When I Count, There Are Only You and I Together

Last night I dreamed of bears devouring babies, despite our best efforts. Two bears, two babies, one for one. I didn’t see it happen, per se, but I knew it did. I was in an alpine kitchen with the others and I was happy, I was feeling the breeze blow in through the double-hung door, and then the bears came. Two doors, one door. Oh, we were so happy! Then, collectively, we shouted, “No! The babies!” We scrambled to get them before the bears did. How nice it had seemed at first, to leave the babes outside on the porch in the sun while we tinkered! And then, fast as you knew it, the babes were gone. // I should say, none of the folks in that kitchen were anyone I recognize from real life, and I don’t know to whom the babies belonged. Yes, you were there sometimes, but you were not in the kitchen. And, OK, my old supervisor was there, but he also was not in the kitchen. My herpes was in the kitchen. You were very forgiving about that. // OK, listen. The bears devouring babies is not the main event here, but that is how I will present the dream to people. “What a bizarre dream about bears and babies I had last night!” No, the real issue worth exploring here is that I dreamed, for the third time this year, that I cheated on you with my old supervisor, and in this dream he gave me herpes. He never gave me herpes in any of the other dreams, or in real life. // I hate these dreams. They come up again and again and they usually coincide with waking-life self-loathing, or hallucinations of bugs on my walls, even though this is a new apartment with lots of space and natural light. The night before this dream I dreamed you were avoiding my texts because you wanted to break up. The day in between these dreams, you bought me breakfast and told me my writing felt like sermons and prayers. “It is the writing of somebody being hugged and shaking their fist at the same time.” The day before that day you sat on the floor rolling a little wooden ram on wheels back and forth across the carpet for my cat to chase and you said you were bored. “Bored of me?” I asked. “No! Just in general.” “I want to be a good hostess,” I said. // I am leaving my therapist, whom I have been seeing for two years. I told him I am leaving him because I think I would benefit from a female therapist. In reality, I am leaving him because whenever I tell him about my dreams he tries to tell me what they mean instead of letting me figure it out. I told him I dreamed of a golden dove that breathed fire and barked like a dog, and after it saw me it began stalking me. He interrupted: “Stalking…stocking?” “What?” I asked. “Like socks. Tights. Is there an association there?” “I have never,” I said, “referred to socks as stockings in my entire life.” Also, whenever I say I think I might need a female therapist, he says, “Nobody will ever understand you completely,” or “You don’t trust me. That is why you are unhappy,” or “You are trying to hurt me.” Then I ask myself, “Am I trying to hurt Timothy?” And the answer is: “Maybe!” // Next week, I will meet my new female therapist. I wonder what she will be like. // In every dream I have of being with my supervisor again, I am not dating you, or I don’t know I am dating you, until after the indiscretion has happened and I go, “My god, what have I done?” These dreams make me feel as if I could break your heart at any moment, irrevocably. And I suppose that I could. // In my last dream about being with my supervisor I was naked in his apartment making potatoes, which Timothy and I agreed was the least sexy food of all. // Of course, I never saw my supervisor’s apartment. He would never let me. For obvious reasons, in hindsight. // When I was a girl I read in the Bible that there is one sin the Lord will never forgive, and that is cursing the Holy Spirit. I’d sit in the backseat of my mother’s car at lights or in parking lots and play a game with myself: if I could not last an entire minute without blinking, I would curse the Holy Spirit and be damned. If I could not hold my breath for two minutes, I would curse the Holy Spirit and be damned. // In waking life, if I were to cheat on you, I am confident you would not forgive, nor would I want you to. // The more Timothy tells me to trust him, the less I trust him. // The thing is that in real life I never had penetrative sex with my supervisor. As if the distinction matters. But when I ended things, after Timothy had given me new self-confidence, my supervisor said, “Why are you upset? We never even had sex.” // I envision myself walking around with a little egg balanced on my head. One wrong move, and it will roll. // The more Timothy accuses me of wanting to hurt him, the more I want to hurt him. // I have never had a baby, but sometimes mothers speak or write about having terrifying visions of taking scissors to their baby’s throats, or dropping their babies down a well, and I think, “I get that, I understand.” // When I learned, months after ending things, that my supervisor wasn’t single, I yelled at him. Again, he said, “We never even had sex.” // You want to know what it was like, being involved with him? It was godawful. He had shark eyes. I was new in town, and lonely. I worked the late shift at the law firm. My roommate back then didn’t know how to take care of Marigold, her giant, anxious dog, and she would leave me to take care of Marigold, but sometimes Marigold would piss on the living room rug and sofa, and no matter how you cleaned that tiny stinking apartment, it was still tiny and stinking. I spent all my time in my bed, under the centipedes that lived in the drop ceiling. I began seeing Timothy, who said, “Bed is for two things: sex and sleeping. Don’t eat dinner in there.” But I would. And my supervisor would come over and that tiny stinking apartment would be tiny and stinking, and he would come into my tiny bedroom and lie with me and he would tell me I didn’t want to belong to anybody. // Around this time, I dreamed I stopped at a convenience store in the mountains, by the highway. The man who ran the store invited me to try his special recipe, which was human blood in plastic cups. I wanted him to like me, so I drank the blood and said, “Thank you.” Then he wet himself. // Another reason I want a new therapist is because I think Timothy doesn’t know enough. Which is fair, because he’s technically still a student. Just before our last session I dreamed I had a small daughter who, rather than say “Me too” in agreement with another person, would say “Me three.” And it was considered cute, the way babies get hooked on saying dumb things when they’re learning. My brother used to point at motorcycles and say “Mommacackle! Mommacackle!” But what was actually happening in the dream was this little girl was acknowledging the presence of a third entity. A ghost, a demon, a shadow self—I never knew. I just know the mother in the dream was a little sad. When I told Timothy about this dream in our very last session, which we both knew was the last session, he said, “Jung writes of ‘the third.’” And I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. He was always doing that, interjecting with a vague textbook statement without context. I said, “Or Jesus on the road to Emmaus.” Remote therapy afforded me the ability to pull up my bedside Eliot: “‘Who is that third who walks always beside you? / When I count, there are only you and I together / But when I look ahead up the white road / There is always another one walking beside you.’” I was being obnoxious, and maybe a little aggressive. I didn’t care. “Or Peter Pan’s shadow,” I added, “sneaking around independent of its owner.” He only said, “Increasingly, you are the mother in your dreams, and not the child.” I don’t know if that’s right, but it sounded nice. It sounded like progress.

Dev Murphy’s writing and visual art have appeared in ANMLY, Brink, Diagram, Shenandoah, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook I’m not I’m not I’m not a baby is forthcoming from Ethel later this year. She lives in Pittsburgh with her cat. Find her online at devmurphy.club.