"dreams are the touchstones of our character."
~ henry david thoreau

from the online dream dictionary:
if you dream that you forgot you had a baby, then it suggests that you are trying hide your own vulnerabilities; You do not want to let others know of your weaknesses.

to dream that you or others are sick, denotes discordance and trouble in your life. it may also signal a part of yourself that needs to be healed, either physically or mentally. perhaps you are wallowing in your own self-pity. you need to quit feeling sorry for yourself.

to dream of an illness in your dream, denotes despair, unpleasant changes, or some emotional breakdown. yhe illness may be symbolic of your inability to cope with a situation and you see that being ill is an easy way out. on a more direct note, this dream may signal you to pay close attention to your health especially to the areas of body revealed in the dream.

to dream that you are happy, may be a compensatory dream and is often a dream of the contrary. you may be trying to compensate for the sadness or stress in your waking life.

last night i dreamed that i had a little baby girl who may or may not have been ill, but no one wanted to take her to be checked out, because they didn't want to know if she was developmentally delayed or terminally ill. then i had a panicked moment and dreamed that i had forgotten about the baby and left her in her room all day, sleeping in her crib. so i ran down the hall of some non-descript home that i didn't recognize and threw open the door. there she lay, with dark brown curls and a happy smile on her face. one sock off and an amazingly dry diaper. she wasn't upset or crying or neglected looking. she was happy and i picked her up and held her and talked to her about how much i loved her and how much her brothers and sister loved her.

then i woke up.

gee...i wonder what that was all about? [note the deep sarcasm]

he drank again last night, so he's now 4/8 in 2010. and 4/4 since we returned home from our little trip to the beach for the 'alone time' we 'needed' so that we could 'reconnect'. [more sarcasm]

the thing is, i really did feel like we had some good conversations and what we needed to do in the future to save this marriage. he said he was looking at some long-term rehab programs. we both agreed that we need to talk more about what we are feeling, instead of holding back all the time. he grew up with two parents who suppressed everything they felt that wasn't all 'happy happy'.

sometimes he was lonely, because his brothers were so much older than he was and his parents were older, so he was left a lot and expected to act more mature. he was also small for his age and was often left out of things, so he told me when he feels ignored or left out or rejected that he drinks to compensate...well that's one of the reasons anyway.

in contrast i grew up expressing my feelings, sometimes loudly...but with this alcoholism, trying to follow the edicts of al-anon (which sometimes i think is a great coping tool and other times i think is a crock of shit) and learning the hard way not to leave myself open, because when he's drunk my words are always thrown carelessly back in my face, it's become difficult to feel comfortable sharing my feelings. difficult to share with pretty much everyone. hell, it's become difficult to make prolonged eye contact with people, nowadays. i guess because i don't want them to see what i'm thinking or feeling? i never used to be that way.

anyway, all of that progress has been seemingly blown to hell...the fact on the very day we got home from our trip that he went out and bought 2 bottles of gin and proceeded to drink 1.5 of them...

i don't know, maybe i am throwing a big ol' pity party for myself and just wallowing in the excess, but it feels as though anytime i open myself up to him, be it emotionally or physically, i get slammed.

he swears that that is not the case. he swears that if he's going to drink, he's going to drink, and it doesn't matter what the situation it follows. whether he's feeling neglected, feeling stressed or whether we had made love the night before...so in a way that kind of blows the whole "i drink when i feel rejected" statement.

it seems like every single time i allow a little bit of hope to build up in my heart, every single time i feel a little positive about how things might go, every time i feel my heart thawing out...BAM!

so. my head is beginning to tell me one thing and my heart still tells me another. problematic enough as it is, but now my heart is fractured, freezing up daily and missing teeny tiny little pieces where he used to dwell.

it seems i've gone past 'detaching with love', thanks a lot al-anon [not], straight to 'detaching'. period.

what the hell am i supposed to do with that?

back again, no real improvement - 2011-06-02
growing - 2010-05-08
does sharing really mean caring - 2010-04-20
don't want to think about it now - 2010-04-13
trying to figure it out - 2010-04-12