I feel like I must hold myself very still and small–like the core of me must be carefully compacted and held in the very center of my body, somewhere between my chest and my abdominal cavity, and that it should not be allowed to bump into anything. Everything seems very loud and intrusive – the happy hubbub of the cousins, the dull hum of the downtown library, the occasional swoosh of traffic outside my balcony doors. It all seems too loud, too grating.

I do not like this feeling.

I did not get up to run this morning with Heather. I’ve been having bad dreams and I cannot sleep, so I needed the extra hour and half between when I pull on my runners and when my kids wake up. But tomorrow I must go or my energy level will tank and I will move from “stable and holding” to “spiraling downward.”

The night before last I dreamed that we had moved to Kevin and Tracy Rains place in Cincinnati. In real life, they have a wonderful communal house there, with a house church, and a gorgeous old mini-cathedral with crumbling angels and an all-seeing glass eye in the skylight. I’ve always admired it. But in my dream all that was gone. In my dream, we got there and instead of living in the Brownhouse, like I had expected, we were given a very tiny house on a patch of weedy land facing a dirt-and-gravel road. The house was very small and run down. There was only one closet and the bedroom the girls were in was just large enough for one bed. Stuff was piled everywhere. The rest of the house was one big room, the kitchen being just a row of cabinets and a sink across one wall. The house was heated with a big iron wood stove which stood in the middle of the room.

Across the street from our house someone was building a resort with a man-made lake and little clapboard cabins. The earth movers were parked in the middle of the partially dug lake. Actually, everything was partially done, the cabins each half assembled, tools lying where they may, trucks parked here and there. I asked someone from the community about the resort project. She said that one of the couples who were in leadership had started it, but that the other two couples disagreed with the project.

Later we went to the place where the community met for church. It was a small rustic room, crowded with people. Someone handed us a little piece of artwork, which flipped open to reveal the words to a hymn I did not know. There were screens with popular “worship” images flashing on them to synthesized music. It was all very techno, only the building was so old and rustic that the whole scene was at odds with itself. At one point everything stopped and I finally realized I was supposed to solo this hymn I had been handed, only I didn’t know it and I’m not a good singer. Apparently everyone had some hymn or reading or something and you were just supposed to know when to read it or perform it. All the regulars knew their hidden cues, but newcomers just had to figure it out. The service finally moved on and the woman who had told me about the building project started giving a sermon while strumming her guitar. At one point she picked a dirty dish out of a sink that was near her and used it to make some sort of point. Then she put it in the dish rack. Since it was dirty still, I thought I could help by going over to the sink to wash the dishes. I remember thinking, “At least this is something I know how to do—washing dishes, clean up.” But as soon as I turned on the water I was shooed away.

The final weird bit of the dream was that someone kept kissing me on the back of my neck, and I wasn’t sure it was Paul. I remember at one point I was finally understanding what was going on in the worship service and then someone brushed my neck and it totally frustrated me because I was just starting to get my bearings. But that time, when I turned to see who it was, it was actually Paul. That whole part totally creeped me out.

I woke up disoriented and afraid. The feeling I had was “I thought this was going to be the perfect place for us. I dragged my family out here and it’s all wrong!”

This morning I woke from a dream that had a similar feel to it, though the story was much different. In this dream, my house was full of people I didn’t know and all these things were happening that I didn’t know about. My friend Shelli was my babysitter and I couldn’t remember arranging that. She was running a drumming class for preschoolers in the living room, and I had given her permission to do so, but I could remember. Also, I was remarried (what had happened to poor Paul?) to some guy in a fake white turban. Someone asked me about him and I was like, “Who?!” Then I was trying to save face, “Oh yeah, right, right, of course.” Then the guy asked me where his daughter (my step daughter) was and I didn’t even know he had one. I was stumbling around trying to not let on that I didn’t remember the little girl’s name when I suddenly woke up – stressed and confused.

What is in my water? Geesh.