They Will Keep On Speaking Her Name, Volume 11 - Dreaming
Side A: These Dreams // Side B: Angel Dream (No. 2) / Bonus Track: Paradigm
Miranda’s Mixtape Memoir - They Will Keep on Speaking Her Name
This post is Volume 11 in my memoir project They Will Keep on Speaking Her Name. Basically, I’m using my transition mixtape as a framework to write memoir pieces about my life as a trans woman. If you’d like to know more, thumb through the Liner Notes here:
In addition to memoir, I write original poetry, which you can find here:
And I select poems from the public domain to share with my readers. You can find my previous selections here:
Side A: These Dreams
These dreams go on when I close my eyes / Every second of the night I live another life / These dreams that sleep when it's cold outside / Every moment I'm awake the further I'm away - from “These Dreams” by Heart
For as long as I can remember, I’ve endured dreams.
Vivid dreams. Unsettling dreams. Recurring dreams. Lucid dreams. Nightmares. Mystic visions. Sleep paralysis. Terror. And hope?
There are multiple songs on my transition mixtape that talk about dreams, so this single won’t be the only time I talk about dreams. In the first draft of this piece, I wrote about one of my recurring nightmares, but I wasn’t ready to publish that. I’ve had many nights in which I was afraid to go to sleep—when I say afraid, I mean it—because what my dreams sometimes hold.
Today, I want to focus on telling you about two dreams. The first is a neutral dream; the second one (on Side B) is positive, but my reaction to it wasn’t always.
When I say this recurring dream is neutral, I don’t mean that it lands in the middle emotionally or that it’s in any way psychologically safe. It’s wrecked my psyche with every emotion over the years.
Around age 4, I started having a dream in which I would live an entire lifetime. I would start the dream by choosing (I guess there’s a lucid element to that) one factor of my life, and I would then “experience” the remainder of that lifetime in flashes, with zoom-ins on some particular “memories” of that life.
This was years before the movie Butterfly Effect came out, but my dream shares some similarities to how that movie depicted the protagonist changing one thing and then experiencing the cascade of his choices. Over and over. Ad nauseam.
Usually the choice I could make in my dreams started at my current point in life (I continued having this dream periodically into adulthood), but it was rarely a choice I felt empowered to make in my life, so this wasn’t just my mind trying to figure out actual choices. Starting from my current point in time always led to unsatisfying, sometimes tragic even, outcomes. I imagined future lives of sadness, pain, heartache, despair.
When I said this was a neutral recurring dream that could take me in any emotional direction, maybe I was being too rosy. More often than not, I dreaded every vision of my possible life. Sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night terrified, feeling hopeless that any choice I made would give me a happy, fulfilled life.
The only thing that broke through the awful recurrences of this dream were the rare times I could choose a complete do-over—times when I could dream that I was born a girl. Being her had the potential, at least, for me to live a satisfying life.
Side B: Angel Dream (No. 2)
I dreamed you / I saw your face / Cut my lifeline when drifting through space / I saw an angel / I saw my fate / I can only thank God it was not too late // Over mountains / I floated away / Across an ocean / I dreamed her name / I followed an angel down through the gates / I can only thank God it was not too late - from “Angel Dream (No. 2)” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
A few months ago, I wrote about how I spent most of my life believing in Hell for me—for my original sin of being a transgender person—but not for other people. That post is here (I talk about Hell on Side B: My Own Prison):
Though I spent way too many years believing that I was unworthy of Heaven, that my “sin” was unforgivable, I did have a concept of Heaven. I started dreaming about it when I was four or five. I guess it sort of riffed off the dream I described above.
Growing up in a Southern Baptist Church meant hearing about original sin early. It meant being made to feel like my personhood was despicable. So I lived in my scared closet and prayed and prayed and prayed that G-d would forgive me.
But I tried to dream about the Heaven the preachers described, one where each person would be resurrected into a perfect likeness of themself. In the Heaven of my dreams, I who had endured mortal life as a man was rewarded with my perfect feminine existence.
Each day, I attempted to play my part as a boy (and later, a man) while each night I asked G-d to forgive me and hoped that I would have that comforting dream where I could be her.
This song reconnects me with that dream, a dream in which I have always seen her face. Now I see her face in the mirror. I thank G-d
Bonus Track: Paradigm
Oh, I give my life to you so I can gain it back again (back again) / Oh, I stand solid while the paradigm is shifting // Humanity sees truth through a shattered window pane / That blocks the view, and plants the seed / So we draw the curtains to close but I say / That the sun can still shine behind a closed mind / And sticks and stones do hurt / When tossed from the tongue of mankind // Oh, I give my life to you so I can gain it back again / Oh, I stand solid while the paradigm keeps shifting - from “Paradigm” by All Together Separate
Becoming myself in my 40s is like time travel.
Tonight I was talking to my friend Eme (Go read her poetry! Here.). At one point, she responded to something I said by encouraging me to spend time with little Miranda. That’s what I’ve been trying to do in my writing, in this memoir project specifically. The memoir project needs to be about the memories—about Miranda’s memories—rather than the project.
Eme also reminded me how far I’ve come. I’ve taken journeys to the past, but it’s like my life has become episodes of Quantum Leap. It’s easy to get stuck in certain places, to ruminate and mourn that she wasn’t ready to be herself. I’ve learned. I’m learning that I need to connect with little Miranda both as a reliving, a retelling, of my memories but also tell her that she has a future.
Is this the revelation that triggers the leap to the next Miranda?
Beautiful. Like you.
Keep on becoming. 💙
And, it is such an honor to be a part of it with you and, especially, to have you as part of mine. 💙