Whenever I want you
All I have to do is dream

Oh for fuck’s sake. My dreams.

Sometimes I wake up and it’s a blank slate; I have no idea how I passed my hours of slumber. Sometimes I am rattled awake by the most vivid, intense dreams.

Lately they have involved my grandma. Yeah, the one that just died.

And somehow I’ve managed to tie in my house issues with my dead grandma issues.

For example, I dreamed I was taking my dog to board and it was at my grandma’s old house. They had changed the property a lot, so it took me a while to recognize it. But when I went inside, I could tell it was her house. Now, funny dreams, it wasn’t anything like her REAL house. But I seemed to really connect to these restaurant style booths and glass candle holders–like those were the leftover signs of grandma.

It made me cry.

The one last night was even weirder.

I was at her apartment with… her? My other grandma? I don’t know. But we were there to clean up because someone had died and we needed to empty out the space. I don’t know if it was her who had died (because in a dream you can go back to your own apartment even if you are dead), or my grandpa, but either way I was very worried about how upset she would be going into the apartment. She kept reassuring me it would be fine.

We went in and started vacuuming the floor. But not with the floor attachment, just the hose. How inefficient. She started trying to help me with a second hose (go figure) and I got all upset that she shouldn’t be having to do that.

So is this about my grandma, or about my struggles to clean and organize my own house? Is Grandma speaking to me from beyond the grave? Telling me to get off my ass and clean?

She never would have been so rude in real life. But she would have made it clear that sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

And I think that is part of what I will miss about her. She came from a time when you just did what you had to do. Life was hard, but you sucked it up and lived it.

She lived on a farm where you just gave birth, at home, whether the doctor had made it there or not. She watched her husband and two of her children die before her.

She just kept living.

And when it was near the end, and she was in a nursing home, and she was in a ton of pain from her physical therapy, she just kept trying. Cuz the only way out, was through. It was the task at hand, so that is what she did.

And I need that in my life. To push through the hard times (though they will never, ever be as hard as her life).

I need to just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.

If a 96-year-old woman could fight the good fight, so can I.

Right?

All I ever wanted was right here
But I had to reach way down inside
I had to have faith I’d find
No Fear

I haven’t written in a while. And I’m scared to try again.

I’m scared I’ve lost the spark, the creativity. My dazzling wit.

But as my mom keeps telling the kiddo, “Feel the fear, and do it anyway.”

Why I haven’t been writing is a whole other story–I lost my grandma last week. She was 96, had been ill, so it wasn’t a total shock. But it has hurt more than I thought. Not sure I’m ready to write much more than that…

But in honor of the family matriarch, who sure as hell didn’t have time for FEAR, I’m going to stick with that idea for today.

In the middle of all of this, I started seeing a therapist. And I like her. She’s full of so many ideas and insights I can barely keep up. Like a college lecture, I feel like I should be recording it and going back to listen again later. Pick up as much wisdom as I can.

The big insight from yesterday was that I am obsessing and stressing about wild daydreams, like owning a farm, so I don’t have to deal with my actual anxiety over what needs to be done NOW.

If I’m researching land, I don’t actually have to clean the house. Or workout. Or cook apparently.

Or even sleep.

Yep. I was up until 1 AM stressing the idea of buying a piece of land outside of town.

It’s insane.

And I can’t seem to break the train of thought.

So goal today… do something for today, don’t just dream about tomorrow.

And I realize when I try to think about today, what it means to be productive today, I do feel a HUGE wave of anxiety wash over me.

There is so much to do I don’t even know where to start. And so much of what is “productive” as a stay-at-home-whatever-I-am, just doesn’t really make a noticeable dent. If I do laundry, no one really knows. It doesn’t change the look of this cluttered house.

So if I start thinking about making this house cleaner, neater, I start to panic because it is a completely daunting task to me. I don’t know where to start, and I know there will be a million moments of not knowing where to put things, where things go, what to get rid of or keep.

And I’d rather just sit here stagnant. It seems safer.

So feel the fear, and do it anyway.

Start somewhere. Pick one tiny task, and do it. Like this guest bed I’m staring at as I write that is covered in clothes. I could hang those up or put them in the laundry.

It’s just cleaning the fucking house, it’s not planning battle.

At least it probably isn’t for most people.

But for me, it is. Battle against myself and my fears and my feeling of being overwhelmed. Battle against anxiety.

Am I alone here? Is anybody else intimidated by an out-of-control house?

But big picture, I don’t want to live my life in fear. Fear of messing up. Fear of being judged. Fear of seeming stupid. Fear of failing–or even just being less than perfect.

Because I see it in my kid. He doesn’t want to do things unless he knows exactly what’s up and what’ll be going on. He wants to be successful and he shuts down when he messes up in public.

I want more than that for him. I want him to feel the fear, and do it anyway.

So I guess I better start walking the walk.