I had a nightmare last night.
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In my dream, I had been a political prisoner. I don’t think that I dreamed the imprisonment itself, or if I did, I don’t remember it. Thank the Divine. The part of the dream I do remember is my attempt to adjust back to freedom. Or, rather, the attempt by my friends and family to help me adjust. I had clearly been abused while in prison, and had somehow betrayed other people by giving information. In reality, of course, I have no information that would have interested my captors, but then, that presumably would have only made things worse.
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Physically, I was very weak. I walked slowly, and leaned on support when it was available. My appetite was bad enough to be a source of concern for my family, and in fact a source of conflict, as I stubbornly refused to eat. I was also emotionally weak, for want of a better description. I wept frequently, and silently. I cowered at loud noises. I spoke very quietly; clearly I had been conditioned not to raise my voice.
\n
In the dream, I was at a gathering, perhaps a college reunion, because a lot of my old college were there, along with (as happens in dreams) people I knew from other parts of my life. It was in a sort of resort camp in a wooded, hilly area, with a stream and a waterfall, and trails though tall trees. I remember being overwhelmed by the beauty of the area, weeping at it, and being unable to stop weeping. I also remember seeing, at a distance, other people surrounded by their friends and family, and knowing that they, too, were released prisoners, and wondering if I had been responsible for their imprisonment.
\n
Mostly, I remember the terrible feeling of shame, combined with (or perhaps caused by) my terrible weakness. My family and friends clearly sympathized; nobody blamed me, or (as far as I remember, now that I’m awake) talked about the years in prison at all. There was, I think, a conversation about the political change that had led to freeing the political prisoners, but I don’t remember any details.
\n
Anyway, it was just a dream.
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Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Which Your Humble Blogger takes some diphenhydramine at bedtime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18379,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11191\/revisions\/18379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}