Is this real life?

Did you ever wake up from a dream and realize that it was real life you were dreaming in, watching your days slip by and just getting through?

Do some people live their whole lives like this?

I ran by the corn fields at the quarry and realized I hadn't listened to corn grow in a really long time. Somebody told me once that if you lie in a corn field on a hot summer day, the corn grows so fast that you can actually HEAR IT popping and cracking as it pushes skyward. Is it true? I can't remember. It's been a long time since I've laid in a corn field. Too long.

The times that I do spend doing things like laying in corn fields are usually procrastinations from "real life important duties"... you know, like laundry...? A friend of mine posted on his facebook about a retreat he had attended where he meditated in silence with 20 other people from 4am to 9pm for 10 days. (I bet he felt awake after that) . One person commented on this experience saying that he had a lot of time on his hands. His response - it's life, we have nothing BUT time. ahhhhh. epiphany. nothing BUT time. It's just how we choose to use it. This kink in my neck is making me wish I was using it to be at the massage therapist right now.

Sam is a right now kind of guy.

So, tonight perhaps Sam is in charge of the planning. Sam can decide the adventure and we will see where we end up.

Mortal Combat

My adventures this weekend were not with Sam. I planned a 16 course surprise adventure banquet for the boy of complex description to be able to spend time together doing things other than working on something or healing (although i'm not sure that it is ever possible for me to completely avoid doing those things internally). the weekend was indeed surprising and not just for him. the parts that he tells me were his favourite were not what i would have predicted and they were echoed by my own - making me think once again whaaa??? who are you? where have you come from? are you in fact real? [i have questioned him at length on the reality of his existence. i remain unconvinced. still investigating. is it possible to believe something so hard that you will it into being?]

500 days of summer at the princess theatre ripped my chest open and left me feeling awed and raw. someone wrote one of my stories and played it for me. a story i am not finished. a story i am stuck somewhere in the middle of. perhaps not stuck, perhaps unenthusiastically moving forward in. there were ACTUALLY lines that i have ACTUALLY said in this ACTUAL situation. subconsciously i was convincing myself that my end could be different as the movie progressed, that the ends of stories were seldom the same. then zoey deschanel opens her mouth and says "i was sure with him, the way i never could be with you" and my subconscious shrugged its defeated shoulders and shut up. argue, dammit, put up a fight! my subconscious remained silent and a hole began expanding inside me where hope had been. do not feel sad for me, dear reader, holes need to open to be filled with new enriching emotions. i know this intellectually, even if i can't feel it just yet.

the rest of the weekend of adventure was funny, entertaining, energetic, outrageous and beautiful but i couldn't get back the carefree feeling i had at the begging, swinging at Goldie Mill Park. underneath it all, i felt heavy. the burden of realization, maybe. the painful grasping of acceptance. i am fighting every urge to cling to my favourite. to use his love to fill this space, to push out the pain. i am fighting not to grab and take, to make him my caretaker. this is NOT what i want, no matter what else i feel.

this is not the overwhelming darkness overtaking me like in my past lives. this is sadness working its way through back behind positive emotions from the things i am experiencing. i know because when i yelled MORTAL COMBAT at the storms battling while we ate bbq on the front porch last night and the boy of complex description laughed in a half humoured, half hysterical way, that was real joy and real love that i felt. mortal combat, bah, i'm so witty!

The third option

There is a tornado warning, so naturally Sam and I go to the Quarry. I dare those stormy clouds to do their worst, but they drift off in the breeze to wreak havoc in a neighbouring city. Having failed at subduing my cantankerous mood with bad weather, I decide to run into the dark muggy forest in hopes of being kidnapped by monsters or eaten by wild beasts.

In the past I have found several ways to self harm. I have been drugged but that made me numb in a way that I couldn't live with. Recently I made myself a solemn promise. I am welcome to kill myself, but the only means I am allowed to do this is to run myself to death. In my darkest moods, I run and pray for my broken heart to burst into fragments or my sobbing lungs to collapse in on themselves. I have never succeeded [obviously], either the adrenaline lifts me out enough to get a brighter perspective or the energy from throwing up from exertion leaves me too tired to care anymore. Those were the only two outcomes that I had experienced from this ingenious plan. I had never even considered the possibility of a third. Until last night.

As I said, my mood was fowl and I wore my headphones so that I didn't have to interact with the dog walkers that frequent the place. Not that there were many - who comes to a wide open space during a tornado? Sam and I are thundering along the path into the forest area. There are really no people in this part. Sam loves it here. The forest is dark and dripping with humidity and mystery. He dives in and comes out several minutes later covered in mud and smelling awful. I am sure that he consorts with orks and bridge trolls while he is in there, but he won't say. And it's really none of my business.

We come to the end of the forest path. There is a gate to stop motorized traffic, a bridge up ahead, but between the forest and the bridge is a wetland. A mosquito infested, mud swamp laden wetland. It's a beautiful wild place when it is sunny, it is a nightmare when it is overcast and wet. It was overcast and wet. I stood at the low gate deciding whether or not the run was torture enough or if I should submit myself to bug bites and sloppy shoes, Tori Amos blaring in my ears that she was worth coming home to. Was I worth coming home to? Where was Sam? Off swapping stories with goblins, likely. I was leaning towards forgoing the swampland, shifting my weight to the ball of my right foot in preparation to pivot, when there was a disturbance in the foliage up ahead, about 10 feet from me. A monster come to eat me? Finally!!! But no, not a monster. A deer. Smallish. A fawn? No, a doe. And out of the bushes after her, not one, but two tiny, wobbly legged fawns. I am sure that in this crazy world there are people whose hearts don't skip for tiny new born creatures. I am not one of those people. Tori warbled that she only sleeps with butterflies and I stood there wide eyed, mouth agape. They were gone in an instant and even when i ran into the swamp and leaned over the bridge to scour the tall grass, there was no sign of them ever having been there. Making me wonder, like that time with the falling meteorite, if I had imagined the whole thing.

Then Sam was there, looking at me with concerned eyes, perhaps afraid that I might jump. I kiss him on the forehead, then repel from the Ork stench and realize I am standing ankle deep in swamp mud and being eaten alive my mosquitoes. We high tail it out of there and I skip over parading snails and try unsuccessfully to catch a baby toad that is hopping on the path.

By the time we get to the limestone pond where Sam washes off the stench of fantasy creatures, the somber clouds and my dark mood have both lifted. And when we climb in the car, permeating the upholstery with the smell of earth, I check my cell phone and am not sad that there are no new messages - because the boy of complex description is at work and there is no one else I want to hear from right now. Progress, I think.