THAT DAY

My sister Miriel visits. We work out arrangements for some of her songs. Can't work too long; she's exhausted and noise-sensitive; on the edge of a migraine--again. She gets a lot now. No wonder: her housemates disrupt her special diet (they "share" her food & don't replace it), just as her musician friends keep her up late and sleep-short. She sees the resulting exhaustion and chronic illness as her fragility. I don't. I see it as abuse. And the victim excuses them with "they don't mean it".

Who cares? They still do it.

THAT NIGHT...

I'm squeezed onto the foot of a bed--in my parents' old home. Crowding me off the bed are some actors from Prometheus Center, a psychodrama theater I was involved in forty years ago. Some have died since then, but here they are alive again, like Beryl over there, confessing "I was kind of a tag-along stalker."

They tell ever-earlier tales, before they did psychodrama, before I knew them. They were all New York activists who worked on a radical magazine. They printed it cheaply by finding a small-town press with low costs.

The only person I don't know is an interviewer prompting their tales--a civil servant or social worker. But don't they ever stop? It's like 3 AM. The actors drone on and on, half-awake. Oral history of the Vietnam era... told by zombies.

Why won't they let me sleep?

At last I get up, groggy and resentful, and seek another bed. But gear and muttering, snoring people fill the house--beds, sofas, armchairs, rugs. No room for me.

Sleepless and hungry, I hunt through their cupboards and fridge. Nothing I can eat, either.

But I find a note. My parents set me up! Why'd they scheme to trap me here without food, meds or sleep? To teach me a lesson. I'm spoiled, insist on nonsense I don't really need. They'll prove to me I can survive without it. By stealing it.

Why go to the trouble? Well, I'm so spoiled, I committed a crime. Or so they've decided! I don't get a trial, of course. That's just more of my nonsense. They know I'm guilty, so that's that. Tough love. Deprogramming. Conversion therapy.

Fury boils up. But they're not even here to tear into! Just arranged my betrayal and left. Even when I wake, the rage lingers.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• 1980, NYC leftists: today our band's drummer mentioned John Lennon's death. I thought back; when John was killed, Prometheus Theater was my circle. I was slow to leave, though the core actors & director disrespected me much as Miriel's circle disrespects her now.
• Sleep deprivation, no space for me, wrong food: Miriel's daily life! The dream's warning she learned her resigned stoicism from parental neglect. Me too; I'm still slow to do what I must to stay healthy. But I wrestle with it--as here.
• Set it up and left: Our parents taught us "never inconvenience others, no matter what" then died--leaving us poor, sick, and convinced we don't deserve what we need to heal. That would be selfish!
• ACTION: tell Miriel the dream. I think she doubts diet, supplements and extra sleep could change her life. I know they can--they changed mine. But to get them, I had to unlearn my parents' denial I had special needs. And that chummy well-meaning idealists full of drama and charm who deny my needs are not friends.

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