"And I build each one of my days out of hope and I give that hope your name" (Ani Difranco)

I wish that I could have posted this morning. The words were fresh and at the ready. The feelings were even fresher, begging to be released and spilled out onto a plain white canvas. But it wasn’t possible. Not this morning. Not in a house full of kids, one of whom is still pretty sick. Not in a house with bare cupboards and an even more empty fridge. Not in a house almost covered in snow.

Not this morning.

So, I’ll try now. Try to capture the words and the fresh feelings…try to grab a hold of them and try to release them onto this plain, white canvas. Try now to share them as Michael the sickie sleeps in his crib. Try now as Rock putters around and calls his Mom about his sister’s delayed return to Canada. Try now as the girls cut and paste and colour and collage in their bedroom, a bag full of Dollar Store craft supplies sitting next to them, waiting for their imaginations and waiting for Kate’s quick hand with the scissors, always ready to cut and destroy until nothing is left and she is happiest.

I dreamed vividly last night.

I dreamed vividly of January last night.

Or rather, this morning.

When I crept up the stairs at around three thirty (four thirty with the Spring forward bullshit), I heard Michael crying and coughing and I went and fetched him from the crib, put on a bottle and gave him a dose of Motrin. He settled into my arms for a few minutes and I soaked him in, visions of breast feeding in the dark filling my mind and memories of the magic that lives between mother and child in those moments filling my heart. And my heart grew and grew as excitement poured in. Excitement at the prospects of sharing that magic with another person, something that I’ve never had opportunity to share before.

And sharing magic….well, it makes it all the more magical, doesn’t it?

The magic flew around Michael and I as I fed him and beat his baby drum and watched him fall asleep. I locked the magic in as I put him back into his crib, turned him on his side and tip toed out of the room.

And then I stood at the front door, turned on the outside light and watched the snow fly…literally…outside. It was coming down in sheets, the wind so strong, it blew it around and around and around, creating drifts so high, our car was completely blocked into the driveway. A snow plow went by. And from the lights on the front of the truck, I could see that the high way was white.

And still there were people driving. And I stood there, watching the snow in the yellow light of the outside bulb and wondered where they could be going at this hour, in this weather.

And then I remembered that there is a whole world out there.

This is just a tiny corner.

I finally went to bed around four thirty or so (five thirty with the Spring Forward bullshit). I didn’t catch the golden ticket last night…and I was happy just listening to someone else grab a hold of it twice…but because I’m a selfish C-U-Next-Tuesday, I decided that I still wanted a ticket for myself. It didn’t take long, for very obvious reasons, and I fell asleep maybe fifteen minutes later.

I fell asleep quickly and easily.

And I fell right into a dream.

It was January. That much was clear. And I was in a familiar room. A room I will likely never forget. But I was surprised. Because I knew it wasn’t the first time. I knew it was a second visit and the visit was a surprise in itself.

“You picked the same place?” I asked.

“It’s the cheapest,” he said and just like that, I was filled with guilt.

“Oh,” I said.

“It’s the same room and everything and I thought that we could try again”, he said, with apprehension in his voice.

He was taller. Much, much taller. He looked like Chris. A boy I’d much rather forget.

He was going to be here for a whole week, that much I knew although I don’t remember anybody telling me the fact. And although the room was apparently the same one, it looked different somehow. It was darker. There was wood on the walls. And there was very little light…natural or otherwise.

I was inexplicably nervous. My palms were sweating. My heart was beating a bit faster. And I felt myself get cagey and jumpy. I felt myself fill with the desire to bolt. Open the door and run.

We somehow ended up outside, in that weird dream way where you don’t remember how you got someplace, only that the location has changed and it seems very natural and makes perfect sense when you’re in the middle of the dream.

We were outside. And it was cold. And he was tall. Much, much taller. He looked like Chris, the boy I’d much rather forget. The boy whose heart I broke in half. The boy that I never speak of. Not to anyone.

It was cold and we were waiting for something. Waiting and waiting. And I was nervous. Because I knew this time, that I had the power to snap him in half.

