incubator, I had no human contact for the first two months of my life. Nowadays no one would ever dream of separating twins, even if one is sick and the other healthy.  We know how healing the human touch can be. Back in the 60’s they weren’t so enlightened. Seemingly overnight, thankfully that hole in my heart covered over and I didn't need surgery. I gained enough weight to be put into a foster home, following my sister who had gone there a month ahead of me.  Six months later our parents took us home.  Today it still takes me a long time to really bond with and trust someone.  Sometimes I wonder: Is it just me who struggles with the heartache and confusion of being torn away from someone, or does everyone feel it? I can’t possibly know the answer to that question.

Maybe I was always meant to be a sensitive person, but probably my entrance into this world has certainly helped shape me. There are plenty of good things about being sensitive – I can somehow appreciate a deeper perspective on things. I am compassionate and have empathy for others.  I can read someone’s energy almost immediately, even to the point that a person can’t walk past me on the street without me picking something up off of them. Like a Shapeshifter, sometimes I don’t even know whose story I’ve become.  It seems like it should be all fun and games, but I am weary of it. So I've recently discovered that I need daily doses of being quiet and reclusive. It’s why I now crave long walks by myself.  I need down time to be introspective, to organize my thoughts, and to sort things out without anyone else's influence.  And well, it certainly has given me the time I have needed to re-discover my enjoyment of writing.

It is how I know I’m not ready to go home yet.  It doesn't feel safe to come out of my hiding place, to face that damn monster.  But sitting here at my desk in my sun filled room in warm Valencia, the corner I’ve been hiding in doesn't seem quite so dark.

Charleen xo