Can't.

I had incredible, happy dreams last night.  My dreams are always vivid, and I nearly always wake up feeling that same emotion from my dreams.  But for some reason, when I awoke this morning, the reality of life came crashing down on me.  And it was heavy.  Ordinarily, I'm a take-charge person; I get things done.  If I want something out of life, I chase it down.  Maybe this is why God gave me such strong legs? 

But the past year has me feeling helpless and as if my life is out of my control.  This is such a foreign place for me that to say that I feel lost would be treating it with kid gloves.  There are frustrations with life that I just cannot fix on my own; I cannot put in enough elbow grease to shine up the situation.

I woke up this morning with the word "Can't" reverberating through my mind.  That word and I are not friends, and we never have been.  I do not identify with it, I do not empathize with it, I do not comiserate with it.  But this morning, I feel as if there are a million of billboards screaming at me from within my own bedroom:  Can't clear up your skin!  Can't get married!  Can't afford things!  Can't fit into your jeans!  Can't have babies!

That last one makes me pause.  It makes me gasp if I dwell on it for more than a few seconds.  It's not referring to a physical inability to have children, but my inability to have them now.  And with each passing day, my body ages toward a point where physical inability becomes a very real enemy, lurking from within. 

There aren't many things in this life that I can say without an ounce of doubt that I am good at.  But, I have always known - from the depths of my being - that I will be a good mother.  When I feel insecure with my career or filled with doubts in other areas, I ache to devote my energies toward something where I know I will thrive.  And it always goes back to one, unshaking thought:  Motherhood.

I am aware enough to know that things can be done to help fix my world of "Can't."  Enough creativity and enough trying will resolve most anything.  I need to return to that place of creativity and effort.  Because I know me - feeling lost and helpless isn't something I tolerate for long.  Like a gypsy, I feel the pulls of change in the wind, and there's no keeping me still once I feel those whispers across my skin.

Mean Monkeys

This morning, my sister, Magpie, sent me this text:

"I had a dream that u were movin 2 new subdivision being built but it had long uphill drive 2 get there & a forest behind it w/ mean monkeys n the trees."

Which is amusingly whack on its own, but in one of my own dreams last night, I was yelling at some woman who was being mean to her. (And the fact that Magpie and I were baking pies and living in a duplex with sidewalk chalk drawings everywhere only adds to the fun of it all.) But, evidently, we were both worried about each other in our dreams last night.

She and I have always had really vidid - and often strange - dreams. And we usually have more than one that we remember each night. Before last night's saga of pie baking and sidewalk chalk, I dreamt that I was looking at a table or ledge covered in flowers and plants and greenery, and I was inspired to write a children's book. I don't remember the subject of my book, but evidently, it was wildly successful, and I was walking around just beaming from the inside out.

And a couple of nights ago, I dreamt that I opened my own bake shop. I've been daydreaming about owning my own bake shop for no fewer than 4 years now, but this has been my first night-dream of one. My daydreams have even gone so far as to have planned the entire menu of classic items and a few new twists (just say yes to gluten- and dairy-free yummies!). But back to the dream - again, it was just a really happy, content dream. My dreams are nearly always so vivid that whichever emotions I experience in my dream are carried over to the next day. Which is all fabulous until I have a bad or anxiety-filled dream, lol. But this morning, I woke up feeling the most smiley I've felt in a long while.

I'm sure that my bake shop dream was inspired by having recently watched "Stranger Than Fiction." Her bake shop is so close to what I'd like mine to look and feel like! And her philosophy on changing the world rings so true and close to my heart. Sigh...But she really does need an old piano in the corner of the shop and way more cookies on that plate.

One day, I'll write a post on lucid dreaming and the ability to control your dreams while you're having them. Ooh boy, I can't wait.