WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS

Last night I dreamed I gave birth to an ugly, bloody baby and I was ashamed of it.  I didn't know it was there, inside my dream uterus.  Plus, it was probably born drunk because of its drowsy baby eyes, and I thought it was dead because it wouldn't make a sound.  Already I'm the horrible mother everyone said I would be, and my child was merely three minutes old.

I wrapped it in a shroud that quickly became soaked with blood, put it in the corner.  I tried to ignore it while I curled up on a heavy, green marble table and cried for what seemed like the majority of the dream, thinking and brewing and refusing to look at the corner my child silently occupied.  Visitors came to see me while I twisted on the table, and they would tell me jokes and I would laugh and they would ask for advice and I would give it, but they didn't know about my child and I couldn't forget it was there, and that I threw in the corner and I was so afraid to claim it as my own because it really was mine, so it must be fucked up.  

Because if they knew it was mine, they would judge me and tell me how terrible I am, and say things like, "your skewed version of how the world should be turned your ilk into monsters" and then the undead, bloody thing would scream and cry and never learn multiplication.  But that was imaginary dread, even in the dream.  Or they would laugh at my child and call it a clown and say things like "your spawn is a joke and the thought of you teaching your values and morals to a creature of your loins is absurd, nearly as absurd as the thought of a man wanting you to mother his child in the first place."  And they would laugh and so would I.

But honestly?  My values are so much better than theirs.  That's why I fucking have them in the first place.  Because I'm right.  I'm right, and I'm sick of gutless people telling me otherwise, even when it's disguised as something as nonchalant as "you're looking way too into this" or "why can't you just do XXX like Normal people."

Obviously this is a theme on my blog, reconciling my mind with other people's versions of Normal.  But my problem is not that people criticize me, because I don't give a fuck about that.  It affects me so greatly because sometimes I give trust and loyalty to people who try to push their own version of Normal in the first place, which means I push my version.

I might insist it's so people can share the things I love, but really, what if I have some sort of secret agenda to turn everyone into me?  I don't want people to be like me.  I want to be the only me there is.  Sometimes I'm even insulted when people say "you are so much alike" and then I meet that person like me and I think, "this person is nothing like me" and then I get angry on behalf of myself and that poor other person that was accused of sharing similarities with the likes of me.

But is it really so bad, not being the only one?  Wouldn't it be nice to share Not Normal things with others instead of demanding my undeniable uniqueness and individuality? 

So in my dream, I sat up on the marble table and wiped the tears from my face, because it was time to claim my Not Normal child.  And I breathed and walked over to the corner which had grown a bookshelf, and I pulled out the VHS clamshell that housed my dream child.  I cracked it open and there he was, in a bloody clamshell, and he looked just wonderful, and there had never been anything more wonderful in the history of the universe ever ever than me and this beautiful child, and all of the other things I had made in my life that were sitting on that bookshelf, (which was the one my mom and I made together) like my first painting called "a pony" and the first story I ever wrote and the first dress I ever sewed and the first blueprint I drew and the first egg drop experiment I designed and everything else, and I licked him clean and hugged him and laughed and he stretched and opened his eyes, and then...and then I opened mine, and I had to go to fucking work.

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