abstract dreams and the lies of silence

bleah!

Restless night. Not for any good reason, mind you, like wrestling for the covers with some nymphette, but from dreams. Not nightmares, dreams. Once in a while I get a vivid dream, something with not only strong imagery but that seemingly untangles some aspect of my life, something that clings and insinuates itself into my waking world so that once I rouse myself, I still ponder it.

So, last night, I ended up more than once staring into the quiet darkness. I really can't give the details, but it is well timed, very well timed. The resolution was to underscore to me, on a more visceral level, a truth that I have been aware of intellectually.

You can't save everyone from themselves.

Having a form of the Superman-Boy Scout-Messiah complex that compells me to help people I see in trouble, even at an expense of my own safety and well-being, I sometimes find myself in a position where I am too busy saving them while placing myself in an untenable position. One of the things that drew me into the Quaker faith is its insistence upon constant truth. While I have been known in the past to tell a lie, usually it was to help someone else out (it is a disease in our society, lying, most feel no moral remorse at saying to someone "Tell them I'm not here" or arguing with a police officer when we were caught red-handed over the speed limit). More often than not, when the lie was exposed, I took the heat for it. It has been native to me.

I retired that piece of the puzzle that is my ethos. It was crippling me. The other day a bill collector, looking for someone I hadn't heard from in some time, called and asked if I knew where she was. I honestly had to say "No, not a clue, nor would I be disposed to help you if I did." I'm not sure they knew what to make of that answer, but they probably thought I was lying (everyone lies, haven't you heard? I don't like it when I am lied to or about, but have had to learn to accept it as a currency of dealing with damaged people and modern society.)

Anyway, the majority of the dream was a conversation between myself and this person, so vivid that I checked my cell phone to see if I had been using it. It took place in an abstract place (when my mind want's me to concentrate on the words and not the images, I find myself in these surreal places, it learned a long time ago that a void merely stirs my curiosity).

I'm fine now (although my raccoon eyes will be prominent all day). And the words and concepts of the dream have been assimilated into me, to fill gaps left void by silence and lies both spoken and unspoken. And I am, in my own way, as close to at peace as I get.

And that was worth a few hours of lost sleep.