Begging for Reality

I've mentioned before that I have extraordinarily vivid dreams. Dreams that, once remembered, cannot be forgotten.

I don't like my dream world.

It isn't that I'm complaining, really, but for all the jokes I make about the idiosyncrasies of my subconscious mind, it often leaves me with this feeling of being permanently unsettled. In my dreams, my fears come true. I relive my dad's funeral. I am forced by circumstance into prostitution. I am raped. My mother dies. My best friend murders my sister. My husband cheats.

Even the banalities make it into my dreams, the petty worry that my sister will take up smoking or that my boss will be ashamed of me.

I suppose I shouldn't call them dreams. They are nightmares.

And they haunt me every night.

Something intriguing about my dreams, something I've not heard from anyone else, is that they all seem to take place on the same plane. They don't start and stop in different places, at different times. They chronicle themselves. While I am dreaming one thing, I am also aware of what I dreamed last night, and how that particular place is just across the plane. The plane, usually, is a barren forest, where darkness rules and I can never run as fast as I would like.

Because of this, my dreams often morph into one another. I have recurring dreams, and in the middle of one dream, I will often remember a detail from another dream and proceed to redream it, no matter my desire (or lack thereof) to experience it again. I often wake up feeling empty and wrong, and usually fatigued. Real life is so much better than my dreams, where nothing makes sense and everything is frightening.

Many people seem to think my memory of the dreams is quite funny. It's something different about me. Something they remember. But to tell the truth, I would rather not dream at all.

My Dark Side

I'm a war of head versus heart
It's always this way
My head is weak
My heart always speaks
Before I know what it will say

-Death Cab for Cutie, Crooked Teeth

This verse describes me perfectly. I am blunt. My friends lovingly accuse me of being tactless, to which I always reply that tact is just lying for grown ups. But my mouth isn't something I can control. The truth comes out whether I want it to or not, and to be honest, I only say about 20% of what I'm actually thinking, so my rudeness is actually tempered by a rather heavy filter.

I've hurt friends with my words, my inability to say things in a way that might not be quite as painful. I've also vindicated some friends with a thorough reaming to people who had hurt them. My truths go both ways --- they can be something you don't want hear, or something you desperately need to. After all, sticks and stones may break your bones, but words are there forever.

If I like you, you know it.

If I don't, you know that too.

This, however, can become a problem in civilized working environments. I have no power where I work. I am the bottom of the totem pole. And people treat me accordingly. I won't pretend it doesn't vex me. In fact, I've rather vividly fantasized about punching some people right in that tenderest part of their eyes.

I find it very difficult to plaster a smile on my face and respect those people who find no shred of decency in themselves to treat me as if I have a brain, or, at the very least, as if I'm human. I've mouthed off a few times, but luckily not to anyone with any power to do anything about it.

It's only a matter of time. Someone has but to cross me too many times, and I will snap. They think I'm small and meek, too young and petite to fight back against them. They don't know how impulsive I can be, or how mean.

In other words, I know what I should do. I should let it roll off my shoulders, ignore it. But emotion runs deep in me, and it is a force that will not be ignored. I speak and sometimes act before I know what will happen.

One of these days, my weakness is going to get me in trouble.

Romance

It's been a long time.

I've been sick. Very sick.

But that's not very interesting. I fear I'm always sick.

I've been reading a lot lately. I'm averaging a book a day, which can admittedly be a tad expensive, despite my recent preference for mass market historical romance novels.

I love nineteenth century London.

I think I should have been a great debutante were I an earl's daughter with a large dowry in 1812. The Earl of Southwick or some such thing. I think I could easily live in a time when chivalry still existed and evening gowns were prerequisite. I would gladly give up my right to vote for such things considering I never exercise it anyway. And I don't really care that I just set my sex back nearly a century. I am a dependent person. If I could be a housewife and get away with it, I probably would.

I do fantasize, however, about transporting back there with my modern clothes and my modern slang and watching the scandalized faces of the matrons in the ballroom while I flip my unadorned hair and wear clothes that *gasp* show my knees. I feel I would wear belly shirts just to taunt them.

They would probably just think it's because I'm American.

I would give in. In my fantasy I am not exiled, but merely reformed. I find a modiste and dress properly, but I do not give up my electric flatiron (despite the lack of electricity, it works anyway) or modern eyeliner (of which I have an endless supply). I will catch a viscount at least. He loves me dearly.

Now if only I had a time machine...