La Belette Rouge

I was on the outside of my house. I was standing on the side of it. It was on an incline and I was looking up at it. It was a beautiful house( not my house, we didn’t live in Lake Forest and we didn’t live in a house as grand as the one I lived in). I was there looking at it. I was narrating. I was saying, “I wish I had known those last four weeks we were there that we were leaving. I wish I had spent more time in the city and in Libertyville Park.” I looked longingly at the house. The more I talked about it the more distant it felt.

The good news is that I didn’t wake crying. And even better that I didn’t dream about any babies. I hate baby dreams the most.

You know, it was dreaming of Lake Bluff that was the final straw that got me into therapy with Igor. When we first moved back to L.A. I used to dream of Lake Bluff. In those dreams there was no content. There were just images of the streets in Lake Bluff. I would float, like a disembodied ghost, through the streets of Lake Bluff. I would see all the houses on Scranton Ave. There on the right is that red house that I loved. There on the left is the house that my friend’s daughter used to run to the front door as she thought it was her house. And there, ahead of us, is the beach. Two years ago when I had these dreams I would wake up in a panic and completely overtaken by grief. I would wake to realize that I am in Valencia, that we really were back in L.A. and that is when the sobbing would begin. It was one of those Lake Bluff aerial dreams that led to a four hour crying jag( I think my personal record) happened and I was afraid that I would never stop crying and that I would need emergency IV fluids and that I would never stop dreaming this dream that felt like a torment and, worst of all, that I would never get out of L.A. During this time every time I would get on the freeway and see parts of L.A. that were loaded with memory I would sob uncontrollably, it was a real problem and one that required therapy —or a moving van.

I have been thinking lately of all the changes I have made since being in analysis with Igor, one of the big ones is that I rarely dream of Lake Bluff( in my sleep) and I never cry when out in L.A. I still don’t like it here. This place will NEVER be my home, no matter how long we live here. But I am not in active greif about being here like I was two years ago. Over time I have found things to like about being here and lately I have even had fantasies of buying a condo here(which is proof that therapy works). The fantasy goes like this : We could buy a condo. We don’t have to be here forever. If we bought a condo we could still move. We could rent it out. Buying a condo would not trap us here. And it would be nice to be putting our housing dollars into equity and not throwing it away on rent. There are property management firms who could handle the renting and maintenance for us. It is just real estate and not the mafia, we could get out of it. If you have been reading this blog for long you know what a big deal that kind of thinking is. It is a HUGE shift.  However, I will admit that it is one thing to think these things and another to get out there with a realtor and start shopping for a place. Yet, the shift is unmistakable and undeniable whether or not we every buy real estate in sunny Southern California.

Last week ( a very rough week indeed: He-weasel was very sick, Lily was too and I had the Psychoanalytic Institute shenanigans to deal with) He-weasel and I were in a part of L.A. that many people love. It is a part of L.A. that is in many movies and where many celebrity sightings occur and it is a part of L.A. that I hate. We were there to see He-weasel’s doctor and driving to and from through this overly expensive yet not very beautiful part of town put me into the “I cant believe we live in L.A.; this is all a bad dream feeling.” In an attempt to calm this part of myself I Googled to check He-weasel’s employer website to see if they had any openings in Illinois and to my shock and unexpected anxiety I discovered that they did. There was an opening south of Chicago, far south. So far south that all the town names are as foregn as obscure villages that I read about in National Geographic.This job was an hour an a half commute away from Forest and Bluff, far too far to commute. I went to Realtor.com and I tried, as I sat in the waiting room waiting for He-weasel, to build an imaginary life in a part of Chicago that I have never been to. The more I tried the worse I felt. I felt so bad that I thought maybe I should go in and see the doctor and see what she had in her bag of tricks for ennui and despair.

Thursday when I told Igor about the job south of my dreams he said what I knew to be true, “It could make you feel even worse to be so close and yet so far.”  I KNEW he was right. Hinsdale is nice, but it isn’t Forest and Bluff. I don’t know anyone there and when I think about making the move there I feel like I have swallowed a big bag of sad. It is close but no cigar—-it is more ashes and stinky butts.

So I think that all of this is likely why Home is up for me in my unconscious. Also, I spent the day with a girlfriend on Saturday. Something about her makes me feel at home( she is also from the North Shore of Chicago and she completely gets my antipathy for L.A.). Just seeing her and her North Shore style and sensibilities makes me feel both at home and homesick( it is a lovely feeling that this friend gives to me, thank you enc).

The strangest thing about the dream, from my perspective, is how I said I would have liked to have spent more time in Libertyville Park. I have never been to Libertyville Park and I have never had any desire to go there. But, to be in a space that feels large, open, free and liberated—that is a space I would have liked to spend more time in.