Concerning Baldness...and Inside-Out Nightmares

So, I had my head-shaving party on Friday, and now Aaron and I are both bald as eggs.  The reports are in for June, and I will be donating just over $100 to the UICC.  Not so great as I hoped, but not terrible either.

Again, what surprises me, though it probably shouldn't any more, is how wonderful I feel without hair.  Judging from the various facial expressions of those around me, I'm not the only one surprised by this fact.  Some pretend not to notice anything different; some openly stare; some shake their heads; some suddenly appear intensely interested in something else...but my favorites are the ones who break into irrepressible grins.  It seems to me that somehow they understand.  I feel at my best this way...my strongest.  I feel thoroughly myself.


I believe it was Emerson who said: "We acquire the strength we have overcome."  He couldn't have said it better.  Really, in that way, the closer something comes to killing you, the more you have to thank it for.  But only if you can drum up the courage to turn the nightmare inside out.  Perhaps that's a barbarous way to think of it, but it's how I see it.  The more we wallow in our own pain, or relax in our own pleasure, the weaker we become, but if we can turn our tragedies into triumphs and come out laughing, we become the best, strongest, and most honest versions of ourselves.  Maybe that's why I feel at my best this way. It's my inside-out nightmare.


In any case, it feels kind of awesome, especially considering the hot weather we've had recently.  And you don't have to worry about doing your hair in the morning, or using too much shampoo, or getting tangled when you drive with the window down.

Dreams

Had a perfectly horrid dream last night.  It's already beginning to fade, so I'm grateful for that, but I remember running away, running in fear from someone I had liked and trusted.


I don't have frightening dreams very often.  As a child, I did sometimes dream that my blankets had turned into snakes, and that was terrifying, but generally my dreams were just amusing and adventurous, or strange, like the recurring dream I had for years that I was falling from the top of our bunk bed.  I never fell more than halfway down, and then I would suddenly bounce back to the top and fall again, like a yo-yo.  It would go on like that for what seemed like hours, and was always kind of fun and soothing.  I also had dreams fairly regularly that involved being lost in a large old house, or sometimes a castle, with a group of friends.  We were generally on a quest of some kind, and sometimes followed, but it always felt more exciting and adventurous than scary.


I will go for months at a time without remembering any of my dreams, and then I will have a string of them all at once, very vivid and strange.  For the last week or so it's been the latter.  I don't really go in for dream analysis.  I don't spend considerable time wondering what it means when I dream that a friend was sent a pink cupcake for mother's day, or a king died and left his daughters scrunchies which they were commanded to wear every day for the rest of their lives.  There are times when I wonder a little... like when I had recurring cancer dreams the year before I was diagnosed.  Then I dream about sledding to work and stopping to order Dutch Babies (the breakfast food, not infants from Holland) on the way at a phone hanging from a tree, and once again I discount meaning entirely.