Living with a Grizzly Bear

Normally, I detest writing about dreams. I also don’t really like reading about dreams.

But for today, I can’t help but write about this strange series of dreams I had last night.

Waking me up from around 5am to 10am, on and off, some keeping me awake until the next strange series of dreams.

Last night, I got to relive, in the abstract dream way, a series of sexual assaults and physical encroachments that, well, obviously I’m not over.

The details don’t matter, I think, or at least, I don’t really want to go into them. But I was trapped in a house and one of my roommates had a pet grizzly bear. He insisted the bear was tame, but I never really felt safe around it. It would corner me. It would paw at me. It’s paws were gigantic, and you know how in dreams you are not even remotely strong enough, so that was that.

Well, so, i’d go to a room in the house, and the house was never all that concrete in layout, but I’d end up in a room with a former aggressor and I couldn’t get out. And my arms weren’t strong enough, because I knew what was going to happen, and what was happening, and I still couldn’t get out.

Then I’d wake up, turn over, deeply disturbed, and half fall asleep again into another room in the house.

When I’d walk around the house, the Grizzly bear would follow me, watch me, lord over me.

Suffice to say, today I’m mostly inside myself. I lay in bed from around 10 to 11ish, poring over the feelings that came right back up to the surface. Suffice to say, I guess I haven’t ever properly dealt with such feelings. I, like most women, didn’t report anything. I didn’t go see anyone or any place about any of it. I think I should, but fear and skepticism keeps me from doing anything about it. I downplay, deny, or degrade the experiences and convince myself I’m over it. Obviously I’m not. I just don’t want to go through all the effort, whatever effort that would be, to do anything about these memories.

There, I’ve said what I’ve said. Now I’m going to try to get back to work. I’m not really ‘myself’ today, but it’s not written across my shirt that I had a bad night last night, so folks don’t really know whats up.

Fucking grizzly bear.