What happens when I don’t dream?

Birthdays are an odd thing. Most people find them to be a death march after a certain age, just the clock telling you how much closer you are to being gone. I’m not there yet and am not sure if I ever will be, but I am at an odd place in my life. I’ve had one of the best birthday’s anyone could hope for. I’ve gotten tons of good wishes from friends, acquaintances, family and strangers. In Fact I think this year I was wished Happy Birthday by more people then I have been in all the years up until this point. I received thoughtful gifts from those I love and a quiet dinner made by the hands of someone I love. But today I am unsettled. This happens occasionally. That feeling that things are not quite 100%. That something is amiss and you are not exactly sure what or that someone is whispering something very important to you and you can’t quite hear it. Usually when I have this feeling something bad happens. Not always to me, in fact mostly not to me. I also dream of horses. Usually when someone is going to be hurt or killed.
The first time I dreamed of them one kicked my uncle the next day, hard enough to cause a good bit of damage. “An inch to the left” the doctor said “and he would have been done fore”. I also dreamed of horses the night before my father was to die. That dream is clear even still so many years later. One lone red colored horse in a field with hailstones falling all around it. The horse was calm, standing in the sunshine as softball sized hail beat the ground. It wasn’t a scary dream. I was beautiful actually. But it meant death as certain as any other I have had.
I dreamed of horses last night and the night before. Both dreams involved being very close to very large brown horses. They were soft and warm and keeping me in the middle of the heard. Nothing happened in the dream on either night, but I was surrounded by large, soft bodies the color of dust smelling like wind and grass. It could be nothing, but it has happened so many times that I can’t shake the feeling.
This birthday is so much different for the others I have had in recent years. So many things are different. March was a real truing point for me and December feels like another. I never use January first to make resolutions; I make them on my birthday instead. I use it as my new year. Last year I resolved to keep off the weight I had lost the year before, and I have. The year before I resolved to stay in my writing program and graduate rather then quite because of the personal relationship trauma I was having. That worked too. This year I am not sure what to resolve. I want to lose 20 more pounds, but after losing nearly 80, it doesn’t seem like I need to resolve to do it, I just need to do it… I want to make a resolution about my writing, but I am not sure what it should be. I have a novel I am happy with and I want to write another, but should I focus on the recent events and try to write something about that? I have something in the works for that already, but is it the right thing to do? Should I make a resolution about the music? Probably not, I feel safer if Walter does that. This is our project so we must make the resolutions about tit together. Perhaps I will think on this, let the birthday pass and get a few days of perspective, see if the dreams of horses come to anything before resolving. Perhaps, if I don’t dream, my mind will focus more and I will feel less unsettled.
Here’s to the future and to birthday and resolutions and to good wishes for the next year – here is to all of you who have been so kind to me over the last 9+ months. I think you – I could not have gotten this far without you and your kindness gives me hope to keep going and hoping.

Thank you