Photo by Ricardo Cruz on Unsplash

Take this with you

it's dangerous to go alone…

I have never played Zelda, which is what the title of today’s entry is from.

My mother thought any video game that mentioned magic had to be evil, so she would tell us that the evil spirits from the game would jump out into us. Even looking at the game cartridge (because, of course, my brother bought it anyway) felt wrong.

I wish she had been as vigilant about keeping us safe from other things. But I think she herself lacked the knowledge. How can you keep your kids safe from something you never learned about? At least not directly.

By the time I entered, “real” school, I had yet to set foot into a “real” pool. One built into the ground. The kind with ladders and a thick chlorine smell. Being homeschooled by parents who made just enough money for the necessities and the occasional treat meant that there was not enough money left over for things like swim lessons.

That and my mother was afraid of one of us drowning.

I was on a school trip to Atlanta the first time I got into a pool. I knew to stay near the shallow end where I could get out easily. I was afraid but ecstatic. Enough water to cover my entire body while standing? I had never felt anything like it before. I was 14.

I was 30 by the time I figured out how to float in a pool. The feeling of weightlessness while on my back in a nearly empty pool, looking up at the stars, it was like flying.

I believe that once you feel something for the first time, you can re-create it.

Now, when I have my reoccurring dream that I am drowning in a tsunami, I can float in it because my body remembers the feeling.

I want to teach my body other things to carry over into my troubling dreams. Things like,

“You’re safe now. You live alone, not with them.”

My apartment is usually a little cluttered. It’s something I’ve realized that bothers me. I plan to toss a bunch of stuff in the spring, which I’m hoping will make it easier to keep it clean.

Lately, I’ve been having a reoccurring dream where I am in my childhood bedroom, and it’s very messy. My mother never made us do chores, at least not right away, so our rooms would get truly awful after a while.

It’s how my room always shows up in my dreams:

Messy, nearly impossible to get out, and there’s a sense of urgency.
I know why the urgency is there, but it’s wrapped in so much trauma that I can’t even type it. I’ve woken up covered in sweat the past few nights, anxious and waiting for the dream to fully dissipate. As if blinking too many times will make the dream pick up from where it left off.

It’s the last thing I want.

Sleeping alone is the last thing I want.

I think naming things takes away their power. I think I can take that part of me that has written out the dream with me when I fall asleep, hopefully tying the two worlds together so that I can reach out and snuff it out like a candle.

Here’s hoping.