Poop dreams

On the fear of opening my mouth

I had a dream that poop was coming out of my mouth.

My second poop dream in two weeks.

I was visiting somewhere and sharing a room with my mom. I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I didn’t want to wake her. I especially didn’t want her to hear me.

So I crept to the bathroom and closed the door.

And then the poop started coming out. Of my mouth.

It was sticky. There was a lot of it. I scraped at it with toilet paper, trying not to let it touch my hands.

I was afraid poop was going to come out the other end, too, so I couldn’t even get off the toilet.

A voice inside me said clean it up, get back in bed, don’t disturb anyone.

When I woke up, I thought: well, that’s not subtle.

I have decided to write a book, and I am terrified.

I’d spent the past weekend doing a deep dive into the purpose and structure of said book. A book about vulnerability. About transitions. Memoir-ish. Personal growth.

Apparently, my subconscious had some thoughts about that.

And then there was the dream about the corpses.

In this one, a war had happened. People had died. And then my family came home, and we had to live among the bodies because nobody had picked them up yet.

I could see them everywhere. I tried to close a door so the others wouldn’t notice. I thought it would upset my family, too. But they didn’t seem bothered at all. My husband, my kids — they just went about their business. Even my six-month-old nephew, sleeping in a room with the corpses, was fine.

I was the only one who noticed.

I kept trying not to make a big deal about it. But I couldn’t stop seeing them. And eventually I had to ask myself: is it okay for me to notice? Is it okay to be upset by this? Or should I learn to ignore it, too?

I think these dreams are two sides of the same coin.

I am afraid of what might come out of me. That if I open my mouth, something messy and uncontrollable will emerge. Something I can’t clean up. Something my mother will hear.

Because I see things that others don’t — invisible things, difficult truths, stuff other people seem to walk past without flinching.

Together, they describe the exact tension of my work.

I am a person who notices things.

I want to keep my poop in the bathroom.

But the poop is the message.

Every time I write one of these posts, I am choosing to open my mouth. A small voice asks, Is this too much? Am I oversharing? Does anyone really care?

And every time, I share anyway.

Because I know some of you are living among corpses, too.

I don’t know yet if I’m ready for this whole book idea.

But I’m ready to stop scraping shit off the roof of my mouth in private.

🕊️

SAM

sweet dreams