The Ordinary Woman, or Breaking Free of the Powers That Keep Us Silent

Last night I dreamed that a man entered our bedroom.  My husband was beside me in reality but in the dream he was not present. The man, so ordinary looking, I thought he must be someone I know, a white man in regular clothes, 30ish maybe and as he came to my side of the bed and smiled, it became clear he was about to put me to sleep, permanently.  I would feel nothing ever again.  I feel anxious just writing this and then I tried to wake up to save myself from the dream man and I began to cry out to my husband but I could only moan softly but I knew that if Dan woke me up the dream man could not kill me, could not snuff my life out, and I moaned through my shut jaw and louder and finally I woke myself up and I said “damn” or “damn it!” and Dan heard me say this. He had heard me moaning and I said, “next time, please wake me up.”  It was sleep paralysis, the space between waking and dreaming - in the dream the ordinary man slipped into the room to kill me and my conscious self at the same time made moaning sounds to wake me from the dream.

What ordinary man is trying to kill me?  What ordinary politician?  What ordinary person is ignoring what is happening? Or is it the male version of my own ordinary self that wants to, smiling, put me to sleep, forever, silence my voice, keep me frozen in time, immoveable, such that I can no longer speak or write.  Wake me up, Dan, wake me up, my husband, wake me up, my friends and my new friends.  Please don’t let the ordinary man, the ordinary person inside me, keep me frozen, unconscious, unconscionable.

Wake up, my own ordinary self!  These are extraordinary times and I am to do extraordinary things.

And, I sigh. 

My will, my consciousness, my agency, my voice, my ability to act, to rage, and to do, is in conflict with my urge, my temptation, to let my ordinary self go to sleep. Forever.