Two people approached us. I knew them. But I only knew them in the dream. Their faces aren’t familiar now.

I introduced the boy to them. I said, “This is Craig. He’s my boyfriend.”

And he looked at me, eyes full of questions and anger and disbelief and he barked at me, “MY NAME’S NOT CRAIG! HOW COULD YOU FORGET MY NAME? I LOVE YOU AND YOU FORGOT MY NAME!”

I felt my face blush and I felt my heart fill up with regret and sadness. Because without even trying, I was breaking him already.

“I’m sorry!” I said. “I’m sorry Chris”.

But then I remembered that I didn’t call him Chris very often. For some reason he had told me to call him another name. You know the name. I don’t need to say it.

I wasn’t scared by his anger. I saw it as fear. And as I sat there on a seventies style couch, because the cold outside had changed into a strange, unfamiliar den in typical dream style, I saw all of it for what it really was.

Fear.

Fear that I will forget his name. Fear that he will become Chris, the boy that I never speak of. The boy whose heart I broke into a million little pieces. The boy that I liked so much but never had the courage to follow through on once I could see how the rest of the world saw him. The boy that I outright ignored in the halls. The boy who still fills my heart with guilt and regret and gut wrenching, puke worthy disgust with myself every time I think of him. Even now.

I couldn’t admit, not even last night, that I had ever been one of those girls. If even for a minute in the ninth grade, the weight of the world already on my shoulders because I didn’t fit in myself, not in the least, because I was already so basically unacceptable.

Fear.

Fear that I will walk away. Wash my hands, brush them against the warmth of my thighs and turn on my heels with a flick of my blond head and walk away in the other direction without looking back.
Fear that I will use the power for bad and not good. Fear that I will turn out like all of the others. Fear that I will turn out like him. In the end, I’ll agree. In the end, I’ll jump aboard and see through his eyes…see through their eyes…and find myself repulsed.

I saw all of that truth in one swift moment. And I knew then that my words had more power than I realized. I knew, instantly, that every word that I let leak from my open mouth has the same power as forgetting his name, standing outside in the cold. Every word carries more weight than anonymous ears would assume. More weight than any objective listener could ever hear.

And just like that, the room changed again. And I was standing at the end of a large bed with a most horrible bedspread strewn across it. I was standing and watching him sleep. I was wearing jeans. And a black sweater. And my hair was covered in a black bandana. And I didn’t have make up on. I had just removed it a few minutes earlier.

I was creeping quietly, finding my purse, finding my vice, finding my cell phone. Finding my way around the room without the aid of a light. Finding my way out of the room, out into the hallway, out to the car parked illegally in the front.

I had snuck out from under his arm. My intentions were good. My intentions were innocent.

I didn’t know then the power I had .

I didn’t know then the intensity of the fear.

I stood there watching him sleep and then watching him wake, knowing that I wasn’t really standing there.

Knowing that I was actually sitting outside in my car with the window rolled halfway down, smoking and watching wholesome looking families stroll out of the front doors. It was check out time. Their teams had either won or lost. I couldn’t tell based on their expressions because every parent had the same face….a wholesome, suburbian face crinkled with hurry and mild panic because there was lots of ground to cover before the end of the day and nobody was moving fast enough. I was sitting and smoking, talking into my cell phone, listening through my cell phone to the account of the events of the night prior. I was fielding questions that begged for too much information as the parents passed my car parked illegally, their crinkled faces turning quickly to disgust because I surely looked like death warmed over and then quickly turning back, turning away as the punk rock Janet that lives inside of me scowled and sneered, daring any one of them to look harder or for longer.

“Fuck you and fuck your fake lie of a life” punk rock Janet shouted.

Nobody heard her, though. They just saw a woman who looked like she had been rode hard and put away wet the night before. They just saw a woman who had crawled out of bed in the early afternoon, talking and smoking in a car parked illegally.

That’s where I was really sitting.

