my dream last night

I had a dream last night that really shook me up. It's still bothering me. Here it is:

It takes place in a kitchen. This kitchen looked familiar to me, felt familiar to me too. It was only on the walk to work this morning that I realized it was Kristy's dream kitchen, the one she's described to me often. Anyway, this kitchen is huge and it has an island in the middle of it. Instead of have a floor around this island, there's an ocean. There are a whole bunch of people in this kitchen. I know them in my dream, but I don't think I know them in real life (although they did seem to feel familiar to me). I am swimming and diving in this ocean, completely enthralled by the life under there. I feel so very happy and fulfilled, I can't stop smiling, and I feel like I've just discovered a lost world or something like that. I come up for air, and I tell the others in the kitchen that they have to come down and see all the amazing things that live under the kitchen. I tell them, "the deeper you go, the more amazing it is". They keep telling my that they're busy - there's a party and they are cooking for it. But I persist. I want to share that incredible feeling I had with them. I keep telling them that there is a whole other world down there, one that most people don't get to see, and it's right here, under our kitchen!

So, eventually, all of these people dive under the kitchen with me. But I am still alone when I'm under there. I don't feel alone, but the others don't seem to be a part of my experience under there - I'm not even aware of their absence. Anyway, I'm swimming along, and this huge fish with a very large mouth charges me. It comes at me with it's mouth wide open, kind of like a Moray eel or something. I'm scared out of my mind, and I begin to panic. And in a moment of panic, I throw a serving plate (and I have no idea where it came from) into it's mouth, and this seems to buy me a few extra seconds before I get swallowed by this thing. And then I have this insight that if I swim to the surface and stay there, I will be safe. I keep repeating to myself "things will be safe on the surface" as I swim back up to the kitchen.

When I pull myself up onto "land", I notice that the water is starting to ice over. I see the others swimming toward the surface too. Except they aren't adults anymore, they are children. I start pulling them all out, one by one, they are so scared, I can see it in their eyes. And they are upset with me. They ask me why I told them it was so beautiful the deeper you go, when really it's a scary place full of monsters, and you can get trapped down there. But they are thankful that I rescued them.

And then I wonder if they are right. I look at the ice. After all the children are out, the ice melts back to water again, and the ocean is back. I feel the temptation to jump in again, but I start to panic at the thought of it. I just know that it's safer on the surface, even though it's so very beautiful down there. I know that I need to jump back in again, but I'm just too scared. And I wake up with that feeling of panic.

Nice one, eh?

Connected?

Do you ever reach that point of emotional saturation, where you simply just can't feel anymore? I'm there at the moment, and I don't like it! I had such an emotional weekend (like you couldn't guess that from my previous entry) and I've reached complete numbness. I'm sure by the morning, I'll be back to my tearful self. I was talking to a friend tonight (at a stinky, smoky, gross, disgusting bingo hall - hockey fundraiser of course). I described to her a feeling I've experienced a few times over the last month. You know how everyone always talks about that feeling of not being able to get close enough to someone? You're holding them and you just keep squeezing tighter and tighter because you just can't get them close enough. I'm very familiar with that feeling. Well, this feeling I've had is one I've never experienced before. It starts with that I-can't-get-close-enough-to-you feeling. But then I can feel her in me, I can feel her in my whole body, from head to toe. She *is* close enough. It is the most powerful, amazing experience. As I explained this to my friend, her whole demeanor changed. She very gently, very kindly told me "that's love, Michelle. Haven't you ever felt that before?" And I was ashamed to admit that I haven't.

So I drive home from the bingo tonight with this mix of emotions:

• acute awareness of the love I'm feeling
• shame that I have reached the age of 28 and am only now beginning to understand what love even feels like
• rejection because that love is not returned (but only a bit - I'm not sure I'm really feeling rejected, but I think I'm supposed to, so it's a bit confusing)
• that whole-body feeling of having her with me, and truly hoping she's doing well and getting her paper done
• I am dumbfounded as to how we can even have the capacity to love so much those who do not or cannot love us back in the same way
• guilt over feeling good about the attention and affection I'm receiving from a friend
• sadness over the fact that I can't give this friend what she wants
• disappointment in myself for I don't even know what anymore
• joy and amusement over a teammate flashing the cars on the highway as we drove home (omg it was funny, and a treat - she's HOT!)
• stress and frustration over my job
• anticipation and wanting so badly to know what the future has in store for me
• I feel grateful for some of the amazing people I have in my life

You get the point. There's some big stuff in there. I went through emotional panic mode for awhile - being sick didn't help. Lying down all day makes for way too much thinking time! If you happen to be an over-analyzer such as myself, then too much idle time is not necessarily a good thing!

