Purgatorial Nightmares

Every flaw on my consciousness is an inkblot on white linen. Permanent and ever-growing.

The Last Judgement, Michelangelo

I keep having nightmares, and so many of them are in malls. Though I’m not sure nightmare is the correct term—they aren’t rife with ghoulish figures or catastrophe. Not usually, at least. There was one recently where my hands were covered in blood and I couldn’t wash them off before my mom saw. I wonder what that means in dream analysis land. Surely it’s not evocative of Lady Macbeth, though the appearance of my mother is bound to mean something.

The nightmares—or bad dreams, rather—involve complex plots, mysteries. Twists and dramatic irony. Backstories I’m already well-versed in. Narratives that I’m somehow simultaneously experiencing in first person and as an avid viewer, as though it’s being broadcast on television. Perhaps it is, on some other timeline.

My nightmares have always been transcendent enough to bleed through my subconscious and convince my brain it actually happened. When I was a child, from as long as I can remember up until I was 10 or 11, I had the same recurring nightmare. Every bad dream was this dream, and the images are still imprinted in my mind.

Unlike my current dreams, this one lacked plot and characters. In its place was nebulous chaos and palpable fear. Vivid color engulfed with shadows. Being chased on the campus of my Catholic church and elementary school by an indistinguishable, monster-esque creature that didn’t tend to take form. Being set with the task of saving the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was tucked away in a glass box—motionless, clothed in blue, glowing. Knowing the figure was gaining and if it overtook me, would take Mary.

This dream speaks volumes about my morals and ideology as a child. I grew up devoutly Catholic and attending Catholic school, entrenched in monthly rosaries, sacrament classes, and the knowledge that God was always watching, ever-knowing, biding time while he awaits your final judgement.

I thought of life in pluses and minuses. Actions and thoughts that would get me closer to heaven, and ones that would push me further away. I’m not sure if they taught this explicitly, but it was certainly ingrained in my conscience. Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s were free pluses. Reconciliation and Eucharist were large batches of pluses. Fights with the siblings were minuses. Hence came this ubiquitous worry that one wrong move would send me straight to hell—a worry I cleverly disguised as perfectionism.

My parents were doing their best to raise good, Catholic children, and we tried our best to please them. My memories are just blurry enough to obscure whether these standards were externally enforced or ingrained and self-imposed. Perhaps a mixture of both. I don’t remember them denoting specific choices of ours as sins, but the right one was always emphasized, and the wrong one unspoken.

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Did I ever tell my parents about this dream? I must have, when I was younger. Did I tell them about stumbling up the familiar cobblestone ramp lined with honeysuckle? The Virgin Mary, my crushing need to save her? Would they have put it together? See it for what it was? The crippling fear being instilled in my being every Sunday and every third period when I got out my notebook labeled Religion and color-coded yellow. Could they see the fear the omnipresence ignited? The shame? Could they see it in my face? Feel it in my shaking as I crawled between them in the middle of the night?

Could they have predicted that in my twenties I’d tremor the moment I foot in a sanctuary, Catholic or not? Could they see how out of place I felt in the pews in high school, when the pulpit preached over and over against the very things I knew were etched on my self, unchangeable? I want to say they didn’t. Because if they had, why didn’t they say anything?

These are the questions I’m much too terrified to ask, yet feel a desperate pull to put out in the world to see if someone else feels the same. Why is it that a thousand strangers’ eyes on my soul feel like a consolation, while the four eyes that have seen me since my first day feel like a honing device, a flip of an alarm system, a pervasive spotlight blinding me and exposing every little thing I’ve never said? Has the omnipresence of God so seamlessly interlaced itself with the two people whose judgement I fear the most? Melded into some almighty lifeforce, fully infinite and fully human. The Trinitarian pinnacle of my eternal fate—life or damnation. But every flaw on my consciousness is an inkblot on white linen. Permanent and ever-growing. My fate is sealed.

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Logically, I know the notions of Christianity directly contradict this paranoia. Forgiveness, absolution earned by The Cross. Earned for all—including me!—if only I accept Jesus into my heart, acknowledge him as my savior, my redemption, my one true hope. But how can I possibly buy into that when the indistinguishable figure looms just around the corner, reminding me that whatever I do, whatever I try, is futile. I’m soiled beyond repair and there’s no coming back. There can’t possibly be redemption for me, not when everything I’ve ever known tells me there’s not.

There’s a particular therapy session from four years ago that I think of often. I was talking about my need to be good, rambling on about the countless standards I didn’t live up to, expectations I didn’t meet, checkboxes I had yet to check.

“I need to be good enough,” I had insisted, tears pooling on my chin. “And I’m not.”

“Helena,” he said, leaning forward and looking right at me. “Are you bad?”

Are you a bad person? he had asked. Is your soul bad? Deep down inside you, are you bad at your core?

I hadn’t known what to say. “I don’t want to be,” I protested.

I wasn’t, according to him. Of course I didn’t believe him. How could I? His wasn’t the voice that mattered, wasn’t in charge of my eternal fate. He might as well have told me the earth was flat. I knew he was wrong. I had evidence, years of incessant reinforcement. I hadn’t checked the boxes, hadn’t escaped the indistinguishable figure and saved the Virgin Mary from her confinement, therefore I wasn’t good.

But to consider this alternative method of thought is to reconsider everything I’ve ever known. The foundation on which I had been brought up would have to be wholly devastated, then rebuilt. The indistinguishable figure must be confronted and exposed for what it is, acknowledged as a a false concept. Only then could it be reevaluated and built up from dust—if, and only if, its worth could be discerned.

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There’s no neat and tidy bow to tie everything together here. No revelation, profound realization, leap of faith. No acute denial or decisive demolition. Just stillness, then shaking, in a purgatorial state of being. Extending my hands at my indie pop concerts and pretending I’m not thinking of worship. Reciting the liturgies engraved on my tongue at mass each time I return home and pretending there’s weight behind the words. Remembering, on some odd mornings when I wake from a bad dream, of the vibrant reds and oranges of the nebulous figure cloaked in shadow just around the corner. Remembering, on those odd mornings, that the dream was simply a dream. Whatever was chasing me can’t catch me. Knowing, those mornings, that I don’t fully believe that.

Where I’ve been daydreaming

• Daily: ruminating in my midday under-caffeination

• Media: Pulp and Salt Circle by Eliza McLamb yet again, my hot girl walk mix

• Books: Indelicacy by Amina Cain - immediate new favorite

Here’s hoping we sleep a dreamless sleep tonight,

Helena