I already posted this letter once, now lets see if I can keep from deleting it again.

I was getting pretty depressed and now I have been running like crazy to 'get things done'. Yeah, man. I got A LOT done. And I have more to do Monday. I've been running. Now I will have it here on my blog and I will know more about what I've been running from when I hit the wall. And so will all of you. Until then...



(Dear Dream Mother,)

Okay, I can write the dream now. I fell asleep on the couch and dreamed that I was in my parents' living room. My father came home. I was confused about why he wasn't dead. I found out that he had never died and had been alive all along. This scared and confused me and filled me with dread. I was afraid of him, but I was also afraid about the fact that I had thought him dead when he had really been alive. I thought I was losing my mind again. How could I have not known that I had been living with my father for years unless I was insane? To make things more confusing, I realized I felt love for my father. On the other hand, I was also afraid of him. I was just plain afraid. I started to have a panic attack in my sleep. I thought of you and wondered if you knew that he was alive. I thought perhaps I had 'sometimes known' and had spoken to you about it during times that were no longer available to my consciousness. And if not, I imagined how hard it would be to explain to you that I had been living in a delusion for so many years after 'imagining' his death. I tried to look at my father and figure out whether or not I could trust him to be safe. I didn't know what to do and I was even more afraid. I went to find my mother in the dream. She was sleeping, so I woke her up. I could barely talk because I was so afraid. She was nice to me and not hideous (that's how I know she was you). I don't remember what all I said, but I whined out some thin little words to explain. I don't think I explained very clearly, but she did know that I was terrified and that it was because of my father. She was nice about it, but all she did was say something to the effect that she was sure everything was somehow okay. Then she went back to sleep. It wasn't okay. I was in the crying place. It leaked out into reality and sort of woke me up a little bit for a minute. The crying was real. I tried to be all the way awake and not asleep. That trapped me for a minute in one of those night terror thingies. But I was too exhausted to fight and I went back into regular sleep and the dream. My father was still there and I was trapped with him. I had to convince myself that he was okay and not anyone to be afraid of. I told myself that I must have made up wrong things about him. I told myself that he was nice and would be good to me and that it was good that he was alive. I decided that I had been wrong about him the same way that I had been wrong about his death and that it was okay for us to just pick up where we left off. So we went out for coffee. Then suddenly, instead of having coffee with him, I was working as a waitress in the coffee shop and I was waiting on him. He was the only customer at first, but he was very demanding. Then other customers started coming. I was trying to hurry with my father's coffee, but I needed to find a coffee cup. I went to go look for them. I saw two shelves. The top one was labeled "tea cups" and the bottom one was labeled "coffee cups". The bottom one was empty, and I knew my father would disapprove of me bringing his coffee in a "tea cup" from the top shelf. The "tea cups" were not really tea cups. They were shaped funny and they were larger than what I knew the "coffee cups" would be had there been any left on the shelf. (I think I know what the shape of the cups represented and it makes me want to puke.) I became overwhelmed and customers were waiting. The manager came to get me. She could see that I wasn't able to do the job I had been given, so she brought some others to replace me. I thought she was going to fire me, but she said she just wanted me to take a job in the back with the paperwork instead. I wondered if my father would miss me, but I didn't think he would as long as someone brought the coffee. At first I was a little sad about that, but quickly realized that the paperwork job was a promotion. Then I woke up. (Husband) and (youngest daughter) were there looking at me. They said I had been mumbling and moaning and whining while I slept.

I'm not okay and I'm afraid to go to sleep.