Can I excise this part of my sleeping life?

I hate having dreams about Charley.

Maybe I'd feel differently if I had good dreams about Charley--sweet, warm, lovely ones…or even nonsensical but mundane ones. But no. I seem to only have bad dreams about him.

It's not a new trend. In fact, I can only remember a few dreams--one or two? maybe three?--that I've had of him over the last six years that weren't awful. Perhaps I'm simply forgetting the good ones or the mundane ones--or maybe I never woke up remembering them in the first place--but the usual bad ones stick with me way too much, are too hard to shake.

In the earlier years of widowhood, the bad dreams about Charley could easily trigger a bad grief day or several of them in a row. And even now, they can be hard to just dismiss and forget--particularly when I've had several of them within a short time.

And since I'm writing about dreams, it's probably not hard to guess that I've had them lately. I had one a few nights ago--Monday night, maybe?--and then another one this morning, plus one last week sometime. The first one last week wasn't horribly jarring--he was back, but I was mostly perplexed and hanging back, waiting to see what was going to happen, to reserve judgement on whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that he was back--and while I don't remember the specifics now of the most recent two dreams, I remember their tone: he was back, but he didn't want us back. Or definitely not me. (I don't remember how much Anna played into either dream.) In the one this morning, he wanted to instead be with a girl, Darcie, I knew from youth group in high school (someone I'm pretty sure he never even knew; don't ya just love the illogic of dreams?)…and most of the dream took place in a Fred Meyer store. So bizzare. But anyway….

One of several struggles I've had over the past few years has been my own sense of self-worth. I've heard (or maybe just read in books and from no one actually in real life) how many widows can feel insecure or have a low self-esteem in the wake of their loss, and in the earlier years of grief, I never really understood it. My own security and self-esteem weren't shattered; I was still me, still mostly the same competent, capable, independent person I used to be, grief and dead husband or no. Hurting, sad, and desperate: sure, I was definitely those things…but I never would have said I was insecure.

But then the last few years of widowhood happened. I made it past the first big hurdles of widowhood, of simply surviving those first three years and finally getting to the point where I was starting to feel better, had made it past my rock bottom…but in the ambiguity and less death-laden/more normalized mode of the last 2 1/2 years since I moved back into Milwaukie, I've floundered again more.

Stacey (a.k.a., Snickollet) once said to me during a get-together for (adult!) drinks earlier this spring that she doesn't like doing things that she's not good at--and she observed that we seemed to be quite alike in that respect. We talked about it in the context of motherhood and staying home with our children, and six or more months later, the conversation has really stuck with me.

I'm a good mom; I know that. But I don't think I've been a particularly good stay-at-home mom. I'm not good at it--or at least not the peripheral parts of the job: the cooking and cleaning, the house care, at getting myself up and dressed and out of the house, with interacting with my child. When I'm home, I'm surrounded by all the things I don't do, can't get done--the dust bunnies, the crap sitting on tables for months, the overflowing litter box, the overdue laundry…etc., etc., etc.

I suck at being a housewife.

And for better or worse, being constantly reminded of what I'm not good at probably has chipped away at my self-esteem these past few years. [Snork. I doubt there's a "probably"; "definitely" would likely be a better word choice.] My social isolation day after day doesn't help matters any, either. I fixate on stupid, irrelevant things that only make me feel worse and I can be hypercritical of myself, to a totally ridiculous extreme.

I know why I do it and where the roots of it came. And I doubt it's a coincidence that the shortcomings I fixate on are also the personality traits that I know drove Charley crazy: my messiness; my laziness, inactivity, and sloth; how slow I can be. I know I was too susceptible to the overly critical opinions of the male figures in my adolescence and early college years--including my father, and Charley at times--and unfortunately, I've become too susceptible to it again in the last two-plus years. In the same way that a person's immunity is lowered after a bout of the flu or during cancer treatments, I don't seem to have many natural defenses left this past year.

So when I have dreams of Charley, my subconscious--hell, even my conscious thoughts, a lot of the time--screams back at me that Charley wouldn't like what I've turned into, that he might not want me back now, in the way that I am. On good days and months, I know that that particular voice in my head is ridiculous and inaccurate…but it's still hard to shake those damned dreams after they happen.

I suppose my "immunity" and guard were down a bit last night when I went to bed. I started crying a bit at support group yesterday when I talked about this time of year and my birthday and how they can be hard anymore, how they remind me that it feels like my life ended many years ago, that I might never have another child. I didn't mind crying--indeed, it often helps and makes me feel a bit better, releases things I don't always know I'm holding onto--but all the same, it's hard being reminded that I'm entering into a difficult time of year. It's already almost late October…and then it's a quick, downhill slide into Thanksgiving, Christmas, our wedding anniversary, and then the dreary, depressing months of winter.

It's no fun being reminded of those things…or of hard-to-suppress insecurities in dreams. It's no fun, either, being reminded that while the years change, the same lingering grief issues can flare up all the same.

Boo.