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In my dream, I was dead: that's how it started. There was no blinking neon sign saying I was dead, I just knew that I was. Moreover, I was in a house and I knew that the house was something akin to purgatory. It was a place where things happened and yet did not happen--an in-between type place. There were other people there, too. They were also dead.
We were all waiting—well, I say waiting but it was more active than that. We were existing there—going through the normal motions of living with a few exceptions. We didn't eat. We didn't sleep. We didn't need to do either or even miss the acts themselves. Time was passing in the way it passes in places that are and are not, which is to say things happened and filled the space of time but nothing really changed or grew or died. This was true, at least, as it pertained to things external to the people in the house. Internally, each person in the house, myself included, worked on issues that they'd carried with them from life.
In essence we were striving, internally, to deal with things we'd done and people we'd been in life. I'm not religious and I'm no proponent of guilt in particular, but I do think that people generally tend to feel the consequences of their actions--unless they're sociopaths. In this place, this house, it didn't matter who or what a person was, they felt the weight of the consequences of all their actions during life—good and bad.
It was not an uncomfortable place. It was a fairly nice house, in fact, and the environment itself was pleasant. If the people in the house felt discomfort, and some of them did, it was only due to internal strife, which, after all, was the point of the house. It was a stopping off place—a place designed specifically to be safe for people who needed to deal with whatever pains or stress or guilt they brought with them from life. Once that was achieved, the person would be ready to move on.
The thing is, everyone had to move on together. No one could go on if there was even one person who was not quite ready. Even so, there was no sense of irritation or anxiety. This was not because the people in the house had achieved some kind of Zen-like internal harmony or angelic perfection, rather it was because no one knew what they were going on to. There was no rush for the white light of heaven because there was no white light of heaven, nor was there any glowing red light of hell. There was only calm and timeless-time. Everyone in the house was content to be there—once they sorted out their internal demons.
I'm not a guilt-free person. In real life, I carry with me two great causes of guilt--my two darkest secrets that I've never told anyone (and that I never will tell anyone). I imagine these are the demons I had to wrestle with in the house. In real life, obviously, it hasn't been so easy to deal with the sins. In the dream, I was clear and free of the issues, though I didn't see the work involved in getting there. Most of the people in the house with me were also free and clear of their demons.
There were two girls, however, who were not yet purged of their personal hells. One was a small dark girl. She had dark eyes, dark hair, dark features, dark circles under her eyes, and a dark countenance. The other was Lindsay Lohan. I realize that the inclination, here, would be to laugh, but Lohan actually makes for an amazing metaphor at the core of this dream. If it hadn't been for her presence in the dream, I don't think it would have made such an impact on me in the end.
Lohan didn't have a huge presence in the house. She died and arrived at the house. People in the house greeted her the way they did everyone who came into the house, but her status as a celebrity made her react differently to it. She wasn't snotty or rude, but she threw up heavy defenses against the people in the house. If they said "hello" or asked a question, she was immediately guarded—because she'd always had to be so in life. As a celebrity, it's impossible to know who you can trust and who is only showing concern because they want something from you. This was one of her demons.
It was a hard one for her to fight, especially since, like everyone else, she was doing it essentially on her own. There was no guidance from the others because none of the others had lived her life or knew how to deal with what she was facing. So, mostly, she retired—she closeted herself away to protect herself. We didn't see much of her through most of the dream.
The small dark girl also hid away through most of the dream. She, however, hid herself away in a bathroom. She stayed, day and night, in this bathroom, hovering over a drain. She was covered in scars and cuts and these scars and cuts would open and bleed profusely—sometimes they would heal over for a moment, but it never lasted long. Over and over, her skin opened and she bled. She cried constantly, whether from pain or despair or both it was hard to tell. She was so ashamed of herself and the cuts she'd given herself [in life and afterward] that she avoided everyone in the house. She just hid in her bathroom.
One long night, I could hear this girl screaming and crying in the bathroom. Everyone could hear her but we couldn't get in to her. The next morning, she was quiet. The door to her bathroom was also, finally, unlocked. I went in to check on the dark girl. She was curled on the floor and drained completely white—as if she had no more blood inside of her. Another girl from the house came in and the two of us rushed to the girl on the floor. We sat on either side of her and lifted her into a sitting position between us. Lohan came in too, but she couldn't or wouldn't risk getting too close and, so, only stood back silently and watched and listened.
