Love the Same

I've been sleeping better than I was for a while there, thank goodness. I love me a good night's sleep, and it's pretty much a prerequisite for me to face the world with the outlook I want to bring each day. But this morning, sleep seems to be eluding me, which feels unfortunate, especially given the long work day ahead of me.

Kinda hard to go back to sleep after the bad dream I had that woke me up about 4:30am, though. I dreamt that I gave birth to a baby boy -- so premature -- so teeny tiny that he easily fit into the palm of my hand. I went to a party to celebrate his birth -- and two of the people who were there were my daughter's preschool teachers, which is noteworthy, since we haven't seen them in about five years. Anyway, whenever I'd turn my attention away from my baby, he'd start to shrivel up and get even smaller. I'd panic, and try to breastfeed him, and whenever I got him to drink, he'd start to come back to life, growing larger again, and I'd be super relieved. But it kept happening. Over and over again, until I woke up. Yuck. I've had dreams before about my kids being lost in enormous mazes, dreams about them falling from great heights, and once I had a dream about giving birth to a stillborn baby. This felt like a mix of those. With my daughter's preschool teachers there, it felt like the intense anxiety I felt was about her, but this tiny premature infant was the form that she -- my child -- the one I'm supposed to feed and protect -- took in the dream. Or more accurately, nightmare.

I know that I'm going to have to get better about detachment when it comes to my own kids, and in particular at the moment, my daughter. I want so badly to make everything all better. Yesterday I dedicated my morning yoga practice to her, and initially when I picked her up, I felt open and loving. But it didn't take much of me sensing something was wrong, and her being unwilling to share it, before I started to feel angry, on edge. And before I know it I'm saying things I know don't help the situation, but I can't help myself. It's like someone else takes over. I guess it's what Eckhardt Tolle calls the pain body -- the conglomeration of all of our past hurt that sometimes overtakes us.

And I get it. I get why this is happening now. I spent many, many years repressing the bad things that happened to me when I was a little girl, and now I'm finally feeling ready to face up to those memories and all the awful, humiliating, scary, yucky feelings they bring with them.

I've committed to this 90 day yoga intensive, and already, 11 days and 8 intense practices into it, my body's changing, beginning to let some things go, becoming more aware where other things are stuck. It's hard and it's scary but I know it's what I have to do if I ever want to really, truly, get to the other side of it.

The song I have for today is a real beauty. I can't get enough of it. I love Damien Jurado's voice, and his lyrics are lovely (if a bit heartbreaking) too:

You don't love me that way
The words that you say
Make it obvious now
Why try pretending you care
When feelings aren't there
Just be honest with me

It's not getting easier
With the two of us just standing here
Knowing we don't love the same

When I initially heard it, it didn't feel like it really fit my recent heartbreak. And it may not fit perfectly, but it nails the feeling I have, early in the morning after a bad dream. It's the same feeling I have, not being able to talk to a partner about what I'm going through with my past or my present:

I said, "Don't feel ashamed
Feelings just change
It's so clear to me now.
Don't cry you can't deny
Both of us tried for each other."

I feel for people who go through what he's singing about here, I really do, because that sucks. With my recent partner and I though, we did love the same, we just wound up
(or maybe we always did we just weren't really honest with ourselves about it or didn't really know we did until we were already in it pretty deep) having very different priorities about what matters most in life, different priorities about what role our love had in the course of our lives:

It's not getting easier
With the two of us just standing here
Knowing we don't love the same

And that's ok. It wasn't getting any easier with that gulf between us while we were still trying to make it work, and it is getting easier now that we're not pretending we want the same things. Easier. But not easy.

Maybe I need to be alone to do the work I'm embarking on now, I don't know. I do know that before my last relationship, I wasn't anywhere near ready to face it, so I'm grateful, once again, for all that growth and healing that our love provided...