Two months sober today, and I’ve woken up at 1:35 in the afternoon. Well, woke up the 2nd or 3rd time. First was to get the kids up for school, second was at 11:30. This time though, I woke myself with the decisive, concerted effort of all of the strength that you can summon after you realise, somehow, that the incredibility of what you are living is because it is, in fact, a dream. This particular one was wonderful but I was still becoming somewhat bored, as I realised that however fantastic it was, it was far from the end, or from resolution, and that I probably needed to get out of bed. How could I be this tired? I guess, yes, I have semi-accepted this drive to hibernate but am still resisting out of capitalist guilt, or the fear of the unending pestering from my husband to be productive. Or maybe I should have just put that out of office on as I meant to do last Friday, but was too occupied by stress packing for a weekend away with friends. So here, I am, almost 2pm, firmly in my pyjamas and winter polar socks, under a cover in the guest room next to a snoring cat.

The dream itself was wonderful, I was co-staring in a two-woman show in a community theater, a show that I had written as well. My co-star is still a bit unclear, her signature costume color was red, where as mine was gold. It was a bit circusy, a bit burlesque… my costume was a gold sequined and quite structured bodice, with some wonderful hot pants that went with it, firm tights below, etc. The show was semi-autobiographical, or at least was an interpretation of my story, my feelings. How strange, even ironic, as isn’t this what all dreams are? I guess my subconscious was just playful enough to actually make this a theater piece. It was a musical, as one would hope the story of one’s life would be. There was someone there in the audience, watching this rehearsal, that I was wanting to impress, a song was for him. I wanted him to see me, hear me sing it. Was he my husband? I had just had a new idea to complete the story arc, but now it escapes me. I think it was more of a feeling than an idea, now that I try to remember, and now I am dealing in words, so it escapes me.

We were preparing for the show, days before, and there was to be a charity auction as well before and during the show. I was also practicing a speech about the auction, and this time I was in my body, standing at the front of the stage, explaining the charity items and matched contributions by our sponsor or something. As it were, I was running the show. I also would explain that the production was sustainable, as everything was reused, donated, etc. I remember wondering if we had contacted Ikea as a sponsor. Then I walked through the old building , that old theater smell of wood and cleaning products and old paint. There were many doors, and behind a surprising number of them were bathrooms, which I found odd. One took me outside finally, to a small wild urban plot, the kind between buildings, a place where I thought it might be nice to put a party tent. It led also to the stage door, where there was old blacktop with weeds coming up through, like a place where you’d go outside to smoke. This is when I woke up.

So now I am sitting here and wondering why I am so very tired. Is this normal? is this ok? or do I have some terrible, undiagnosed illness like cancer, my worst fear, or a mild traumatic brain injury from this minor accident that occurred so many months ago? Is it depression, life crisis, or just surrendering to the natural flow and heaviness of winter and if so, what explains the ringing and rushing in my ears? I am in it, and will have to wait to know, this is the hard part, knowing that you do not know, and will it even matter when I do? When I first started to write, to type, the letters in many of the words were all jumbled, like the timing of my fingers had been off. Is this a sign of something serious, just tiredness, or a side-effect of my anti-depressant? So many questions and no answers, this ruthless subjectivity of living inside a body.

Perhaps this is just part of my awakening, being in my body again, feeling it’s tiredness, one that sometimes, even more so lately, refuses to react even to the copious amounts of coffee that I drink to wake it up. I want to be in my body for the first time in a long time, and honestly I wonder if I have arrived too late. Having the feeling that something is wrong is a funny predicament, as if anything is discovered, through the relentless searching I seem to be doing, then this feeling is confirmed as intuition, as having known something was wrong. If nothing is confirmed, I was just being thorough, or wanting something to be wrong, or looking for an excuse to take action. Either way, it’s a strange place to be in, and it seems to be speaking to my pervasive desire to somehow make time stop, to just be for awhile, to feel like I will not be left behind by the outside world, which quite frankly, isn’t something that attractive at the moment, anyway. Maybe this is fine, why not? Who says we have to spend life always participating? Even the word ‘spend’, like you spend money and then it’s gone. Why not keep it, save it, so that you might have it to give to your children, to buy the house of your dreams in a beautiful location, to afford to rest when you need to rest, to pay for the truly special experiences you want to have. Why can’t we look at life the same way? Maybe the idea of stepping back is a way to save our own lives so that we might know how we want to spend them later.

Part of my intense last year or so has been going through the archives of my past, literally, by going through things from my youth and my family history at my mother’s house. I have had the gift of looking back with such a long time that has passed, as I unpack boxes that have been untouched for up to 20 years. I haven’t gone home, as some adult children do, and seen the shrines to my childhood. My mother has never had this ability, to have the few, important pieces left behind arranged in a way that show remembrance, even reverie. No, she didn’t have that skill set at all, so instead she kept it all, and squirrelled it away in hopes that one of us would come along and sort it out, and we did, finally, after so many years. Luckily, it’s been when she’s still alive, so that she might also see how it can be done, after so many years of chaos.

Now here I am, two months sober, wondering just how many boxes I will have to unpack before I start to really understand my own story, how many dream will I have to try to remember, and how many daytime naps until I feel rested. I wonder when will I be able to look back on this time as part of the story, as part of the past who has made me who I am, on that day.