Last night I had a dream...

It came to me unbidden, as they usually do in the wee small hours of the morning.

I was back in my home, the one that I sunk every penny I earned and inherited into and made into a beautiful abode with my partner.  A friend was coming round for dinner and I had the house to myself, so I worked hard all-day cleaning and arranging it so she’d be impressed and appreciate it as much as I did. 

I set up the dining room, polishing the big dining table and laying it with the tablecloth.  Fitting the candlesticks with tall beeswax candles, vacuuming the deep pile on the gold carpet.  Plumping up the cushions on the expensive settee, covered in toile de jouy patterned fabric that we bought at auction.  Putting some relaxing background music on.  Loving how the dining room and its small, connected lounge formed a snug area, deliberately kept separate from the rest of the house as an area we’d allotted ‘the grown-ups rooms’ so that it would be free from the chocolatey, sticky fingers of young children and their compadres who frequently tore through the house.

After I’d finished in there, I went through to the extension my partner had built onto the house, firing up the range cooker on my way through the kitchen.  Whilst the oven warmed I brushed the York stone-flagged floor that at one time had been the original exterior patio, shook out the rugs and cleaned the smears off the large glass doors on either side of the fireplace, looking out onto the garden with its full flowerbeds and Koi carp, raised pond.  If I had time, I’d arrange the patio too after I’d put the roast in the oven as it was such a beautiful, balmy evening.  If I put some candles out there, we could take our wine outside and sit in the peace of the evening after we’d eaten.

I cleaned the downstairs bathroom with the stone-tiled floor and walls, admiring the shower that was part of the room, no cubicle needed.  Put fresh soap by the sink and towels on the heated rail and went to deal with dinner.

At this point of the dream I was swimming to the surface of consciousness and some inner-voice drifted through my mind, causing ripples through this blissful dream, that maybe I should cut my losses and go back to my now, ex partner.  Perhaps we could somehow go back home.  Back to this beautiful place where I was now lovingly polishing the hand-blown, stained glass standard lamps that we’d bought on our holiday in Greece and carefully transported home.  This deluded inner voice had forgotten that my ex was now dead.  It was only focusing on the house.  The furniture.  The lamps it was still polishing.  Not the man I’d managed to stay friends with, the big man who’d been diminished by the cancer that tore through his body and ate him up.  Nor the children that the dream had conveniently omitted, lending it a quiet atmosphere.  Just stuff.

At this point, the sane part of my mind, who was clearly getting fed up with this fantasy, sent me back to sleep and suddenly my beautiful clean home was invaded.  It started with my partner coming home covered in brick dust with a few friends who’d come back with him for a beer and a chat about man things that were apparently urgently important.  As I was struggling to keep a lid on my irritation my friend rang me to cancel – no doubt her sixth sense had alerted her to the fact that, perhaps, it wasn’t going to be a peaceful evening at all.  And she’d have been right because just as I was thinking that the evening could still be salvaged and I could shut the door to the dining room and eat my dinner in relative peace on my own, through the front door traipsed mine and my partners extended family including all of the ones I didn't get along with, plus ours and everybody else’s children.

In no time at all the roast beef was devoured, there were chairs everywhere that I kept tripping over, even the crappy old chairs we’d stored in the shed because there weren’t enough to accommodate the number of bottoms that needed to sit on them.  The downstairs toilet was trashed, beer-swillers were littering the patio and what sounded like a heard of elephants was thundering around upstairs.

It was a relief to wake up from what now, had become a nightmare.

The dreams that stick in our minds usually have something to tell us.

My desire to return to my life at that time, at the cost of returning to a partner who didn’t respect my boundaries or protect my peace and my reaction to remembering his tragic death and feeling shame at my selfishness reminded me of the constant struggle, confusion and dissembling that I used to experience in that relationship. 

I loved the house and home we created but the devotion I had to my children was constantly interrupted by the emotional power imbalance that existed between me and my partner who initially seemed to love me until he became bored by me then ignorant and sometimes cruel to me causing me to constantly seek his validation then being sad when I didn’t get it.

The objects in the home - the decor, the attempt to keep things sanitized, sacred and cherished - were inanimate objects that couldn’t argue with me or disappoint me, and the desire to keep them pure and clean, even by creating child-free zones, represented appearance above all else, heart not being a priority.

No doubt there are many other interpretations and meanings I could divine from that dream but the important comparison between my life then and now is that I know myself now better than I did then - the good, the bad and the ugly -  life and the passage of time will do that to you, and I don’t have the house or the stuff any longer but thank God, I do have my kids and they’re in their rightful place, in every room now when they visit me in the house and constantly in my heart and mind, instead of parts I keep separate. 

My ex-partners illness and death was traumatic for all of us, our children and his aged mother mostly.  And sometimes I do wonder if we’d stayed together, if I’d sucked it up and just built a life separate to him but hadn’t decided to end things, might he never have become sick if he’d been fed properly and looked after surrounded by family.   I’d have liked to have had some sort of meaningful conversation with him about this before his death, we both owed each other an apology, but by that time the cancer had eaten his brain and his conversations were other-worldly and vague.

Sometimes we choose to open doors to a different life, and sometimes life opens those doors for us, but we can never go back.  I loved my previous home, I created some kind of life in it, some kind of love in it, some parts of me grew stronger within it for a variety of reasons.  Some of those parts for good reasons, some of them against the odds.

Dreams are not always the subconscious mind ridding itself of unnecessary data.  Occasionally they can be a way of processing things that we’ve formerly been unwilling to place importance on, such as; it’s essential to let people know how we feel about them, not just by telling them but by showing them.  That our uncomfortable feelings can be an important message and that focussing on our inner world is only productive if it can lead to empowerment and self-acceptance without the need for someone else to validate us. That avoiding difficult conversations in order to shield ourselves and others can cause more damage in the long-run. And that a priceless ornament or piece of furniture - it's just stuff.

And sometimes it’s too late to apologize.  Forgiving and forgiveness are the things that ultimately release us from prisons that we lock ourselves and others in.

I don’t own a home now but the home I have, whilst it lacks space and good furniture and pretty lamps, has been traded for cherishing, loving and protecting my family and other people.

I’ve not had a partner since my ex and I split but I traded looking for someone else to love me in order to feel validated, for learning how to love and respect myself. That part hasn't been easy but I'm getting better at it.

In time, there may be another home and there may be a new partner, but if that happens I hope that these will be built on and furnished with the values I have now and that these can be the light and the illumination.  The stained glass, trumpet-lilly-shaped, hand-blown lamps can wait.

Gina X