I dreamt of taking a bus trip with an assortment of people I know from my actual life and some I didn’t (there were maybe famous folks I’m fond of or folks I passed through experiences with, but don’t “know”). We traveled to an interesting and unprepared place. It was a large home or lodging of sorts, maybe a literal residence owned and operated by a church or clergy, and it didn’t have enough beds to accommodate everyone. So this meant it didn’t have space for me and in this particular dream I was with my wife, so it didn’t have space for us. Room after room, bed after bed, bargaining with person after person and no space, not even on the bottom of a twin daybed. Not one friend (I get the strangers not doing it) offered up their space, to share or to just have. It hurt. It was a first-off-the-bus-run-in-grab-your-bed situation. I can’t remember where our position was on the bus, but how we went from being social and connected on it to being stared at blankly or with sympathy, but with no help baffled me. And it also didn’t.
At some point the trip coordinator, a former work acquaintance, shared with me on the hush that the clergy who ran this place died and before doing so had changed his will and testament to condemn same-sex relationships and wrote whatever other manner of hate rhetoric and bullshit. I took this to mean that we shouldn’t keep making a scene about a bed since clearly we weren’t welcome. And so clearly, because of who I am in real life, wanted to jump into action, but I was so tired and just wanted a place for my wife and I to lay our heads.
In the next part of my dream I managed to bunk with a young Shirley Chisholm, but in our own house. This was before her run for political office or the presidency. She was fiery and saucy, beautiful and strange, and even though she wasn’t famous yet, I knew who she was. I can’t remember who all was there, even if my wife accompanied me, but I had a home and was safe. Sister Chisholm would show me all I needed to know to get around the place and fight some demons. She talked assertively and with some sass. I remembered in the dream (from my real life) who would manage Sister Chisholm’s actual campaign and serve her memory to the day that he died (good ol’ Bill Howard). I remembered him and felt soft and connected to this man who was an elder, almost like a grandfather to me. I felt connected to greatness because this black man built a legacy for a black woman. And this woman helped lost little me in my dreams. She showed me her power and I harnessed it.
That is all. Some dreams about not belonging and then being held in dignity and love. I’ll keep thinking about what this means or just how it felt to finally know my place because I had one.