This morning, it was one of those utterly implausible, plausible, detailed dreams. I was shot in a mass shooting - four times. My right flank, side (right in the imaginary tattoo - though I do have one on my left), shoulder, and right below my eye. As happens in dreams, I was initially terrified of death, but my dream kept going. Something about getting to my house (the one I grew up in, but now mortgagetually "mine"; that address seems to have appeared more, through the past year, hmm), getting to my mom, protecting someone else, and failing, failing, failing, failing to get ME to a hospital. At some point I was driving myself, again through the old neighborhood, not apparently to get care.
In the dream, the medical upshot of my injuries was unclear apart from bruises rising up from each bloodless bullet hole. One wound, indeed, couldn't be seen for the bruising and the tattoo. Even in the dream, I dismissed the caliber as a small one, since I could keep moving. For what seemed like hours.
The thing is, the real impact of the dream was that first moment: that fear of death. The shock.
The stunning truth of it.
I'm not special. ANY of us is subject to dying this way, in the United States. Land that I love. Sigh.
2019 has not been the worst year, for me, in recent memory. Yes, we still endure under the increasingly authoritarian and demented regime of the puppet Drumpf. Yes, there is much still to do. But even with that, much is happening, too. HR8 passed last week, and in a time of inured sensibilities, Cohen's testimony was scathing. (His redemption narrative, I could personally live without, but perhaps the benedictions he has received are not positivities best dismissed.)
And but personally, so far this calendar year is kicking 2018's ass.
The time I have taken off (quite a bit, so early in the year) has been for VACATION, not illness and death and mourning. So far.
I have spent time with far-flung friends, and family-by-adoption, people I love, and a new puppy I don't have to train. Mom's doing better, and my house has not fallen down around my ears. Yet.
Three four-day weekends in, I have celebrated a birthday, a bar mitzvah, and a long-distance visit.
2019 ... well, to quote something I said about 2009: it's been better than it had a right to be.
Breathing is good.
Now if I can just avoid being shot.
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