Anyway, throughout all of this I have lost my connection to the universe, and lost that sense of peace (and the trust that goes along with it). So my job right now is to get myself reconnected, find my intuition again, and look at my life from that sense of peace and trust, rather than panic. I've had my ups and downs in life, and as my dad always says, usually with complete astonishment, "Michelle, you always come out of shit holes smelling like roses". And when I look back on my life, he's right. Things ALWAYS end up good for me in the end. Not always the way I thought I wanted or predicted, but always good. And I know that there are amazing things waiting for me around the corner. It's just a matter of getting there. And of course that's always the hardest part.

Someone once told me that it's easy to be happy and feel at peace and trust yourself in the quiet times, and in the happy times. But the challenge to achieving true happiness is to be able to maintain those feelings during times of transition. There's always been a clear direction in my life, I always knew where I was going next. This year has been different. I'm in transition in every single aspect of my life - love, career, life goals - it has been a tremendous challenge to enjoy life in this moment without worrying about what's coming next.

I think for me the key is to stay connected and maintain that trust in myself. I'm finding there's a lot of fear involved in trusting myself, and when I get bombarded with emotions, fear drives away my connection. So I think what I need to learn is how to reconnect when that happens. I think I can recognize when fear starts to take over, so step #2 will be to learn how to stop the fear when it comes calling.

I wonder if I can learn these things in this lifetime?

tell me

Someone tell me how to do this. Someone tell me how to love someone who does not love you in return. How to stop dreaming. How to stop hoping. How to stop believing. Someone tell me how it's even possible to feel love for someone after such a short time. Someone tell me how even now, through my tears, my greatest hope is that she can feel love again. Even if it's not for me. Someone tell me why the thought of the stress I must cause her hurts more than even the rejection I feel. Tell me why it hurts so much to see her as anything other than happy and full of joy. Tell me why. Just tell me why she would come into my life, such a beautiful woman, a strong woman. Tell me, how could I not love this woman, this woman worthy of more than this world could ever give her? Tell me, most of all, tell me how to let go of her. Tell me how to be her friend, so I can still have her in my life. Tell me how to love her silently so I can watch her grow. Tell me how to be strong for her. Oh sweetie I love you.

favourite books

I just a great conversation with my colleagues about books. I thought I would share some of my favourites with you. Here they are, at the top of my head, in no particular order:

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The Ground Beneath Her Feet - Salman Rushdie
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
The World According to Garp - John Irving (yes, I like it better than "A Prayer for Owen Meany" - suck it up!)
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates - Tom Robbins
The Alchemist - Pablo Coelho
Walden - Henry David Thoreau
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
The Piano Man's Daughter - Timothy Findley (in fact ANYTHING by Mr. Findlay)
And anything by Anne Rice!

i am such a suck

You'll never believe this, but I am watching the Bachelor. It's the season finale, and the guy has to choose between 2 women. One girl gets to go home married and the other one gets to go home broken hearted. I haven't seen any other episodes of this show, yet I am already crying over the poor girl who goes home alone. Why? Because in the end, I always wind up alone too. I dream about the day someone actually loves me. I mean really loves me. Someone who can look me in the eyes and say the words and really mean it. I guess we all want that. To love. To be loved.

I was chatting with someone I really care about tonight, someone who's going through a hard time. A hard time because of love. Cuz she had to go home broken-hearted too. Sometimes when I talk with her, I feel like I'm in a movie, where the main character wakes up to find she is the only one left alive in the world. There's this moment of panic, I run out of the apartment into the street, and realize there's no traffic, no children walking to school, no old ladies walking their dogs. I'm alone. I look up at the sky, looking for any sign of life, any sign of something bigger than me out there. And there's nothing. I don't feel alone, I don't feel deserted, I just feel like I'm missing the bigger picture. I feel like if I just look a little bit harder, or try not to look so hard, or try to view things differently, I would be able to see my life again.

I guess I know that me and her have something special. Our connection is so strong. We can share incredibly painful emotions with each other so easily, so freely. It feels so safe, so comfortable, so amazing to me. But sometimes I get scared, like during our talk today. I know she values what we have, but I also know that she isn't in the same place as me. And when she reminds me of this, I see myself in that empty movie world. And I dread the day when she chooses someone else, and I go home broken hearted.

I need more.

I’m sitting here, naked, wrapped in my orange fleecy blanket, playing Minesweeper, expert level, and listening to Tom Waits. "And I want to know the same thing everyone wants to know…how’s it going to end?". I’ve been sick all day, and I’m bored to tears. I spent the entire day either in bed, in the tub, or on the couch, acutely aware of my shaking knees and the dizziness that ensued with every movement. My internet has been down for a couple of weeks, and today would have been the perfect time to spend an hour on hold with Shaw trying to solve the problem. But did I? No, of course not. Laziness begets laziness. The more bored I became, the more difficult it was to get off my ass and do something about it.

