I awoke one day last week in a horrid state due to a dream (rather a nightmare) from the night before. You know the kind of dream I'm speaking of -- the one where everything is so real and feels so precise that you just stand there re-experiencing some horror show from your past, paralyzed once again to stop it all. Or maybe that's not your dream. Maybe yours consists of some unrealized fear from some not-yet-experienced situation, terrifying you nonetheless. Either way, we wake up bent out of shape. I awoke from my dream feeling horribly out of sorts all day, reliving painful and frightful emotions that I had thought I was coming to terms with. And in usual nightmare fashion, it lingered and festered anew until I felt trapped by this stupid ghost of a dream.
Where do these bad dreams come from? Are they my unconscious fears seeping out into my sleep only to ravage me when I'm most susceptible? Could some be riddles, filled with bizarrely camouflaged warnings of something to come? Or an answer to something that has passed? And why is it that the content of a dream can be something that happened years ago, something long ago reconciled (or so one thought) and even briefly forgotten about? Is it that the fear emotion provoked in a dream never left the unconscious, only to be easily resurrected once again? Essentially I'm haunted by fear. And it stinks. In fact, it smells like the putrid odor of rotten food whose stench lingers on in the frig even after the culprit has been disposed of.
I'm finding as I spend more and more time being truthful with myself that I have lots of ghosts that haunt me. Proverbial ghosts, that is. I'm not actually haunted. But at times I feel haunted. I feel greatly haunted most days as of late, truth be told. I feel haunted by bad decisions, by ignorance, by naivete...just to name a few. The inability to clearly see a truth that was so obvious in a moment of time that unknowingly led to long-term hurts and frustrations -- that's a fear ghost for me. Being consumed by loneliness for the rest of my days due to poor decisions made today -- another fear ghost. All these little Fear Ghosties running amuck, wrecking havoc. What to do...
"Every day is a chance for a new beginning."
I hear that statement frequently. And while I "get" its meaning, I don't think I understand it intrinsically the way I should. If I did, wouldn't I be making much more of this day? Wouldn't I be able to let these Fear Ghosties go, relegating them back to the past from whence they came? If I wake up every morning with the gift of instant restart, where do I begin with the work to be done?
Starting now, I tell myself, I'm letting go of all my fears, both old and new. OK. Simple enough. Decision has been made to roll with it here in my "new day." Now what? Oh yes, now comes the tricky part -- actually letting go.
I have a picture on my phone of a balloon floating in the air with the words 'Let Go' underneath. I frequently call up this vision when I'm stewing on something, trying to visualize my hand letting go of a balloon that's filled with whatever stessor I'm currently experiencing. I find this technique hasn't been helpful just yet. My hand seems to have a death grip on plenty other balloons at the moment, all containing portions of that same fear.
Maybe the bigger question is -- how do I cleanse my unconscious? Is there a trick to getting in there and power-washing all the cobwebs loose, running my Fear Ghosties out of Dodge? How do I let all of it go? Once and for all. I understand how necessary this step is to my state of well-being. But I think on it too much and end up creating a new fear for myself -- the inability to let go. What if I'm so jaded that it's impossible for me to actually let go? How do I learn how to let go...
Let's come back to this one in the new year.
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