you know how sometimes, long after a moment has passed, you think up something that you might have said, wished you’d said, or done? and how annoying it feels to feel as if you missed the chance? well i had a dream last night that seemed to have that sense of things in mind.
in the dream, i received a letter that laid out a mass of ugly and made a bunch of false accusations and pretty much demonstrated to me that what i thought was reality and what the sender thought was reality were, obviously, universes apart from one another.
so i set about doing whatever i could to insure they got everything they ever said they wanted from or out of me, so i could get the fuck away from them because, let’s face it, who wants or needs to be around someone who can conceive only of illness and ugliness and who is willing to do so?
in the process, i stumbled over what looked like an evidence of an ill act by one of their friends; retaliatory and mean it seemed. i shoved it under their nose and told them i wasn’t handing over a damn thing until they could explain it.
instead, they countered by saying the things i’d written about them on my blog made them sick and it was just me trying to shove a wedge between them and their friend, and they didn’t want to talk to me anymore.
in the dream, i launched at them. full bore.
i told them how asinine and hypocritical it was that they could stand there, all full of their self-righteousness, and think to complain about what i have written when they’ve been running around whispering poison and ill intent in any ear that would hear it.
and i told them what an eye-opener it was to see this was the way of things, and to finally have some sense of just how bifurcated and bizarre it was… how i should have set them on the curb the first time they tried to play the ‘ok for me, wrong for you’ game.
and i said that it seemed very nicely fitting that they should feel sick, as sick as i felt to discover the things they said about me as if they were more than deviant, twisted things from their own mind… as if they were true.
and i stood there and i watched their face flood with color and knew it was because they were hoisted on their own damn petard. and i leaned in and whispered,
“yes, that’s right, swing you bastard…. because the things i wrote i regularly and freely admitted were my views and reactions and not necessarily real at all, and i gave them to no one but myself, set in such ways as to utterly cloak identities… but the things you’ve done and said have been enacted with intent and purpose that demonstrate very clearly you make no such distinction and have no such compunction.
very happy are you to spill poison and bile everywhere. fully self-justified do you lay entire fields of mines between me and those with whom i would find friendship. gleefully, you have done these things… with intent.
you want to see who the hypocrite is? you want to see who the ill-minded is? you want to know who the liar is? you want to see what true sickness is? you want to know where the poison comes from?”
i handed them a mirror, turned my back to them, and without another word, left.
i woke up with residual tremors and all but panting for being out of breath with anger. but i also felt exhilarated, liberated, and utterly free.
the part of me that has spent so much time trying to remember good things and trying to balance these venal things against them has been spent. i laugh because the only reason it has ever mattered is that i have chosen to let it. how much time i have wasted. oh stubborn me!
even this dream i could count as a waste of time, not to mention that i document it. but i resist the judgment because, obviously, there was something in the back of my head that needed to dream it, and something that needs to mark it. so i do.
but… here, in this moment, i feel only the utter appropriateness of it all. these are my feelings. this is my space. even now, i couch it all in ways that it remains utterly veiled from any but those involved or those close friends of mine who comforted me through it all.
not that the one in question deserves any of it, but my choice to keep it veiled, ‘hidden in plain sight’ rises from my own standard and honor of the difference here… the difference that may well remain unknown to them, but exists despite them, in spite of the spite of them.
they long ago returned to the ‘punish you by silence’ routine. and for a time, i let it bother me. for a time, i was stupid enough to think it was actually about me. it never was. you want to talk about relief? that insight is among the top five in my life. a beautiful thing despite the ugliness endured to find it. perhaps even all the more beautiful because of the ugliness endured.
i feel no punishment because i have committed no crime. what i do feel is much simpler and far more enjoyable.
i feel free.