Me Here, at Last, on the Ground; You in Mid-Air

I’ve spent the last week or so on school holidays doing pretty much sweet nothing work-wise, and it feels great. Sorry, not sorry, right?

One of the things I’ve been doing is catching up on sleep, and with catching up on sleep comes lots of dreams.

In one of my last blogs (see Familiarity in Dreams), I wrote about having those dreams that haunt you. Coincidentally, I had one again on Thursday night.

One of the lyrics from “Send in the Clowns”, one of, if not the, most famous songs from Stephen Sondheim’s musical A Little Night Music, has haunted me for as long as I can remember: “Me here, at last, on the ground / You in mid-air.”

It’s all about things and people and relationships we’ve lost, because the timing wasn’t quite right. I sometimes feel that this is my life in a nutshell, the hesitancy within me causing my timing to be off — a step right instead of a step left, things left unsaid, opportunities that have walked away — and therefore pushing me into some sort of self-harming cycle.

Part of the lyric, too, reminds me of some specific people, and the person in my dream was, when I knew him in my personal life, soaring. Reality had, on the other hand, finally grounded me. It seems strange, thinking about it now, his star rising and me finally being realistic about life; I’m looking up at him, in awe, happy, thankful, while he’s… Well, there are so many bright stars in the sky. Why look down?

In the dream, we were reunited. I had no expectations. There were many other people vying for his attention, and I was at the end of that line. Yet, when he got to me, happiness and thankfulness were within me. What will be, will be. And he spent more time with me. I laughed, he laughed, and it was like old times.

Everyone was going swimming in the pool, he told me. Will you be coming along?

Of course. But inside I was very uncertain, about my body, about me, about how I should react. In short, I was being little old insecure me.

I finally built up the courage, got changed — swim trunks with a tee-shirt — and went out to the pool to find it was a beach on a cove leading into the ocean.

There were hundreds upon hundreds, if not more, people there.

And he was nowhere to be found.

I woke up haunted.

This has been what I have been dealing with partially in my recovery from dissociation. Dreams where people leave me, where I’m alone, where I have no expectations and nothing happens. If I have no expectations, I can’t be disappointed, can I? I’m on the ground. Grounded. Completely grounded.

The other dream I’ve been having — and I’ll probably talk about this more in another blog — is the dream where I don’t even recognize myself, whether it’s in photos or in the mirror or in a reflection of some sort. That can be even more haunting.

What can I do about this? I don’t know.

The guy in my dream helped me in a rough patch in my life. And, maybe, that’s the point. One time, I relied on him, but I can’t rely on other people forever. Sometimes, I have to step up and rely on myself.

Sometimes, I need to launch myself back in mid-air.