Compassion and Daymares

I have good days and bad days. It comes and goes. Not thinking about it makes life normal and easier, yet thinking about not thinking about it is also somehow irreverent. I never want to forget what happened, because that makes light of the tragedy and the life that was wasted for no good reason. I started this blog with intentions to do something productive with my life (besides the recurrent pangs of wanting to go to grad school and volunteering on the weekends). I have many hobbies and not enough time to do all of them. Having a blog and forcing myself to post gives me an outlet, but before I can do anything creative, I must first work through my emotions. So perhaps a good way to stop running around in my head and giving myself headaches and stomachaches is to put it all on paper.

I'm not past being sad. But I've added anger to the mix. On bad days, I want the guy to get what's coming to him, and bad. On good days, I feel sorry for the poor idiot, a misled teenager. It is not our place to judge, only God can do that. And I can try to forgive and pray for his soul. I want to believe that he has some good in his being, that he has remorse for his behavior, that although he is responsible for his own actions, he is product of his environment, upbringing, and a victim of gang pressures. That he was not strong enough to fight the bad influences, nor did he have enough love and support from family and friends, which resulted in the person that he has become. This is on a good day. With compassion and peace and forgiveness. I have a healed heart on good days. On bad days, I have daymares.

I had a daymare last night before bed. For those of you who don’t know of these things, a daymare is a nightmare that occurs during the non-sleeping hours when you’re conscious. It is a wild fantasy of things all in your control, and you allow it to go as far as you want, as detailed as you want, have full imagined conversations, replays, alternate endings, etc. This can occur when sitting in traffic, having a quiet meal, reading a book, walking, in the company of others (they see your eyes glaze over), etc. Mine often make me have cold sweats, heart palpitations, anxiety, and a nasty look on my face. After a while, I realize I should stop the daymare. Especially when people ask me what's the matter and if I'm okay.

My daymare last night was about meeting Gil’s killer. I was at work, he was a student coming up to visit the Getty with friends and/or schoolmates. For whatever reason, I was introduced to him amongst the other kids, which is strange in itself because I don’t work with the public nor am I in the Education department. He introduced himself while shaking my hand. And I froze. I said, “what?” and he repeated himself. I snatched my hand back – and in Ending #1, I pounced on him and beat the crap out of him. And (of course, because it’s MY daymare) no one stopped me. I don’t know exactly how I beat him (I have no real-life experience so details in fake-reality are very vague) but I know I was pissed. I probably broke all my fingernails and didn’t even know. In Ending #2, (because I consciously know that I can’t just strangle people and not have any consequences) I watched him walk away as I stood there and wrung my hands, wrung my shirt, grabbed a nearby railing as hard as I could. I wanted to bang my head on a wall, pound it on cement blocks, rip out my eyes, cut my arms. I was so angry. SO ANGRY. And so frustrated. Additional alternate endings were similar to the second, except coworkers were concerned, people huddled around to watch me writhe on the floor and pull my hair out, but no one knew what had happened or why I was acting this way. I couldn’t speak, and I didn’t care if I looked psychotic. I was uncontrollable and my fury took over my body.

I then decided this daymare needed to be over. So I sat up in bed and cried. I felt so sick to my stomach that I wanted to eat a bottle of Tums. I sang some good, quiet songs in my head to calm myself down and lower my blood pressure, and tried to get to sleep.