Darkness and Dreams

The darkness is my sanctuary. The quiet calmness is my comfort and my safety. The reality of this is completely revolutionary. The nighttime used to be my nightmare; not only in the sense that I was afraid of the dark, but also in the context that there dwelt terrors in the shadows. Everyone is familiar with the stereotype of children being afraid of monsters under their beds or in their closets. While part of the fear is irrational, I also believe that children are a bit more sensitive to the spiritual dangers of our fallen world. 

And so begins my story...

           ...the night used to frighten me. It was a thick darkness in the time of my childhood.  In its inky shadows there was a sense of someone watching, hanging over my bed, coming closer the more I tried peer into it. I hid under my covers, pulled them up over my ears and tucked under my chin, forcing myself to fall asleep; afraid that if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be there when I woke. Then my dad would read the Bible to me before bed, my mom anointed my bedroom with oil, and the darkness began to fade. Not the night itself, but the terror that lurked in the corners of my room.

        Eventually, the night became a sense of comfort to me. I could be alone with my thoughts, and the most important part of my day became the part where I would lay in bed, waiting for sleep, and talk to God as He whispered to me. I fell in love with Jesus during the nighttime in the soothing quiet. It became the time when I was the most creative. It still is. I wrote, I read, I imagined. It is the time of day when I just feel. The darkness became my solitude, the singularity I needed to get through my days, and a complete contrast to what it was in my earlier years.

        Now, I hardly dream at night. I am too busy dreaming during the day, where I can control my thoughts, then when I sleep. In the dark, in the night, in my sleep, that was all devoted to the whisperings and the lovingness I had for my Father, His Son, and the Spirit. There was no need for nightmares or night terrors. God had transformed my fears into the place of rest and safety.
And yet, there are times when I do remember my dreams. The times are few and far between, and what I do remember is often the memory of an emotion or the faint outline of a face. I almost never remember faces, which makes me kind of sad, especially when I have good dreams... but back to the point. Scientists have all sorts of answers when it comes to the human brain and its dreams, but I think dreams are something miraculous. I only have to consult the Old Testament to demonstrate the impact that dreams can possess. I understand that those times are not current times, and some of the dreams people have are just fanciful notions of an overactive brain, but I do not dismiss the fact that dreams can still be used by God to communicate to His children. The fact that I have had very few dreams that I fully remember makes me believe that the ones that I do remember might be important. It's like my sense of physical touch (more on that later), since it doesn't happen a lot, it carries a heavier weight with me than it does with others.
So having said, let me recount.

        I had a specific dream once, long ago, and it was so utterly vivid that it permanently etched itself into my visual memory. I never told a soul, but now I guess it is time: I stood in a line of people, like those who wait in line for a store. We were all ages, heights, races. I heard nothing. I could only see, and what I saw wasn’t the moment of tragedy, but it was enough for me to know that we were being executed. The flash of the blade of the guillotine was enough for me to jolt awake, and it might not have been a guillotine specifically, but it was a blade of some sort, and we were dying.

I must confess that I was and still am a little confused as to the purpose of this dream. It was a few years ago, but it was brought forward to my mind just a little while ago, with a night terror in my daydreams. It still echoes in the back of my mind.

How do you describe a night terror? And how do you explain how it occurs as you are awake? It is strange, is it not? To have night terrors during the day, as you day dream? What then do you call them? Is it even possible to day dream nightmares? Aren’t you supposed to have more control over your mind at that point? Even in the off chance that it did happen, wouldn’t stopping your thought process be easier? Snap out of the day dream terror before the emotional pain became too much? But I could not stop it when it happened. It washed over me like waves on the ocean shore, and I was as powerless to stop the terror as I was to stop the ocean.

