Last Night’s Dreams Have Stayed with Me…

I had a series of upsetting dreams last night … followed by a wonderful one.

 

In the upsetting dreams, I was failing mightily as a “designated protector”.

 

In the first upsetting dream, I was taking care of three large dogs that kept getting away from me in a heavily-traveled area. I was afraid one or more of them would be hit by a passing vehicle unless I contained them quickly, but the methods of recapture continued to fail and they kept dodging cars.  None of the dogs were killed before the dream ended, but I was feeling mighty responsible for their perilous predicaments.

 

In the second upsetting dream, I was in charge of a girl of about six or seven years old, a little rascal who would not be contained.  At one point, she scampered up a ladder that led to the top of a tall, multi-story building. I followed her as fast as I could in an attempt to apprehend her and make sure she stayed safe, but at a slower pace because she was like a squirrel and I was a mere adult human, no Wonder Woman.

 

When I got to the roof, my escapee was already almost completely across it, at the farthest end of the structure. I watched in horror as she scaled a perimeter containing fence, lost her footing, and plummeted more than a hundred feet to the concrete below. As she fell, I kept thinking, “Oh, my God! There is no way she can survive that fall!”

 

She hit the ground, got to her feet and started to hobble off.

 

I quickly reversed my steps and came down the ladder. During my descent, a  passerby had caught the injured girl. He delivered her to me. She was still alive but I could tell by the way she was breathing that she had severe internal injuries. I knew she could not possibly survive, but I tried to keep her calm as I headed for an emergency room.

 

The dream either ended there or I segued to another one in which I was with Oprah Winfrey and she had to pee in the worst possible way but there were no facilities available, so I said, “Just squat and go. There’s nobody around. No paparazzi.”  She looked at me as if gauging whether I was going to whip out a camera and take a picture as she squatted, so I turned around and headed in the opposite direction so she would realize I had zero intention of gawking or taking her photo.

 

And then came the dream that has lingered with me longest. I was in the office of my Warner Bros. boss, Dan Kronstadt. He was on the phone with Human Resources (or some other entity) referring to me as “he,” “him” and “his” and obviously getting some push back from the other end. He very calmly explained to the listener that although my official records and attire indicated my gender as female, I was in fact a male.

 

In this dream, Dan was totally honoring my truth. I found myself marveling at how easily and respectfully he was able to do this, even within earshot of me. He was very calm, even-handed, and matter-of-fact.  I thought, “Jesus, this is wonderful!” It was like it was no effort at all for him to honor who I really am.

 

And in the dream, I thought, “But good Lord, if he ever introduced me in person to others who consider me a ‘she’ as a ‘he’, I know it would make me very uncomfortable, because  almost everybody within earshot would squirm.”

 

The truth is, I hate it when people are uncomfortable; I’d rather be misinterpreted as female than to make someone else less comfortable than they can be around me.

 

But I do have to say that for the few brief moments when Dan was casually, calmly explaining me, I felt amazed, thankful and very grateful that he “had my back.”

 

I’m sure this dream happened because Lisa is putting the final touches on the cover of my next book Womb Man (a very short, but very timely and important book to a lot of people struggling with gender identity issues),  and because I recently watched the first three seasons of Transparent and am presently watching GLEE, a TV series in which high school student Kurt Hummel–endearingly played by actor Chris Colfer–comes out to a few of his classmates and to his single parent dad as gay…although I suspect that if the series were produced today (GLEE was in production between 2009 and 2015) Kurt might have been written as a candidate to become surgically transgender later on because, at one point, he unselfconsciously joins the “girls” side of the room until he’s told he must return to the boys’ side. But in the existing GLEE, he’s in love with a definitely-not-interested straight guy, so maybe the series was written before transgender and/or bisexuality were acceptable topics on cable TV.

 

I love ‘Kurt’.  The rest of the cast is terrific, too, but Kurt owns my heart, probably because he is my polar opposite. (I perceive him as a transgender individual–a woman in a man’s body–not as a gay individual.)   His angst and issues resonate with me; as he navigates his truth, his pain often brings me to tears. The scenes between Kurt and his dad tear me apart emotionally because Kurt’s dad is the kind of parent all conflicted children should have, and too few do…

 

Jane Lynch is the perfect villain. It’s no wonder she has won so many acting awards for her role as Sue Sylvester: I think I’d be tempted to hit her if I ever met her! I’m sure she’s actually very nice in real life. (Good people love portraying scoundrels. De sure did.)

 

But I’m getting off-topic, in a totally-understandable, roundabout way. This blog started out with last night’s dreams, segued to why I probably had them, and finished with the shows and upcoming book that probably triggered them. So it all makes sense, in that sense.

 

In Other News…

 

Also this month, I plan to debut KrisandKritters.com.  I’ve already sneak-previewed the type of posts you’ll find there right here in earlier posts. I will continue to do so every Friday or Saturday until the blog goes live in the next few weeks.

 

If you love animals, KrisandKritters.com is where we’ll be spending a lot of time together in 2017.

 

So stay tuned!