the blood sucker

I had a strange dream. I had gone out to the ocean, on a remote stretch of land isolated like an island or peninsula. It was dark, as it so often is. I was alone, waiting. There was a room at a hotel with three beds in it and one was mine. The room was small and tight with doors on both sides letting in and out of other rooms, surrounded. I passed through the back door near my bed and went out into the night to walk. I don't think I had any direction, just restlessness. I didn't know what to do with myself. The place was suburban, a bit like being back in Durham court. From time to time I revisit Durham court and it is always an anxious place. I passed rows of houses, like we lived in at Durham, about four small places attached, an early predecessor of the town home, but poor in stature, with humble residents. The yards were small and sloped up sharply. As I passed on the road beside the sidewalk I just spotted a small creature in the grass slightly spasm. At a quick glance I thought it was a pet guinea pig and that it was just shy of dead. For a fraction of a second I was going to move on and forget about it, but the thought of a small suffering creature throbbed in me and I turned back and bent down to it. I found it was a runt of a bunny, frail and thin beyond any bunny I'd ever seen. My heart was moved as if I were looking at a loved child returned to me and I took the creature into my arms and drew it close to me, enveloped in my arms. I expected it would not live very long but I wanted to attempt to nurse it back to health. I brought it to my hotel room and somewhere along the way a transformation occurred. The bunny was a warm chestnut brown when I found it and became solid black and teardrop shaped, like a gorged leach. It was sucking the blood out of me greedily and no amount quenched it. I could not get away from it's mouth, and I tried vainly to restrain and contain the blood sucker. All this time I had been waiting for someone to join me, my mother. She arrived at this point, I was in the bathroom of the hotel room which was large and set lower than the rest of the space and covered in sterile white tile everywhere. It sparkled, exuded untouched, nothing but white tile. When my mom arrived I expressed my grievance and desperation to her, that I could not get away from this little black blob that sucked my blood. And I remember nothing else.

As I lay in bed last night I had a realization. And it made me want to cry, but I couldn't. It's that feeling low in your throat and high in your chest. Jeff has never once said anything to make me feel bad about myself and on reflection I've never heard him say anything bad to anyone that would make them feel bad about themselves. And the facts are that every other guy I've ever dated has, and usually often. Fuckers! What made it worse was knowing I had never done anything to these men to provoke them, never been cruel or hurtful. It puts a burning desire for retribution in me. As well as eating at me to know I put up with it, in silence. I didn't think very highly of myself. God, if I could do it over all the men that I would write out of my life! Most of them. Amazing.