Clockwork Dream

Last night I had a dream where my body was no longer human.  Instead it was made up up of clockwork mechanisms.  But these clockwork mechanisms were broken.  I could function, barely, but I couldn't function properly.  This being approached me and said that if I fulfilled certain quests, then my body would be magically repaired.

I tried and tried to fulfill the quests the being set me, but always, I failed.  I failed because my broken clockwork body simply couldn't do what needed to be done.  I kept telling the being that because my body was broken, I couldn't do the quests properly, but the being just kept insisting that the only way to get my body repaired was to complete the quests.

I kept trying and kept trying, but eventually my body broke down so badly that I couldn't even try anymore, and I lay there broken and crying.

I woke up as the powers that be were lowering my broken body into a burning cauldron to reduce my parts back to molten metal.

Despite the rather cool steampunk imagery, this was not a pleasant dream.  My "real" body is broken and has been for some time.  I've been almost continually sick or injured for almost five years now.  Most recently, I tripped and fell while trying to fence off a part of my pasture where the septic system had imploded.  I fell on one welded wire fence panel while carrying another panel.  I landed on the panel I tripped over, and the panel I was carrying fell on top of me.

I ended up covered in deep bruises, with two sprained ankles and a broken kneecap.  Just a hairline fracture of the patella, but still...  I also re-damaged and/or damaged more severely the muscles in my right hip and leg which were still not completely healed from being thrown from my horse two years ago.  The broken tailbone that I received then, has also still not completely healed.  (And may never completely heal, from what I've read online.) 

Over the past five years, I've gained 20 pounds of weight, and I've lost the physical fitness that I had worked to maintain all my life.  Every time, I get well enough to start exercising again and begin to trim down and tone up, something else happens.  I get whiplash, I have to have abdominal surgery, I get thrown from my horse, I come down with pleurisy, I trip and break my knee.  It seems as if I will never be allowed to get healthy again.

I'm tired.

I'm tired of being sick and injured and overweight and out of shape.

This dream is quite easy to understand in light of what's been going on in my life.  I just wish that it had had a happier ending.

Clockwork World by Vladimir Vitkovsky