        When I remember it, I can still hear the screams echo out in the recesses and corners of my mind. Out into infinity and ringing like bells. The cries. The blood. How can something feel so real when you can still see the outline of the chair in front of you? And yet, the screams vibrated into my chest, the air was hot, heavy, and tasted of copper, and the blood was warm on my knees and hands as I knelt on the ground. The children with their innocent faces, the teenagers with their confused faces, and the adults with their defiant faces.

I don't know why, but it paired with the nightmare I had long ago, as if the audio of a track was finally laid over it's scene in proper time. The two pieces became one image, playing itself again and again, on repeat. Whether or not it portends something to happen to me or in general, or is simply the creation of an over imaginative mind, I cannot say. I can only say my piece, and I have done so. Make of it as you will.

The Story of an Introvert

Disclaimer: This is a giant rambling from a logically compromised mind on a Friday night. Poor organization and grammar is most likely present. Read at your own risk. If you don't want to know about my internal constructions, don't feel bad about skipping to the next post.  



Words flow so much better when I write them. My speaking skills suck. I blame it on my brain working too fast for my mouth to keep up, but somehow my fingers seem to do the trick. It slows the way I think. I have yet to figure out how to apply it to my mouth. That, and I also blame verbal dyslexia. I don't know if it's a thing, but when the words come out backward on my tongue, that has to be some sort of dyslexia related thing, since I have the source ailment. It's actually been pretty bad lately. I think it's because I have been quite stressed lately. The specifics of that do not matter.

I have no complaints on my childhood. It was actually pretty great. I mention this only to note that some behavioral issues are learned as a person gets older and are not learned from parents. To that effect, I haven't a darned clue when these issues started, but I am painfully aware of them. 

As an introvert, I keep to myself for the most part. I play the role of observer while carefully constructing responses in my own head that I never seem to vocally share. All the thoughts tumble upon themselves whenever anyone looks at me in a group. I know where the thoughts connect and flow, but I am never able to communicate it quite as effectively from my brain to my vocal cords. Let's just say the biggest reason why I got a B+ in my English Literature Senior Capstone was because 60% of the grade was discussion. It is not that I don't have thoughts. It is that I have too many, and I don't think it's worth the effort to say something unless it's insightful. I can assure you that not all my thoughts are so purposeful, and speaking for the sake of speaking is lost on me.

If it has some sort of social charm, I wish someone would explain it to me, but it is a conversational art form that died before it got to me, and I'd actually prefer it stayed that way. Unfortunately, most people would be put off by my intensity if I simply asked what their view was on the ethics of Artificial Intelligence or their opinion on Intelligence Design. Such topics are not exactly typical ice breakers or conversational starters. This is probably the biggest reason of why I am unable to initiate conversations with strangers. The rote, "Hi, how are you? Where are you from? What do you do? I'm well, thanks. Nice to meet you, too. What brought you from unnamed state to this state? Oh, fascinating. Have a nice evening. Good bye." conversations are shallow to me. I do not wish to fake interest or smiles when I have neither. To do so drains me.  I understand their social purpose, but I fail to grasp why I have to bow to convention. In retrospect, it's probably why I am typing on my computer at night in my darkened bedroom.

It is all so pathetic.

Which leads me to another point in this stream of consciousness, that is my mind, on a Friday night. The fact that I am an introvert does not mean that I don't feel anything. I just don't express it. I have been told my face is an open book, but I have met few people who feel the inclination to read it. Either that, or I've gotten much better at schooling my expressions, but I doubt it. I do internalize everything. It is not the same as compartmentalizing, which I can do with basic mastery, but as emotions arise, I shut them down. It's like a valve to twist off or a door to close. Slam it shut, bind it under lock and key, and then later, when I am alone, in the dark with my trusty pillow, it all floods out. I feel it all at once or not at all. I don't know where this comes from or how I learned it, but it just is. I have fought with it for the last few years, but I don't know what a person does with that. I tried looking it up on the internet, but everything that came up was about behavioral disorders, which totally freaked me out. 

