Nightmares
Posted January 11th, 2006 by MichelleLast night I dreamt I was waiting tables again. It was the “Server’s Nightmare”, not unlike the Actor’s Nightmare, which every actor has actually had (and, of course, there’s a play about it as well). In the Actor’s Nightmare, the actor suddenly finds himself onstage, in the middle of play, but he doesn’t know any of his lines, and doesn’t even know what play he’s in. In the Server Nightmare (any many of us have had this one too), suddenly, you are on the floor, in the middle of service, but you don’t know which tables are yours, you don’t know what course anyone is on, you don’t know what’s supposed to be happening, but there are hundreds of people clamoring for you and you can’t escape. That was my dream last night, except it was all the worse because I was me now but I was back to waiting tables. It was horrible.
And then today, my mom got in a really bad car accident. In real life. She’s totally fine, the car is totally totaled, and I just feel so incredibly far away.
I feel torn and scared about many things in my life. I mean, I’m thankful that I have these sets of problems, versus sets of problems I’ve had in the past and I’m sure I’ll have in the future, but it’s still scary. Although I have to say I do feel extremely present, extremely aware, extremely- if you’ll forgive me- alive. But my heart has been racing for what feels like days now and I can’t seem to slow it down, because things keep coming my way to make it go nuts.
You know, it’s crazy. I’m sitting here thinking about everything I’m feeling and I realize it’s growing pains. Twice in the past couple of months, I’ve begged certain people to stop telling me about the things they care about, because I felt like I couldn’t care deeply about one more thing. I care so much about my family, about my close friends, about my coaches, about my organization, about the arts in my community, about the new foster care center and all the kids I’m working with there, about the state of this country, about the victims of all of last year’s disasters, you know, blah blah blah, and it seems like the more you care about things, the more you realize there is to care about. And it’s like I don’t know how to control it, I don’t know how to pick my battles. Or I don’t know how to graduate my care, assign it levels, at least when it comes to the amount of time I spend on any thing in a given day. And twice, when someone started to tell me about YET ANOTHER THING that I was clearly going to care about, my heart started racing and I begged them to stop. Because I honestly thought my heart would burst, in a totally bad way.
But then, if I sort of give myself time, I find that my heart didn’t burst, it stretched just a little bit. Ye gods, crucify me for this silliness if you must, but it’s like I’m able to internalize that one more thing just a tiny bit, without getting totally overwrought, and I find that I can care about all sorts of things, I just can’t *do* something about every single one of them.
Boy howdy, am I glad it’s a three-day weekend coming up. In the meantime, it’s 8:30, and I’m going to go to bed.
Yikes. What a terrible dream.
I’m very glad your Mom’s all right. Tell her I said howdy, would you?
I’ve had similar ‘care overload’ feelings. It’s a good sign — it shows you have a fully functioning heart. Try to remember it’s not your job to make it all better.
Try to think of what you do as a gift you give because you want to give back to Life, which has given you so many priceless gifts (and has more in store!).
I hope your three-day weekend was good. It’s clear I should be reading your blog more often!