Raw

I woke up this morning raw, exposed.  I'd had one of those long, dubious dreams that seem to make sense and then seem to make no sense at all.  Only this time, when I woke, things knitted together and made sense after all, in the shower.  Another piece is that without writing last semester's series of long, self-delving poems, I wouldn't be here at the spot in the middle from which the sense is visible.

In the poems I found that I stay with Grumpy because he gives me unconditional love, which I desperately need because I didn't get it when it would have been of use, as a child.  At the time of finishing that last poem, I thought I'd learned something that made sense of my long (for me) and incomprehensible (to me) marriage, made it all right.  Suddenly I am looking from inside the mirror, and it seems fatal.  In the dream nothing fit.  A lot of my dreams are like that.  (I suppose a lot of everybody's dreams are like that.)  There were clothes, people, backwards structures where people stand for an event, ladder-like stairs oriented backward and dangerous, there were clothes coming apart, falling off, other clothes given to me that were the wrong size, etc. etc. etc.  When I woke, I felt the same about the dream as about Grumpy, like nothing fits but I keep going on like it does, like I always have with men in my life, giving them what I think they want and not asking for much, or more frankly, keeping my needs secret.

My libido is making a comeback, which timing leads me to attribute to alpha lipoic acid supplements.  I was doing fine without it, though in fact sex was originally our main reason for being together despite conspicuous reasons not to.  For years I've barely been able to generate a minimal level of performance to just meet Grumpy's absolutely lowest acceptable level.  But now  mistiming left me horny one night (and a fabulous session with vibrator next day), then sex the next night for which I totally faked desire and pleasure.  Then the crazy dream where nothing fits, waking up to make sense of it as a life in which nothing fits, but we get by, needing to believe it does in order not to be lonely.  Is that a good enough reason?

I just woke up, haven't had coffee yet, so all this might be garbage . . . or not.  It might just be the misfit sexual timing this particular weekend.  Or it might be a destabilizing revelation about our relationship, one I should act upon.  How can I tell?