Bang a Nail in the Wall, Hang it Up and Move On

Last night, I dreamed about cancer.

Chris and I were very distant with each other. We both had cancer and I was trying to connect with him in some way. I came across his Woody Woodpecker pajamas (In life, he had Underdog pajamas.) and I wanted to give them to him, but couldn’t figure out if doing so would trigger anger and fear in him or bring him comfort.

As is usually the case in my dreams, he was mad at me.

As my morning progressed, I must have suppressed whatever emotions would have surfaced as a result of my cinematic slumber, so when I was hanging pictures up and came across our wedding picture, I completely fell apart.

I was married, once, to a man with whom I fit completely and wholly. I don’t get to be with him anymore.

I retreated to my bedroom, hammer still in hand, and dropped onto my bed, embracing the picture and crying.

As I lay there sobbing, I had a poetic (albeit macabre) vision as though from above my own body, of me lying on the bed with my arm around the picture, bleeding from my head of a self-induced beating with the hammer.

There’s so much rage buried within my psyche.

Sometimes I just want to go to sleep and find him, and never come back.

I don’t know where to hang our wedding picture. Somehow I feel as though it shouldn’t be the first thing I see every time I come home. I feel like it shouldn’t be in my bedroom. I also feel like it doesn’t belong in the bathroom or the office or the kitchen, or the hallway.

I’m stuck. At the moment, it’s on my lap getting rained on by my tears. But I can’t sit here forever, so I have to bang a nail in the wall, hang it up and move on.