Nightmares

I'm married to Matt, but I'm still a teenager. Or at least, I feel like one.

"Well, at least you're not a dyke," says my father. "I honestly thought you'd have a better life than this, but you're a fuckup. And you married a fat fuck. At least he's enough of a man to take care of you."

He goes on to chastise me for being fat, and for smoking, and for being a "junkie." I assume he's talking about the painkillers. These are all things that he, himself, is guilty of.

I scream at him. I tell him he has no right to say any of that, that he washed his hands of me as soon as he could get away from my mother, that he lied to me, abandoned me when I wasn't of any more use to him. I tell him he's an asshole and I'm glad I didn't turn out the way he wanted me to.

Flash forward, another dream. Matt and I are going on a trip somewhere together. I think it's to some kind of convention on the other side of the country. It should be fun, and I should be excited, but I feel horrible. I'm deeply anxious. And then, for some reason, we end up on different flights. I can see him in the other plane, but we can't talk. He's lying down. The other plane is full of beds instead of seats. And then we take off. I feel like throwing up through the whole flight. I'm crushed against the window by a man who smells like rotting flesh. We finally land. I wait for Matt at the terminal, but he never shows up. I ask about the flight, but no one has any idea what I'm talking about. It's as if the flight Matt was on never existed. I'm now alone, frightened, and without any means to call someone for help. My phone is dead and there isn't anywhere to charge it. I think it would almost be better if someone told me the plane crashed. At least then I would know. I fear I'm losing my mind and that Matt was never with me to begin with.

I wake in a cold sweat, nauseous, my head pounding in pain. Matt says he came in this morning to give me a kiss, but I only vaguely remember it. For several moments, I don't know where I am, and then the room finally rearranges itself to be recognizable as my own.

I sit up in bed, take my morning pills and wait for them to kick in. I'd been sick the night before with stomach issues, with a slight fever and a general feeling of weakness. I chalk up the nightmares to that, but I'm still shaking a little bit. I feel like I just want to stay home and rest, but after those dreams, I feel like I can't waste any precious time I have with Matt over the weekend. I manage to get dressed and go with Matt when he has his therapy session. He's in session now, and I'm writing this entry.

I'm better now, but the dreams suggest that I am still struggling with my self-worth, of a fear of disappointing others - my father, in particular- even though my father hasn't been a part of my life for many years. I am also terrified of abandonment, of losing what I have. My world revolves around Matt. I depend on him. He's my husband, so that's normal, mostly, but because I have disabilities, it's even scarier to think what would happen to me if anything happened to him.

Sometimes, I think that this all must be a dream. I will wake up back in my mother's house and I'll be 22 years old and none of this will have happened. And I'll be sad, but safe, in a strange way. Maybe it's just the feeling of needing familiarity, of needing to know that something isn't going to change. We're going to be moving again in just a couple of months, and we don't know where, and I'm really hoping that wherever we go this time will be somewhere we can stay for more than a year.

Again, Halloween, my favourite holiday, will be too busy with preparations for moving to be enjoyed fully. But that's what Samhain is, really. It's when the wheel of the year turns and you get rid of what you don't need anymore and you start anew. I think on last year, when we were burdened with a horrible landlord and the huge expense of treating all of our belongings for bedbugs. I think about how sick I was from all of the bedbug bites. I think that this year has got to be better than that, even if it is stressful. I just really don't want this to be a yearly occurrence.

I'm still afraid of change. Every time, it gets a little better. I know that. It doesn't mean it still doesn't terrify me. In addition to the move, there's the looming back surgery. I just feel overwhelmed. Maybe when I get overwhelmed like this, that's when my brain goes haywire and produces these terrifying dreams.

I just want not to be afraid anymore.