Plaid Suit, Men in Black, Neighborhood Terror

I dreamed last night that I was living in a brick house in an older neighborhood with my siblings. I was tinkering in the garage (fixing a car or bike I think) when a couple of big, burly older men rolled up in a huge semi. There was something wrong with it and they asked for a part but when I didn't have that they wanted some motor oil.

I thought we had plenty lying around but I kept combing the shelves and all I came up with was a big bottle that was mostly empty. They took that and then asked to use the phone. I wasn't really ok with them coming inside (I didn't know them and it was just me and my sister and my brother) but they barged in and began canvassing the house.

I knew then they were dangerous so I pushed my siblings out the door and told them to go hide somewhere in the neighborhood. I tried to keep the men from opening the doors in the house (it was mostly empty like we'd must moved in) but they unleashed their horrific children (the kids were feral and there was something monstrous about them - they weren't really kids).

I went out into the neighborhood. No one else was around. So I climbed into an empty house and ran to a closet. I searched for a way to hide as the men had followed me and I found a secret passage in the closet that led to the top of the house. If I could hide up there they would never find me.

I found a grey and black plaid (the big plaid) suit and grabbed that and decided I would disguise myself as a male. I felt something in me switch and I was male. I had short brown hair and straight lines instead of curves. I hid in the closet passage and when the men were past the house I got up into the attic and changed while I kept an eye out via the small octagonal window with shutters at the back of the attic.

I don't know if they ever found me because I woke up immediately after.

Back and Forth

I have been yanked back and forth by my inner struggles for the last six weeks.

One day I love everybody and want to be with them and take the initiative, and the next day I'm sobbing in my room because I feel like no one goes out of their way to be kind to me.

I'm trying to tell myself that this in no way means I have cruel friends. I don't, in fact. They are quite wonderful. But this depression has warped my brain so that I need/want more than people are capable of giving and that's where the disappointment comes in.

I cannot expect people to give me what I want, especially since at this point I am very needy. I am still getting used to the idea of being a widow and I miss my spouse more than anything in the entire world. I do not have someone like that and probably won't and I'll have to deal with that.

I also cannot expect younger people to understand or have time to take care of me. They are figuring out themselves and can barely take care of their own things let alone reach out to someone else. It isn't fair for me to expect things of them.

So what do I do? How do I communicate that I don't blame them for feeling this way but knowing that I need more than people are capable of giving? What if I need so much that there isn't anyone who can help me? Why do I need more right now?

I hate it. I hate being this way. I want to kick depression in its ugly face. I want to be free of it once and for all. But instead I just stair at the ceiling and tears leak out of my eyes because no one seems to care about how much I'm hurting.

I feel selfish (even though I know that I'm in pain and that my feelings are valid). I feel stupid. I feel alone.

I just feel sorry that my friends have to deal with me right now. I'm not the "fun" me they knew last semester. I can't be her anymore. That was me trying to push myself out of a hole and for once jump headlong into something I didn't worry too much about.

Guess what? It blew up in my face and now I'm shaking in my room afraid to reach out to people in case they decide to slash at me (emotionally). I want companionship so badly that I'm starving for affection but no matter who reaches out or how much, I'm the dog that has been abandoned and I just don't trust people any more.

This jumble of trust-abandonment-rejection issues needs to be taken care of. I just don't know how. And what does it look like on the other side? Can people get through this?

All I can think of is that I wish I could just sleep the rest of my life away so I don't have to worry about being a failure, or that people don't actually love me, or that I won't ever be able to be healthy and happy ever again.

What Love Looks Like

I have these friends.

These friends I made for myself, on my own, after.

I met them because we are theatre kids.

One is a middle-class Southern straight white girl. She is a born leader, able to get things done with determination. She started up a theatre program so that us misfits could find each other. She is capable of many things, and I think she'll do whatever she wants. But deep down she's insecure about her weight, her looks, and her self. Her mother is verbally abusive and so she has learned to hide her emotions, even from herself. I call her Vulcan.

One is from a poor Southern pastor's family. He's gay. He is sassy. He loves parties, musicals, and Liza Minelli, good food, road trips, and people. He's a warm person, compassionate. He works with children with disabilities. But deep down he's worried that no one will ever love him. He also believes he needs to remain celibate because of his faith. I call him Sweet [name withheld].

One is from a truly "average" American Southern family. He's a 4 on the Kinsey scale [mostly homosexual but with some heterosexual attraction - may identify as pan, bi or queer]. He has a beautiful voice. He has a sunny disposition, a big smile and blue eyes, and he gets energized by hanging out with his favorite people. He's talented, with a big heart. But his dad has never connected with him emotionally and any story with a father and son makes him cry. I don't have a pet name for him yet. I'm working on it.

And then there's me. A poor white girl from a family with complicated emotional issues. I identify as a genderfluid, panromantic asexual. Two of those are wrong according to spellcheck. And most people don't recognize any of those terms as valid. I keep losing people, which has led to abandonment and trust issues. My parents abandoned me emotionally when my little brother died. I have had to say goodbye to so many people because we moved all the time. And my husband died less than a year ago. I'm not confident in my abilities and I'm not sure that I'm really good at any one thing.

They call me Kate. Or Katheryn Elizabeth (which is not my real name).

But we found each other doing theatre.

I love these people. But I didn't believe they loved me. Why would I?

So I became sad and withered, withholding myself from a relationship with them because of my abandonment and trust issues. I thought they would abandon me. I didn't know if I could trust them.

But I started talking yesterday. I'd been in a spiral for a month and I finally spilled my guts as they took me to work.