But last night, I stood at the end of the bed and watched him wake up and look around. Wake up and look to his left. Look to his left and notice my absence. Notice my absence and say my name out loud. Say my name out loud and hear nothing in return. Hear nothing in return and assume that it had actually happened.

I had actually left.

I had been too kind…no…I had too much pity for the sorry fuck to leave the night before, just as I had threatened. And he was a fool for believing me, for allowing himself to even dare to think that this time it could be different. A fucking fool. A fucking fool with nothing left, only wasted time and a lifetime of mistakes that any normal person could have avoided without even trying. Every step was a challenge and every fall was a failure. Why would this time be any different?

And how could he have thought…dared to dream….that deep down inside he was anything besides imperfection and failure and weakness and poison? Even she could see it and he was a fool. A fucking fool for feeling disappointment because in the end, they all see the truth and they all run away. And who could blame them?

Certainly not him.

I stood there at the end of that giant bed and watched him curl up onto his side. Watched him almost allow himself the luxury of sadness and defeat before….

The door opened.

The door opened and I watched myself walk back into the room, quietly, so as not to wake him.

And I watched him from the end of the bed, close his eyes and pretend to return to sleep, and hope it wasn’t a joke, wasn’t a trick…watched him will himself not to feel relief. Because it surely couldn’t be true.

I stood there, a shadow of myself and watched myself take off my jeans and kick them into a corner. I watched myself shed my sweater. I watched myself crawl back into the bad, back under the arm and I heard myself say, “It’s okay. You can go back to sleep.”

I stood there and watched as I snuggled back into the pillow, totally unaware of what I had managed to avoid. Totally unaware of the smile on the other side of me. The smile of temporary relief and gladness. Totally unaware of my own power and my own weight.
And I watched him as he didn’t return to sleep, although my real self thought that he had. My real self thought that I had woken him completely by accident when I had opened the door to come back into the room and my real self felt badly because it had been a long night and a long day prior and he was old and needed sleep.

My shadow self saw the truth.

Saw the fear.

Saw what I had avoided. Without realizing it. Saw that night all over again from the only truthful perspective.

I wasn’t alone. A man stood next to me. A man who has only recently allowed me to see him as short.

“I’m still taller than you, kiddo”, he’s fond of saying.

And I always laugh.

A man in a hat. A man in a hat who sits next to me almost always. A man who was standing next to my shadow self that morning.

“I couldn’t stop him, kiddo. That’s why I called you,” he said.

I turned at looked at him…my shadow self next to his dead self…and I muttered,

“I really didn’t know. I’m sorry. I didn’t know”.

The short man in the hat whose presence is tall and looming and very protective. Whose protectiveness I always associated with his son. Whose protectiveness I never claimed as my own. The short man in the hat said,

“You had to see it now, Janet.”

I stood there, my shadow self looking at this short man in a hat, my shadow self watching two people both very much in love but both very scared wrapped up in one another, both pretending to sleep, both hoping that the other was fooled, both so open and vulnerable and frail it was beautiful and I said,

“Why?”

The short man in the hat stared at me and said quite clearly in a voice so gentle you could never imagine it capable of hurt, never imagine it capable of anything but love,

“You had to see it tonight. We had to show you the truth of that night tonight. Because it’s almost time. Remember my words and your angels’ words…remember what they said about May’s purpose not yet being clear. You needed to see this now. You needed to know this now. May’s purpose will be clear soon. We’ve been guiding you both for years to this moment. It will all be clear. You need to trust us, kiddo, and you needed to know how easily he can be broken. I couldn’t stop him so I had to call you.”

And just like that…the room filled with light. The two lovers wrapped up in each other and scared out of their wits didn’t see it. They were both too busy pretending to sleep… one still scared of feeling relieved and still ready for it all to disappear, turn to shit at his touch…the other…well, the other is another story.

I woke up, groggy, still not sure which room I was in. Still not sure what day it was or what time it was for that matter. I stumbled out of bed this morning, power drank a coffee and sat and talked to Paul.

He’s still talking.

And I’m still listening.

And I’m not going anywhere.