Suzaji’s Blog

As if life itself isn’t strange enough, then there’s the dream world. Last night I was in a hotel room with a man from my past. In real life he was a healer—a successful, movie-star-handsome doctor. But he was also a wounded child, addicted to sex and drugs, with posttraumatic stress syndrome from his years in Vietnam. Our ten years together eventually woke me up to the shadow side of relationships.

In the dream, many years had passed since I’d seen him. He was claiming that he was now rehabilitated, and I was supposed to trust him. He was still young, lying nearly naked on the bed, smiling with need and beckoning me to come to him with that same “I want you” look on his face as when we were together. But I felt nothing, no sexual pull . . . just a sense of obligation.

I said, “It’s been a long time since I’ve had sex. It’s going to take time for me to trust you.” And just as I said that I noticed an insect crawling on his pillow—a scorpion. I looked again and saw another one, and another one, and then I realized that they were everywhere, all over the floor, and that I had already been stung on the leg but hadn’t noticed it. I shouted, “We’ve got to get out of here!” and ran out and closed the door.

When I woke up, I scribbled all this down in my journal. And, as I wrote, I saw how each man in my life was like a symbol, representing a world I thought I couldn’t touch on my own.

[My editor says, “Develop/expand on this last thought, Suza!” And I say, “I will!”]

Tags: dating at midlife and older, journal writing, wounded daughter, writing yoga

This entry was posted on February 5, 2013 at 5:35 pm and is filed under New Memoir Chapters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.