No sweat or tears

Again with the abandonment dream. It has recurred more times than I care to admit. When I wake in the morning, it feels as if the dream took place over all the hours I was asleep. Yet I know it was most likely nearest to the time I woke up, as it is so vivid, that I wake up warm. As if my spirit and mind are fighting each other.

The dream usually involves me having to recount to some one I haven't seen in a long time, why it is exactly, that my marriage failed, that I'm single and my wasband is not. It's a painful process in this dream, as many people are around me, talking while we're making a meal, and I have to speak loudly to be heard over all the chopping, rinsing and clanking of pans.

I have to explain that I was left years before he physically left. Emotionally, spiritually, physically, and sexually. I have to explain that intellectually there was tension. I have to explain that compassion and trust were not words in his vocabulary. I find myself spinning in place, listening to myself as I tell the old friend how things fell apart.

That old friend knows me long enough to know that I've been abandoned before. By the last two serious relationships I had just prior to meeting my wasband. They know that each of those two people were also not respectful, nor compassionate, and that I shouldn't have trusted them.

I wonder what it takes to break a cycle or pattern of choices that leave me lonely and alone? People in the dream look at me, and then away, to their task at hand. We've had this conversation before and there is no answer....or words like trust, faith, timing, a process are bandied about.

In the dream I'm trying to wake myself up. I don't want to have this circular conversation. I don't want to dream about how unfair it feels to be the giver who gets taken for a ride. I don't want to hold, carry and deconstruct the weight of the emotions that I know will linger long after I awake.

The pillars of self-care are these: sleep, movement, being of use, whole foods and positive social contact. I can direct myself successfully with all of those pillars, except for the social contact at the romantic level. How, why, and what does it take for me to position myself mentally, physically and literally to be in the right place, at the right time, to find the right man for me?

I can feel myself fighting the covers and tossing as I pull away from the rounds of questions from the old friend my dream. I can see the confusion in their eyes, and disappointment, or is that just my mind projecting an image of shame back on myself.

This afternoon the dream haunted me while swimming in a crystalline pool. I was in a good rhythm, a zone of perfect breaths, strokes and turns. The sunlight through the ceiling bouncing off the bottom of the lane next to mine, put me in a meditative state. I was reliving flashes of the dream and thinking to myself, "No one can see you sweat or cry in the water." I wasn't in tears, but I knew if I let the images and words from last nights dream grow too bold in my mind, there would be.

Instead, I focused on the pillars I can control in my waking life. The feel of the water and sunlight. The fact that it was World Water Day and my spirit was thoroughly enjoying playing and pushing myself through the water. It was only when I paused at the end of the lane, to adjust my googles or grab a kick board, and saw couples my age being intimate with each other, that a dangerous pang briefly gripped the middle of my throat. But I shook it off and finished my mile, and enjoyed the company of my friend with whom I swim.

Good night, single swimmers and dreamers, G'night!