81. nightmares

I'm still laid out with the death-flu, and it has me navigating some strange places in the dream realms.

Last night, I dreamed of three aspects of self: a young innocent maiden, La Loba (Wolf Woman, She Who Knows), and Maleficient, my inner protector. In the dream realm, La Loba came in the form of a huge snarling black dog, but I wasn't afraid of her. 

I've been walking in dreams with more power the past few years, and I surprised myself tonight as I sat down to write and just happened to find this piece I wrote almost exactly three years ago to the day. I'll leave it here, and tomorrow, share a little more about the birth and growth of Maleficient. 

“I think maybe I have PTSD, “ I say quietly to my husband as we lay in bed, the soft glow of morning light streaming in the window. The dog snoozes peacefully between us, blissfully unaware of the complexities of our human experience. 

“Why?” he murmurs, his face muffled by my skin as his head burrows into the space between our pillows. I absentmindedly scratch his back, tuning my senses into the complete safety I have in this waking space, observing how it feels in contrast to the constant threats of my dreams. 

“Nightmares again,” I reply, thinking back to twenty minutes ago, when I found myself trapped for what seems the thousandth time in a dreamscape with someone I want to excise completely from my consciousness. 

“Is that why you were sleepwalking?” he asks. 

“Hmm? No, no, I just didn’t feel you in the bed, and thought maybe you fell asleep on the couch. No, just the same dreams again. He’s always here, hunting me. Refusing to leave. He’s not even harming me, or threatening me. It’s just his presence. Like he believes he has ownership of this part of my consciousness, an entitlement to be there. I’ve tried everything. I’ve even murdered him, more than once. I’ve banished him. I’ve commanded him to leave. Nothing works.”

My husband is quiet for a moment. 

“Can you invite me into your dreams?” he asks thoughtfully? “Maybe I can kill him.” 

I start to cry softly, and kiss his tousled hair. 

“I love you so much, thank you. I'll try that," I say. 

“You’re safe now,” he promises. 

Most of me believes he’s right. But still…

Night after night you invade the inner sanctum of my being. No, not my body - my dream temple. The place where I’ve always walked with power and ease. 

You don’t belong here. You arrive, with that same stupid expression on your face, as though I’ll be glad to see you, or at the very least, tolerant. Entitled. Like you have a right to be here. 

You have no right to be here. 

The only threat you carry is that of your presence. It looms in my somnolent spaces, bringing with it a sense of inescapability, like I’m doomed to carry part of you in my being for the rest of time. 

I will not have it. 

Whatever is needed to release you, I will find it. 

You harmed me. You preyed on my desperate need for acceptance, forgiveness, belonging, and you lured me into your web of lies. 

You harmed me. You used my hunger for God like a carrot to a horse, but slammed the door each time I drew near to the ineffable light of Her being.

I, not knowing better, didn’t realize it wasn’t your door to slam. I didn’t realize the door was my own creation. 

You harmed me. You called me the jewel in your crown when, like an obedient child, I acquiesced to your way of relating to the spiritual, then continued to shame me for sin, even as you orchestrated the conditions for me to bury myself ever deeper in a pit of self hatred and exploitation. 

You harmed me. You encouraged my sexual curiosity when it benefitted you, for your own enjoyment or financial gain, but when your own insecurities and mother wound could no longer hold the expansiveness of my appetite, you shut me out with icy indifference, the silent treatment, or long winded sermons about my sexual demons, calling me Jezebel, liar, whore.

You harmed me. You drove me to pick up drugs, blessed me as I used them to navigate the fucked up situation we’d created for ourselves, then sanctimoniously called me an addict, told me I was beyond hope, that you were worried about me. 

You were not worried about me. 

You were worried about yourself. 

You were worried about being alone. 

You were worried that your lies would catch up with you.

You were worried that the FBI was getting too close.

You were worried I’d find out who you really were.

You. Harmed. Me. You exploited me for your own gain: physical, emotional, mental, material, spiritual, and then weaponized my own shame against me. 

Even as I try to excavate all the ways harm was done, the wound blankets me like a fog and I cannot see. Even as I lay the injuries at your feet, a part of me still feels conflicted, disloyal, unfaithful, inadequate. Even as I stand, feet planted, hands on hips, clear and strong and firm that what you did to me was wrong, so too is there part of me that is curled in a ball on the floor, remorseful, despondent, aware with every fiber of my being that this is all my fault.

I’ve tried running and hiding, finding safe spaces far from your influence where I can heal, restore, and learn to live again. 

But in my dreams you find me still.

I’ve tried cutting cords, unwinding the tendrils of our energies woven together, not in fusion but snarls of desperation. I’ve cut them down to the quick, willing to sacrifice limbs of my spirit to be rid of you.

But in my dreams you find me still. 

I’ve tried setting boundaries, blessing my space, claiming this corner of the astral realm as mine alone.

But still you find me. 

So here is what I will do. 

I will learn to walk in the shadow spaces. 

I will become the spider-witch and dream-weaver.

I will embody Maleficent.

I will become a wayfinder in the recesses of my soul. 

And if you walk into my dream, you will find, in short order, that it will be your nightmare.