Relief?

Finally. After what has become a blurry length of time.....a peaceful night's sleep. Dreamless. Restful.

I woke this morning feeling not so much like a new person, but like a person who has been granted some sort of reprieve - like someone covered the spikes in the bed for one night. I don't feel tormented and confused this morning. A little fragile, yes, but the kind that will solidify if given the chance.

My body feels different. I didn't realize I was carrying around that much tension, but the absence of it is astonishingly noticeable. I move freely. I realize now that I had been walking around as though something hurt inside. I guess it did, but I didn't figure it was that severe. Now, not having that stiff, careful quality to my movements...I feel almost like dancing.

But for now, I just want to sit here and take stock of things and enjoy the liberated feeling. At least until I have to start dealing with the things I stopped tending to during all this. I think I can do that, though, with this sun that has come out from behind those big, dark clouds.

Dreamfest '08 (yes, that's sarcasm)

More dreams last night. These ones had my sister, ex-husband, and I think either my mother or my one remaining grandmother was in there, too. Maybe occupying the same figure and switching back and forth.

At one point, my sister and I were driving in Erie. It was dark and raining, and I was trying to remember how to get places, and taking wrong turns. She was sort of laughing, sort of impatient about it.

At another point, we were in my dead grandma's old house, but she was recently dead. We were spending a lot of time there, having to stay there overnight and such, and my sister and I changed the sheets on what had been Grandma's bed, and shared it.

I dreamed we were later standing in the kitchen, and looking at the floor. The vinyl was in bad shape, which would have been so not Grandma. But that's when my ex was suddenly standing there, looking at the floor and talking about laying tile (he's a professional tile man).

There was a dog, which was odd, because -that- grandmother didn't have a dog, the other one does. The dog's water dish had been put on the back porch for reasons we were speculating about, with me saying that 'she probably didn't want to damage the floor with spilled water'. I moved the dog's water dish into the kitchen, next to his food dishes on the floor in an out-of-the-way corner.

Then someone...I knew them in the dream, but don't remember who it was now, came up to the back porch and said something like "The gray board from Mr. So-and-so's shed is gone again." (I heard the name in the dream, but don't remember it now). It seemed important that the piece of gray wood in an otherwise white shed kept getting swiped. Interestingly, this shed and the gray piece of wood show up in other dreams - where it's called to my attention that the gray board is gone. And it always seems to be disturbing news.

This is all getting old. I feel like I've gotten on a ride at an amusement park, only nobody told me until we were strapped in and started moving that it's the worlds' longest roller coaster.

Still broken

I think I must have some part of me that got broken inside when Dad died. It's in there, dangling by a wire, and rattles around when I move through life. And sometimes it unexpectedly gets hung up in other parts, and causes problems.

And sometimes, like now, I just feel like I'm filled with broken glass and it hurts no matter which direction I go. Dad has been in my dreams lately, which puts him on my mind a lot, which brings him into more of my dreams....it's a vicious cycle that is wearing me down and hurting me and making me start to avoid sleep unless I think I'm too tired to dream. And it's all taking a toll on my ability to think clearly, to make decisions, to even type. Holding conversations is difficult, at best. I can't keep doing this, but I don't know how to stop. I don't know how to make this grief leave me alone.

It's been like this for a couple weeks now, and I don't know how much more I can take. I'm tired on so many levels, but it seems I cannot rest easy. There is no comfort, no peace of mind, no restful sleep. I crawl out of bed exhausted with only a minute to spare before I have to take the kids to school. Thankfully, that stops in one week. Maybe if I can just keep pushing until then, I will finally get some rest...once I fall into exhausted sleep, I'll be able to sleep as long as I really need. I hope.