Strangely, I still found a way for the Dream Mother to get distracted away from this particular email. I'm afraid it's hopeless.

I'm not sure why I'm choosing to post this right now, but this is from an email I sent to the Dream Mother last week...



Husband slept in the bedroom Thursday night. I was fine with it, but I had nightmares Friday morning. I dreamed that I lived with my mother (not you, it was fully her). I went to my closet and there were strange, ugly insects in there. There were many of them and they were all over the shelves. I don't like things like insects indoors. I went to tell my mother and I was wondering what I should do. She said it was fine. She was in a rather jovial mood (it was fake) and she wanted me to come and keep company with a man who had come to the house. I got the idea that she was trying to set me up to marry me off or something by the way she was acting. The man was a dream-morph man. He was my brother and my uncle. He looked like my oldest brother, but my mother said he was 'uncle so-and-so'. I made nice for a moment and turned my attention back to the problem of the insects. Again, my mother insisted it was fine and she was getting impatient because I was bothering her about some bugs and ignoring my suitor/ brother/ uncle. I insisted that it was not okay to have insects in the house. Then I found out that she had gotten rid of them. There were little trap doors in the walls and she had put the insects in there. I somehow knew that wasn't good, but I went back to the closet thinking it might be okay. I could see they were coming back by finding ways to crawl through tiny cracks in the walls. Then I woke up.

When I went back to sleep, I dreamed of my cat that I had when I was very little. His name was (let's just call him Billy Joe). My parents gave him away right before we left my hometown when I was five... I was an adult in my dream, and I dreamed that Billy Joe was lost somewhere outside in a town that seemed similar to my hometown. I went looking for him, but I was afraid and did not really want to find him. When I did not find him right away, I felt relieved and was ready to give up the search. Then a woman (the tenant in my old home across town) told me that she had seen him. She pointed the way and I went around the corner near a church and there he was prowling around outside of the building. I was very scared. I woke up.

1. Two of my uncles are named Billy and Joe. I named that cat. I guess I didn't like the third uncle as much. He was the youngest of the three and would have been about 13 or 14 when I was born. Though he turned into a decent adult, I think I had reason not to like him much as a child. He was (still kind of is) a terrible tease and I can imagine him picking on younger children. One of my aunts (not Aunt P) told me that he beat her terribly one day when she was around ten years old. He is a few years older than she is. He is also the uncle that I reported to my grandmother for trying to scare me by coming into the bedroom and pretending to be a vampire while I was taking a nap (I think now that it was only a night terror. I had them even when I was little.)
2. My grandparents' house is less than a half-block away from the family's church (where I found Billy Joe in the dream). What does that part mean to me? That's easy. If you want anything resembling reality - it will be OUTSIDE of that building. There is only bullshit inside. I don't think I have ever dreamed of Billy Joe before. And I don't remember ever being afraid of him. Not even when he scratched me. The only fear I remember around Billy Joe, was the day I accidentally rocked my father's rocking chair on his tail. He yowled and I thought he had been killed or mortally wounded, and I cried as if he had been. That scared me, but he didn't.

Again, I was going to save this in draft. I don't want it to get deleted, so I am sending it for you to save. I want to make sure you know about this. It might suddenly be deemed irrelevant at any moment, you know? I get the possible implications here. I do. But I have no feelings about them. It's like none of this is real anyway, so it can't really matter. I am thinking of young Bobby from (novel #1). I'm thinking about how he fell asleep in the basement in 'my hometown' only to wake up on the beach here in Florida twenty years in the future. I'm thinking about the flashback last year where I tried to get inside the closet. That happened after those pictures I took that told the impossible story of Bobby's travel. I'm thinking of my Aunt P and her flashbacks about the grandparents' hallway that contains a closet I remember hiding in. I'm thinking of the amnestic character in one of my unfinished works. A boy named Bobby grows into a man named Bob who cannot remember? A man who doesn't even know where he came from and thinks he was made instead of born? Hmmm... I am thinking of the character I fell in love with in (novel #2). He's Paul. You read about him on my blog. Why is this character's name Paul if I disliked my Uncle Paul so much that I would name my cat for his brothers and leave him the odd man out? Could that just be a coincidence? You see? It's all irrelevant and crazy and makes no sense at all. None at all. I am not to be believed about anything. No wonder I feel nothing. None of it matters anyway. It just doesn't. I see Husband has left the closet door open again. He must have done it on his way out to the couch. He knows I don't like that. I guess I will close it and then finish wiping the counters and such before I go take a shower. I am assuming I will be okay. I hope I will. Goodnight, (Dream Mother). I'm keeping you with me again tonight.