Keeping the Dream

Sunlight floods my room. Last night was rough, but not new, but fewer in between than years ago.

Sometimes, because of my music and my general writings, people get the idea that the sun almost always never sets in my life. But that’s not true. I have learned to become “comfortable” with my pain. It is part of the reason why I can write about it and transform much of it into one creative project or another. Experiencing, being at one with wherever I am is also part of what fuels my passion.

Suppression leads to apathy. Expression leads to life. No seed has dared to root itself to the earth or stretch out of itself to break through the soil and venture into the unknown territories of light and air through apathy. Yet every seed must express itself in this way to live.

Perhaps, “comfortable” is not the right term. Perhaps I’m speaking of acceptance, of just being in the present moment, knowing that the darkness will pass and the sun will rise, even though there appears to be no movement.

But holding a seed, drawing it close to that earth of your heart is movement. It’s the movement of faith in green and leaves and shade under sun and a strong trunk to lean against in the night. You don’t have to feel it…

You don’t have hear the sound of roots or tender shoot moving soil. You just have to wait.

I am still tender, but there is light and I can see beyond what’s immediately before my face.

The sun does rise, but more truthfully, it’s always been there. It is the turning of the earth, the turning of our awareness that causes this ever present source of energy to fall across our horizon, spilling its colors and light over us.

Demian,
~DreamSinger

Sometimes in the middle of the night, I lay awake and thoughts I had strength to keep at bay during the day, find their way to my attention. They pry their way into my resistance, slip the credit card down the door jam, break in, intruders quietly and methodically stealing my night of its dreams and rest. I cannot even escape out the back door. I am caught.

Sometimes I lay there and wrap myself deeper under my quilt and bury my face into my soft pillow and just as soft tears. Or maybe there are no tears, which is worse. Other times I get up, like now, and look for something to do. Too tired to work. But not able to lay down. These thoughts and the feelings they bring, are old acquaintances.

I’ve known them all my life.

I remember the laying in my childhood bed at night, a heavy weight, not always my father. Depression is a violation.

It’s not so bad tonight. I can write. But it hovers over me like a bird of prey shadow, and I, like some small rodent with darting eyes look both for cover and bearings. How far am I from safety? How quickly can I dart into refuge or will I be overcome?

What is hardest about the healing journey is when all of a sudden it hits you or perhaps just sinks deeper, the deep cost of what happened years ago, as a child. How the long fingers of that past have touched so many areas of your life.

The longer you’ve been on this road, the further back you can see, and sometimes choices made long ago or yesterday come back to haunt you…when you look back and see who you are now would have turned right where you turned left, and the choices you let go, are the ones you long to have now.

And you want to scream, “It’s not fair!”, but you get depressed instead. Because you know hollering about it is as useless as telling your abuser to stop hurting you.

And I wonder, after another long day of working on my music, working on the marketing, working on writing, creating…and still struggling way longer than I would have hoped to, I am haunted with thoughts of what good is all this stuff, anyway? When I’ve made so many mistakes in good faith, how do I know I’m not doing that now?

And those are the hardest moments for me, when I doubt what I’m doing now. And I know I have to and will ride them out…but in times like this, the thought of riding anything out doesn’t bring much comfort, because time stands still.

It just stands still.

But it doesn’t. And I know, that even though I can’t see it right now, and it’s dark outside, that sun will come up.

And I will eventually lay back down, and then I, too, will rise again. And I’ll write my songs, even though I can’t feel them now. And I’ll go back on-line, and someone will email me and I will be moved by their reaching out.

And I will reach back.