They send me the sweetest texts that afternoon and made a plan to meet me later. We went to our favorite place that night and talked honestly about ourselves. And then we went to the house and we cuddled on the couch together. We put on a fire (courtesy of Netflix), went outside for a smoke, and came in for tea and blankets. We scrunched up and just held each other.

We hugged each other goodnight and said "I love you". And they told me to ask for whatever I needed. That they were not going to leave.

I made these friends by myself. We are all broken. We are unique. We accept each other as we are, in all our messes, our faults, our mistakes, and our flounderings as we try to understand each other. We love each other.

I feel like I have finally found the type of friendship I have always been seeking. It's difficult to be honest with each other, it's difficult to navigate life alongside someone who may think quite differently from you - but it is worth it. The quiet moments where we feel safe with each other, the moments where we share ourselves, the moments where we decide to do something crazy...these are the moments I treasure because they mean we are being human, almost maybe the way we were meant to.

Last night was very nearly like the dream I had a few days ago, and it was with the same people.

So I guess sometimes, dreams do come true.

And I don't care if that's cheesy.

My good dreams hardly ever come true. This is worth celebrating.

Black Mass and Vampires in Paris

Last night I dreamed that my mother, sister and I were in Paris and we went to a house that had been set up at as a museum. It was a tall, thin house with brightly colored walls and paneled floors, big windows and empty spaces. We trudged up and down winding wooden staircases, talking to the curator and the museum workers about the house. I did some sketches of fashion designs based on the rooms (an outfit per room) and even made a mixed-media portrait using a piece of jewelry my friend Lydia had made for me.

I left my phone and purse in one of the rooms behind a piece of furniture and we were about to leave when I remembered my wallet and phone. I went to get them and when I came back downstairs, the curator was asking if she could keep my sketches to put up on the walls. At first I was willing to give her all of them but then I saw a few that I wanted to keep, including the one with the jewelry.

So we worked out a deal where I would keep my favorites and give them copies and they would send me copies of the ones they kept. We stayed around talking and then I realized it was late and they left and I was alone.

A tall, thin, dark-haired man in a waistcoat and jacket swept in and looked at me with piercing black eyes. He had a long, pale face and I knew he was dangerous. He sat down on a bench beside me and leaned over to brush his mouth over my neck and I fell into darkness.

I woke up and there were several people that were being prepared for human sacrifice. The man was a vampire and he was doing a Black Mass. And a man and I were dead but had come back as ghosts and we exacted our revenge on the vampire. I think I choked him to death.

Touch, Gender, Orientation, Skype And Religion

The title of this post gathers all the things I've been thinking about lately into a nice five-word list. Of course, all of these words are much more complex and complicated than their sounds. I'm still sifting through them for myself (I think we're always sifting).

I dreamed the other night that my friends finally understood that I needed touch to survive. One of them put his hands on my shoulders when he talked to me, one hugged me, and one held my hand and another played with my hair. I felt so loved and warm when I woke up. I wish people were better able to express love in this way and not feel like it's sexual or creepy.

I've been thinking about orientation a lot (as usual). I have more and more friends who are not 'straight' and it honestly refreshes me. It's hard to be around straight people all the time. There are things I can't explain, and even some people who aren't straight don't understand.

I have this one friend I talked to on Skype the other night - he was saying I should become a nun since I'm asexual. I tried to explain that just because I don't have a sex drive doesn't mean I don't want a relationship. Because I do.

I want a committed, long-term relationship. It's why I got married. I want to hold someone's hand through life. In all the wretchedness, it helps to know that someone loves you so deeply that they will wade through the dark water with you.

I want to take care of someone and be taken care of - I want a partner. I want to spend the rest of my life with someone. I just don't want to have sex with them.

I guess most people don't understand that. They also don't understand when I try to explain that I'm genderfluid. I just realized how much of a gap there is between orientation and gender, and it finally clicked with me that what I am is a genderfluid asexual.

There are some days where I feel masculine. I feel weird and uncomfortable in dresses and I want to wear suits and ties. I feel like taking the lead in a relationship. I feel more at home hanging out with the guys. There are days when I want to get my hands dirty and chop wood and shoot guns and do things that are typically seen as 'male'. (This doesn't make these things male or masculine-coded but rather society has masculine-coded them in such a way that to be attracted to these things is in some ways taking on the label 'masculine')

And there are days where I want to wear dresses and feel more comfortable around girls. There are days where I want to be feminine, whatever that looks like for me.

I'm attracted aesthetically to both males and females (it depends on the person, which I guess would mean I'm probably panromantic) - when they're clothed. I don't like nakedness.

But I have both kinds of days. I have dreams where I'm male.

It's not androgyny. It truly is a spectrum of gender for me. I'm fluid, flowing from one side of the spectrum to the other, depending on the day, my mood, what I need to do, and what I'm doing.

How does all of this tie into religion? I'm not sure. Maybe it doesn't.

I'm just tired of trying to make all the pieces fit. And I noticed a week or two weeks or  maybe a long time ago that the little light I hid under a shell inside my soul to keep it safe had been extinguished. I don't know how it happened. It's just gone.

Would Christianity accept me? Would God accept me?

I'm a genderfluid, panromantic/romantic (?) asexual. I have clinical depression. I'm opposed to the death penalty and I believe in equal rights. I'm in love with television and I can't abide religious/political institutions and authority figures. I want to give up my citizenship and seek shelter in a less widely known place (I dream of becoming Canadian). I want to act and befriend all sorts of people.

Is there room in the Kingdom for me? Is there a Kingdom?

I don't know where I am anymore, but I'm getting a clearer picture of who I am.