I’m reading "The Way the Crow Flies" and I’ve become completely emotionally involved with this book. At first I was just in love with the main character, Madeleine, an 8-year-old feisty imaginative girl that reminds me so much of myself. It takes place just after the Second World War, and there is a definite element of mystique between the lines of this book. So I have found myself reliving my childhood fantasy of being an international spy. Don’t laugh! This is a true story! The danger, the thrill, the espionage…what more could a curious girl ask for? I think about that time in my life, when I actually believed the world was my oyster, and there was no good reason why I couldn’t be a spy. I remember the love of life I had back then. I think about going back to work tomorrow, writing systematic reviews. Fuck. What has my life come to? Sitting at a desk, my 5th one at this job by the way, staring at a computer, trying to answer questions that I have absolutely no interest in answering. Where’s the danger, the thrill, the espionage? I NEED MORE! Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel like I need to dress in black, be equipped with 47 guns and glasses that take pictures of things, and travel off to far-away lands to seduce Russians into telling me their secrets. I just need more passion in my work!

God speed the missionaries

So I just turned down a “deputy director” position in Mozambique because I had a serious case of an illness called “morality”. Damn. There are days when I simply wish I were somebody else. I spend so much time dreaming about Africa, remembering Africa, longing for Africa, and then an opportunity like this comes up and I have to turn it down. Why? Because the offer came from a Christian organization. And although I have tremendous respect for the relief work this organization does, hell would have to freeze over before I would allow myself to be the poster girl for them. It’s frustrating….I was just reading about Darfur in the Sudan. There are more than 25 Christian aid organizations at work in that region. This, to me, seems even worse than colonialism (in fact, colonialism can be blamed for the Christianization of Africa, come to think of it).

I may be overly cynical here, but here’s how it looks to me: oh look! A famished country with inter-fighting – all of these people living in the grips of fear! Let’s go pretend to help them! Let’s go set up a top-notch elite hospital. Just say you accept Jesus as your personal saviour and you too can receive state-of-the-art western treatment! Oh, you’re a Muslim? Sorry…all beds are taken.

When I think of my experiences in Africa in terms of western culture and Christianity, it’s hard to even see the distinction. And I find it disconcerting that traditional African culture and values are seen as inferior to the empty promises of the Church. One of the questions I asked of the families that participated in my project in Uganda was if they feared getting TB. Many people answered along the lines of “it’s God’s plan”. It all just seemed so defeatist to me, like they didn’t believe that they could actually take precautions to protect themselves against disease.

I guess part of me can understand why this sort of belief system would be beneficial. They suffer so much – poverty, famine, AIDS and other illnesses, disempowerment, etc. It’s hard to love life when you are surrounded by so much death and destruction. So I guess the whole “God’s plan” thing lets people believe in an ultimate higher purpose for it all. But I think it also has the potential to extinguish free will, and the desire to fight for life, for love, for democracy, for happiness.

The African spirit is one of courage, laughter, love and an admirable respect for themselves, and for life. I witnessed a woman being beaten by her husband in the field one day. I was crying, and I wanted so badly to jump out of the truck and scream at the asshole, but naturally my companions wouldn’t let me. He was hitting her with a stick. She was probably bleeding. Each time she fell to her knees, she would stand up again and wave her fists at him and scream and yell, and each time he would knock her back down again. Part of me wished she would just lie down and take it so he would stop. But she wasn’t going to let him take her power away like that. I couldn’t help but respect her. I can imagine the conversation I would’ve had if I could’ve talked to that woman afterwards….I guarantee she wouldn’t say “it’s god’s will that he beats me”.

So I sent an e-mail to this organization, thanking them for the offer, but turning it down. I told them I wasn’t a Christian. I told them I was a lesbian. The response: “thank you for your upfront honesty. We really need someone who can be a mentor of Christian values”. I wonder what she meant by that.

Me, reasonable?

Sometimes I wonder why simple things always seem so complex – maybe I just have a nasty habit of complicating things, intellectualizing things instead of experiencing them. I don’t understand this part of me. I have a natural curiosity about the world, always asking questions, wondering why, looking for meaning in everything. I had an apple for breakfast, and instead of enjoying the taste, I was wondering what exactly made the peel red. I guess this makes me good at what I do, in terms of my job, but what about the rest of my life? I find myself second-guessing my thoughts, my feelings, my decisions because I have no “evidence” to base them on. Lately my intuition has been strong, gut instincts about things are occurring on a daily basis, and quite frankly it pisses me off. I feel like such a flake always saying “I feel, I feel, I feel”. I feel like I need to justify all of my emotions with a rational explanation. People don’t respect “it just doesn’t feel right” as an explanation, they want a good, solid reason. I guess I’m not a reasonable person. Lucky me.

Welcome to my life!

Ok. I have been home from Africa for, oh 8 months now, and still people talk about my emails. My life here at home is waaaaaaaaaay less exciting than my life overseas, but I want to share it anyway. Y'all know how I like to talk. And think. And dream. And talk about what I'm thinking about dreaming of next. So keep checking back for the updates. I might surprise you one day.