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I bought it on a whim while walking through Albertson's the other night.  The flower case, chilled, refrigerated flowers shined out to me.  I had the urge to buy some for someone when it occurred to me that I needed a rose, I needed to be treated, I wanted something beautiful to hold in my hands.  And so I picked out the one that said my name, took her home, and laid her upon the empty pillow on my bed where she hast rested ever since.

I tend to forget her laying there, yet when I awake in the night I see her and any heaviness in my heart quickly subsides.  During the day I forget she’s there, yet when I return home and hang my hat upon the post I see her and there’s a possibility of hope. 

I hope for the day another buys me roses.  I thirst for the day love is true.

If it weren’t for my cats, who (don’t get me wrong) I love dearly, I would surround myself with vases filled with all my favourite flowers:  roses, daisies, lilies, sun flowers, and stargazers.  I love the colours.  I love the life.  I love as they slowly wilt, reminding me of the impermanence of existence in this mortal body and perhaps of another important lesson:  while some things pass I remain.

Before setting the rose so gently upon the pillow I had been having nightmares almost nightly.  Some were so severe that I literally leapt out of bed in a sweat screaming.  Some were the result of psychic attack, others the result of deep inner spiritual and emotional work.  I became so anxious about sleep that I couldn’t sleep at all this past Saturday.  I’ve slept like a baby from the moment I set the rose in place.

Intent is everything.

I have only, to my knowledge, had one disturbing dream since.  I believe it was partially motivated by a guest on Coast to Coast AM who said it was possible to travel to alternate universes where we’re alive but certain aspects of our lives are different.  By doing so, he insisted, we could take aspects of ourselves there and bring them back to our own universe.  I do not know if this is possible and as a true skeptic I remain open until I am able to prove or disprove the idea (the latter of which is more difficult than most people are able or willing to acknowledge). 

I dreamed that I was a young, young boy again.  I was out helping my dad stack wood on the back porch as we always did in the fall, readying ourselves for the winter with two stacks seven feet tall and about fifteen feet wide.  As the dream went on my dad was being his normal self in such a work situation, i.e. a bit of an asshole ready to go off over the smallest, most insignificant thing, but something was different.  When I made a mistake or wasn’t working hard enough or stopped to breath he looked straight at me and immediately began bitching me out.  To my amazement he could see!!!

It was then that I had this uncanny sense that I had slipped into another universe where the only difference was that my dad hadn’t gone blind and now that I think of it his life, up through the late 70’s, would have been more or less different had he not gone blind then.  He would have still met and married my mother (ah, the idea of eloping sounds so romantic to me now!), they would have still gone to Australia where they had me, and they still would have moved and bought that the ranch home on three acres of alfalfa outside Prineville, Oregon.  And I would have been helping him stack wood while he bitched me out.

I have lived my entire life assuming that had my dad not gone blind he would have been a very different person.  That fact has allowed me to forgive him for many of the scars he gave me in my youth and the wounds I have been burdened with on some level or another all my adult life.  This dream caused me to question my entire premise about our relationship.  Why would he have been different had he not gone blind?  He was still, essentially, the same human being!  Perhaps the opposite was true, perhaps I was lucky he had gone blind so he could not see me taking that moment to breath, so he couldn’t see every mistake I made and put me down even more, so I wouldn’t have had to take even more lashing of the Cat o’ Nine tails which could have very well put me over the edge causing me to have taken my life when I was 17.  I barely made it through as is.  After this dream I’m not so sure I would have had he had retained his ability to see me.

Dreams can be a wonderful insight into oneself.  At the same time it can be dangerous to read too much into them.  Most people aren’t, in my view, terribly great at dream interpretations.  The first reason is that there’s a major assumption out there that certain things mean certain things (i.e. water means the subconscious).  Such attitudes on dream interpretation are inherently ignorant of basic human psychology and neurology.  The deeper issue is that dreams are a subconscious manifestation of the personality.  If one does not understand oneself, which far too few people do (imho), then one cannot accurately interpret ones dreams.

Knowing oneself can be a blessing and a curse, I assure you.

I will keep the rose by me until it is wilted and then I will get another and another and another.  I deserve to treat myself.  It is and will continue to be symbolic of the love I have and should very well have for myself, my heart, and my spirit, regardless of life’s challenges.

Take care, blessed be,

 

Aslynn S. Meyers