Sunday, June 20, 2010

Leggy dreams

I was going to do this whole countdown to turning 40 by doing a blog a day for the 40 days before my birthday. Since I turn 40 in just over a month, that idea just didn't pan out since my schedule hasn't allowed it, and to be honest, I'd probably run out of good ideas to write about less than halfway there.

In the meantime, though, I do hope to get in a few more entries since we're on the verge of San Francisco Pride and I have a few interesting things to write about...including a weird dream I had last night.

Sometime over the past year, I caught a Jerry Springer clip about a transwoman named Sandra with Body Integrity Identity Disorder. While this subject matter has appeared on Nip/Tuck in the past and some researchers have debated if GID is somehow related to BIID, I hope that people see that while the two may have very distant similarities, both are theorized to have different causes. BIID is thought to originate from a body mapping disfunction while GID is thought to be a gender development issue of the brain based on exposures to different hormones. So, that being said, let me also preface this next paragraph by stating that I have absolutely NO desire to cut off my own arms or legs.

Anyway, in my dream last night, I was missing my left leg below the knee. I have no idea how I lost it, but at one point I was in the hospital...then going through rehab...then I had on a prosthetic leg. What I found interesting was that I didn't seem phased by the situation either due to realizing it was a dream or that I realized it was more important to be alive than worry about missing part of my leg. I love my legs...and my feet, and everything included with them...even my ugly unpainted toenails. I love being able to walk and run everywhere. In the past, people often asked me why I ran...and I told them 'because I could'. I just found it kinda weird that I wasn't freaked out because, if that really happened, I'd probably be an incredible wreck.

I think I realized I was dreaming, though, as I had woken up shortly before the dream, but had gone back to sleep. As the sun starts to creep into my bedroom around 6am, I typically wake up, groan, and then go back to sleep, sorta entering a little twilight sleep period. Also, one of my teammates recently suffered a season-ending...and possibly a sport-ending...injury to her knee, so I'm not sure if this was a little bit of survivor guilt manifesting in a dream or not. I had offered to taxi her around this weekend since she's unable to drive in her current situation, but she never called.

OK, it's late...off to bed...hopefully without any amputee dreams.