::10:26:08::

::: On the Couch :::

I had a really scary dream. But not as scary as the sweating burned bodies of the past. This time it felt like I was sucked into a vortex of past nights crying. Like when I called that doctor woman-- she had given me her card on my day-pass away from the psych ward. "I'm having a harder time than I thought I would." She said, "I know." That was on a Saturday night. I was crouched on the floor between two sets of bunkbeds and four female roommates at the Salvation Army-- the "Salv".

But this time, I hid in a tunnel. I battled six-hundred girls. I crashed a bus. I called for Travis, in tears, but I couldn't dial his number, over and over I tried to reach the T's in my phone-book. There was evidence that I had crashed the bus. My drawings from the students on the school bus. My pillow left behind. A soggy Cheerio's box, yellow and bent, under my forearm in the rain. I was naked in a shower and a kid kept trying to buy a ticket from me, bursting into my tent, over and over like a gerbil.

I dreamed I woke up on the fancy lobby couch at work. With a vision of my boss bursting in, standing over me in a purple shirt and thick glasses, his ID badge hanging over his taught belly. Firing my ass to oblivion. To no health care. To more bad dreams and calls to Travis I could no longer afford. I was asleep on the job. He would be justified in letting me go. But he didn't understand. It was four am, I had been plucked from my bed where a man with a pale wood baseball bat staggered outside my window. Where a spider turned the same color yellow as my bedspread and crawled over my fringe. I threw it in the toilet, carrying it in my thong, and didn't wake up Nathan. Like the cockroach that had scurried over my black shoes-- the ones with the socks attached-- only moments later.

Nathan. Our legs intertwined. I didn't know him well enough to know if he had a f*cked-up foot or not. My foot kept circling his, trying to detect a defect. Or were his feet just long and flat? Or was he missing a toe? He didn't limp, I noticed when he got up to make coffee. I spat out the coffee because I coughed. But also because I wanted to seem vulnerable and cute, and his. He wiped my chin. We still haven't been together-- like that. I told him about Patrick and how I wanted to get to know him too, and he called him a douche-bag. I laughed inside.

But my dream-- I woke up wanting to call someone. Not Travis at this hour. Not dad-- last time he was scared I would go outside and battle the man with the bat. In my dream I had called my God-father by accident. That's how I knew it was a dream. I didn't have a God-parent. Except for Sidney. Or Scott. I texted Meghan, my make-shift sponsor, and waited. Thinking about her Erin story and one-thousand plastic bags. Thinking about Poppy and her incessant need to chatter. Waiting for either for a reply, or for my boss to come fire me. Or to return to the couch when an opportune moment arose, when Don the weather-guy and used car salesman wouldn't be taking his turn sleeping there. A beautiful woman was on the news next to me talking about anti-American rhetoric.

I hope someone reads this. Then I'll know I'm real. My phone is next to me. All you have to do is call. Until then I'll be unsettled, like I forgot something. I'll be here, drinking cold coffee.

Written by: ~ Gina B. Lalonde