We knew that the dark girl was not in danger—she was already dead in the house, we all were. We knew that it wasn't a danger, but seeing her drained of all color was scary. She lolled between us, not quite asleep, not quite conscious. Her wounds were still open but they didn't bleed anymore; they couldn't. She began to talk in a low sad whisper, "I don't know what to do. I don't know how to make it better. I don't know how to make myself worthy to move on. I have punished myself over and over. I have bled until I can't bleed anymore and still I feel the weight and guilt of my life." She began to cry; it was pitiful and deep but also silent.
The two of us who were holding the dark girl held tighter. We said—I say 'we' because we both did say it though neither of us seemed to talk and though I'm not sure how either of us knew to say it in the first place—"Maybe what's needed isn't punishment, but forgiveness. Maybe you're not here to punish yourself for your life but to let it all go, to forgive yourself for whatever you may have done and to forgive others for what they may have done to you. Maybe you're just here to heal. We all have wounds. The only difference is that we have forgiven ourselves and those who have hurt us and we have allowed our wounds to heal." The two of us held up our hands and showed the scars we bore—scars that looked self-inflicted but may not have been, scars that were surely and completely healed.
The dark girl collapsed between us. She was still crying and it was still deep and silent, but it wasn't as pitiful. She seemed, somehow, relieved to know that she wasn't alone, that she wasn't cursed, that healing was possible, that forgiveness was possible, that it was, in fact, all inside of her. Lohan left: both the room and the house. The other girl and I held the dark girl for a while that didn't feel like a while but could have been an eternity. Eventually, the wounds on the dark girl began to knit themselves closed. We could see it—we could see every wound close. We could see her skin flush with healthy color.
The days after this were bright. Everyone in the house was at peace in most every way. The one nagging problem was that Lindsay Lohan was still gone from the house. She hadn't been seen since the bloody incident in the bathroom. We were all as worried as we could be in such a dimension. We knew she wasn't in danger, just as none of us had been in danger, but we were all worried what she might be doing to herself as she wrestled with whatever residual bonds still held her fast.
We worried but afterlife went on the best it could. The residents of the house—all but Lohan—were out in the sunshine-washed front yard one day when we heard a sound like a car. Around the curve of our idyllic street came a cornflower blue VW Bug with Lindsay Lohan at the wheel. As she drove by, we greeted her with excited waves. She only looked on guardedly and kept driving. A few minutes later, she drove by again. Again we all waved excitedly. This time she greeted us with a small smile that, nonetheless, didn't quite reach her eyes.
There was some doubt amongst the residents of the house as to what Lindsay was doing and as to whether we should keep waving like idiots when she only greeted it with suspicion. The decision we reached, however, was that whatever she was doing, she was doing because she needed to, because it was the way she saw through her path. We also decided that no matter how long it took, we were going to keep waving at and greeting her like family, like trusting, loving family. So we did, pass after pass, we waved and smiled.
Every time she drove by, she looked slightly different. It hit me, in the dream, that she was going through every life she'd led—either in reality or on camera. She was working her way through each of them, moving through the entirety of her life, working through any issues she found. This took hours or days or weeks, it was hard to tell…still she drove, we waved, and the sun shone unfalteringly. The more she passed-by and the more we waved, the bigger her responses became. Eventually, when she would drive by, she too would be smiling and waving unabashedly. Then there came a time when she didn't drive by; she stopped. She got out of the car and rushed to greet us like friends.
At that moment, in the blink of an eye, we were moved—physically. We were suddenly in another place at another time. We were in a pool. It was the most beautiful warm but not hot day and we were all splashing about in a pool and laughing and meeting other people—people who had come from afterlife houses of their own. Each of us, having dealt with the various parts and the full sum totals of our lives, had moved on—together.
We were in a place where there was no guilt or judgment or worry. There was no fear or mistrust or duplicity. It wasn't heaven or hell or anything like that—it was just simply a safe place. I knew all of this—of the safety and of the eternity of it—because of something Lindsay Lohan did.
She stood by the side of the pool. Everyone around—the people who'd been in the house with us and those who had not—yelled "Take off your top, Lindsay; show us your tits." And she did and we all applauded and cheered. And she smiled, openly and freely, and dove into the pool.
I realize that, at first glance, that scene seems silly and laughable, but what her willingness to take off her top symbolized in the dream was the freedom from fear and judgment and duplicity in that place. Only in such a situation could most public figures really and freely let loose—could any of us let loose, I suppose. I think, seeing her willingness to be herself, to be naked, true, plain Lindsay and not some character from a movie or some caricature of herself from a tabloid, was what screamed: This is it, this is the end; you're home.
At this point, I began to wake up. I was just in that place between waking and dreaming when a thought flitted through my head: Sartre was wrong, hell isn't other people; hell [and heaven] is what's inside of each of us. Then I was fully awake.
08.19.08 // 1:51 pm