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I've written here about how since July I've taken Prazosin for PTSD nightmares. It's been wonderful with the PTSD nightmares, but it's done something more that Seroquel never did: it has done the opposite and it has made good dreams possible for me for the first time in years.
I had a super healing dream last night. I think I told people here that I had my tire slashed the week of the presidential election here. I live in a very poor town and I teach Spanish along with death and dying classes at the community college here. Besides teaching Spanish, I'm known as the USA born guy who translates between English & Spanish at the prison and the churches in town. So some poor soul among my townspeople celebrated the presidential election by punishing Mexican "illegals" in my name. It cost me a whole new tire that weekend.
However, my dream last night flipped the script beautifully with blessed reconciliation between English and Spanish speakers. In my dream I was in line in a cafeteria style restaurant with an English-only coworker friend. He happened to be reading an English version of the ending of the Latin American Nobel Prize-winning classic novel by Gabriel "Gabo" Garcia Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude. When he finished it in the cafeteria line, he turned to me and there were tears in his eyes, he was so moved. It's got an ending like that, like the one at the end of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, if you know what I mean. Awesome.
The cafeteria workers who were serving us on the line were all Latinos, as is often the case where I live. So as my reader coworker spoke to me about being so moved by the book's ending, I turned to them. I said to them in Spanish, "Look how he has tears in his eyes. He just finished Gabo's book 100 Years of Solitude." And they all nodded in admiration, smiled sympathetically, ooed and ahhhed, and then burst into spontaneous applause for him.
Then down the cafeteria line each one of the Latino restaurant workers shook my English-only reader coworker's hand one by one to congratulate him for reading our Latino classic of literature and for getting it so well that it moved him to tears.
The cafeteria line became something like a graduation line, a congratulatory line of thanks for his having been willing to complete a cultural rite of passage to reach out to embrace the Latino experience. The reason they cared so much is that the last line of 100 Years of Solitude says: "because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth."
We must all cherish this life while we have it. I woke up cherishing life again, and I was smiling. At the very least, from my downturn in nightmares and my uptick in healing dreams, I recommend Prazosin to you. And 100 Years of Solitude isn't a bad book, either.
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I haven't written in my diary on my computer since May because I thought that my computer was dying. I got away from writing but my computer is hanging in there. I think that I will start writing in it again. It's so therapeutic.
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Years ago, I won a mirrored armoire from my job. It's in my bedroom but I rarely stand in front of it. Yesterday, I had to have a dexascan done so I had to change into a gown. There was a full length mirror in the changing room. I'm aware that I gained 5 to 7 pounds over the last year from cheating on Keto but I didn't know what it looked like. It was a reality check.
Down here in Texas, Mexicans (not Latinos or Hispanics) are the demographic majority and Spanish is fanatically color/dialect coded. Morenos in Mexican dialect only. Morenos will tell racially mixed cousins they are the wrong color to understand, much less speak Spanish. When I attend a Spanish Speaking Mass at church, people will change to English to greet me. The joy of having an entire room fall silent and change languages when I enter is an experience I have yet to find words for. Children seem to notice it more than their parents. I often wonder how they interpret the lesson. It is almost as profound as the experience of being verbally attacked for the crime of understanding what was said in a public conversation.
But. . . I, too, see signs of healing in that highly volatile arena. Healing hopes for all, no exceptions.
Still think "100 Years of Solitude" is too esoteric for my taste. The original Spanish version was easier to follow, but not by allot. I wasn't able to finish either version. Mario Vargas Llosa is my favorite South American (Peruvian) author to date.
Life. Let us enjoy it:-) So glad for you that the good dreams have returned!
Nerdy story about that: when I had my doctoral exams Garcia Marquez had won his Nobel but Vargas Llosa hadn't. After my written exams I was allowed to pick my own author for my PhD orals, and I was kind of a rebel in choosing Peru's Vargas Llosa over Colombia's Garcia Marquez. But then Vargas Llosa went on to win the Nobel, too, and I was more than vindicated! Mexico's Octavio Paz had won his Nobel already, Chile's Neruda and Mistral, too, and Guatemala's Asturias had won one. It was awesome. Backward Latin American got certified as smart.
Along those lines, even a Vargas Llosa fan such as me, though, had to admit that Gabo's Nobel for 100 Years of Solitude had an impact on the average Joe in Latin America never seen for a Nobel prize ever anywhere in the world. Latinos wrote folk songs about Gabo and about the characters from 100 Years of Solitude and sang them in the streets, something never done for a Nobel winner. It was as if Gabo's Nobel belonged to everyone. Kind of like its ending.
Interesting as it all has been, nonetheless,I never thought all of this highfalutin literary study of mine would have much to do with my PTSD recovery. In fact, in the middle of my doctoral studies I had a PTSD breakdown. I collapsed in my home and just went into constant flashback mode. Try as I might I just couldn't get it back together that semester, so I lost a big scholarship I had won.
I had to sit out a semester, then had to literally pick myself up off the floor to make a comeback to get my doctorate done. It was incredibly embarrassing to go through a PTSD crisis in front of the whole university department, in front of all my professors and my fellow classmates.
And yet here now Latino literature has become part of my PTSD healing. I'm excited to go to sleep tonight more than usual, just to see what dreams may come. :-)