Be Brave Project: Day 17. Dreams and Schemes and Flying Machines

Just woke up from a dream I repeatedly have. . . I am flying home from Europe, and the plane makes a series of straining, popping noises as it takes off. Passengers and the flight attendant make jokes about it the danger, but I am terrified. Next to me is an American businessman who doesn't like Europe and wants to go home. Behind me is an old female friend.

As the flight continues the plane doesn't rise above the old city--it flies low and weightily over narrow streets and between buildings, with wings tilting to avoid tearing off against their facades, then suddenly the plane's nose turns up and we head straight straight straight towards the sky at a dizzying speed, and I'm pressed back in my seat by the force--then, as the plane seems to level off and begin to fly normally thousands of feet above the ground, there is a sudden tumble and rush as it plummets, as the views from the window are smeared blurs, possibly our final view. As the plane falls toward the narrow city streets, the pilot (who is a woman) attempts a landing--but the wheels don't come out. We're moving faster and faster, the plane is level but heading for the ground, the city road beneath us. . .enormous sparks fly up when the undercarriage scrapes the ground. . .we bounce. . .

And the dream ends.

Forgot to mention that for some reason, lately, Carson Kressley of the cancelled show Queer Eye is the flight attendant. This dream is obviously a control dream, a wanting to escape fantasy of fear. . .and I think that the woman who pilots the plane is actually me. (It must be admitted that there have been versions of the dream in which I am outside of the airplane, straddling the cockpit--Dream interpreters need not apply.)

I think the dream was, this time, a response to my having qualified for the first time at my Home group AA meeting. It's a fairly unnerving and exposing thing to do--I don't really want people to know my boring-ass story. Unlike many women in the rooms, I wasn't raped. I wasn't sexually abused. I didn't try to commit suicide or cut myself, though I did think about the latter. I just. . .drank. And learned how to drink some more. And, like some George once sang-- (Foreman or Thorogood or Bush, or for all I know, all three Georges)--I drank alone.

So that was my brave act for the day. Telling my story and then sitting with the feelings and regrets that brought up. "We learn not to regret the past", they keep telling me.

I think that the Be Brave Project might help me get there, but right now I'm feeling impatient and underslept. So if someone gives me that line about learning not to regret the past, my answer right now would be: "Oh Yes? When?"