Which leads me to the whole "it'll flood out" thing. I hate crying, especially in public, which is possibly a trigger for the internalizing thing. But when I do cry, it's in the dark into my pillow. At a young age, I taught myself how to cry without making a noise. I sob, and my pillow gets wet, and my nose gets stuffy, but I don't make a sound. I shake, and I bury my face and fists in my pillows... but still nothing. Have you ever trembled when you cry? I do. Every time. After all, I don't cry too often because everything is pent up inside, so when I do cry, it's kind of epic. So yeah, trembling. And while I'm confessing to my ugly crying, I might as well mention that I have to squeeze my pillow so fiercely tight so I feel like my insides will stay in my insides. Literally, it feels like having to hold myself together with my own arms. It sucks. 

Why confess all of this? Because there are parts of me that do not see the light of day. And they probably should. But the thing is, I don't think I'm good enough.

I know the whole not-comparing-yourself-to-anyone-else cliche. I recite it to myself all the time because I am an overachiever with perfectionist tendencies. I also don't know where those tendencies come from considering my parents never stressed either of those traits. I am in my early-mid twenties (thus the "under 25 and single banner), and I don't believe I have accomplished much in my young life. I do not say these things for any sort of validation. Really, I don't. I don't want anyone going, oh, but you've done so much! Because I won't believe you, and I'll think you're giving me the stereotypical response which I loathe, in case you didn't infer that from the "Hi, how are you? Where are you from....?" conversation described earlier.

Because one part of my brain says: you have written over 40 poems, a handful of essays, framed 3 books, graduated with a Bachelor's at 21, you have a family who loves you, you moved 350 miles away from home to start a new life (basically on your own), you make just enough money at the moment to pay rent, gas, student loans, and enough for food. I survive. I have read 22 books in the last 8 months, and continue to write, read, and help my friends with their personal issues. But even still, that's not enough. Because I always hear in my head how I should have finished at least ONE book by now, not be afraid to find some sort of publisher, have a full time job by now since it's been two years since I graduated. I should have a boyfriend, or, at least, guy friends, because let's be real. With all the issues I've already talked about, just having a guy friend would be an accomplishment.

So, I am learning lessons about myself, even as I get older and write this rambling down in the dark on a Friday night. Currently, the biggest thing is that I am far more prone to listen to the negative things I think than the positive things. It's a self-destructive tendency that has no foundation in my childhood or even in my teenage years. I have created it all on my own, and only God knows how or where or when. I just know that I have become painfully aware of it in recent weeks, and I need to work on it. And if you're reading this, and you feel or relate to any of the ridiculousness that I just addressed, you aren't alone. Perhaps there is comfort in that little bit. I know we like to hide in the dark, but I don't think we should.

Rambling over. I probably shouldn't edit this very much, otherwise I'll loose my nerve to post it. 

"Take Me Dancing." A Companion Poem to "Dance with Me."

The memory of the girl in the glade
Is not one that shimmers and fades
In a cotton dress, in bare feet, the little girl
Dancing in the summer grass, she twirls.

She’d become the scarred and reluctant heart
Who questioned You at the very start,
Now she remembers blowing those kisses
Because it is You her heart misses.

This time, she comes to You, offering her hand,
And it's not like anything she had ever planned.
But she comes to seek You, ready and expectant,
And there is no fear of being assumed petulant.

Her fingers are taken, laced in between Yours,
And inside her heart, her soul soars.
And she whispers, her eyes without fear,
"Take me dancing," just for Your ears.

Hands clasped together, hand at her waist
The embrace of the dancers, properly placed.
Safe and secure, willingly in her lovers arms
As it always should be: guarded from harm.

They dance together, uncaring of who sees,
Today is the Day; they do as they please.
He is the One-Who-Fought, the One-Who-Waited
And she was the one His Father had fated.

As they dance together under Heaven’s eyes,
"Don't let me go," she quietly sighs.
"There will never be a need," is His reply.
They celebrate their victory under sunless skies.