If you’re inclined to be cynical, this likely won’t land with you at all, but that’s okay. You have no reason to believe me, but you also have no reason not to.

I have dreams. Weird, oddly detailed dreams about other people, usually not in my immediate circle, that reveal a certain amount of truth. Truths that I could not have otherwise known. They’re not predictions or future telling, so far as I can tell. They’re more like a reading of the undercurrent, the unspoken.

I think I’ve had these my whole life and brushed them off. Everybody dreams, right? In the last year, though, I’ve started paying more attention and when a dream stays with me a little longer than usual, or *feels* different, sometimes I’ll share it.

That’s where things get…unusual. When I share the details, dialogue, feelings or scene with the person I dreamed about, the first reaction is usually disbelief. “How did you know?” Well, I didn’t. At least not consciously.

Yesterday morning, I woke from a particularly detailed dream, that on the surface seemed… bizarre, maybe silly even in the level of detail. The dream involved a man I only really know from short conversations at school pick up. I went to a yoga straight after dropping the kids at school, and during quiet moments in class, kept returning to the dream and the feeling it left me with. When I sat down late at my computer to work, I decided to shoot him a message. Something along the lines of, “Buckle up, big guy. I just had the strangest dream about you…”

They start like that. My communication with the subjects of my dreams. A sort of “ha ha, isn’t this wacky” opening salvo that I hope doesn’t freak them out.

I won’t share the particulars of this interaction, because the dream hit with such stunning accuracy at deeply personal, private parts of this man’s life, I have no business knowing, let alone sharing them.

But the wildest part was not that what I dreamed was accurate. It was how he responded. He was not surprised. He was not taken aback. He welcomed it.

“I give you credit,” he said. “You saw into my energetic world and it was highly accurate. I respectfully bow.”

He said that he believes in intuition, that it behaves outside time and space, that we all have the ability to access that part of ourselves but most of us don’t choose to listen or to practice it. He validated that what I saw was, in fact, real, and encouraged me to seek stillness to tune in to more.

That surprised the shit out of me, to be honest. I’m used to that kind of response from the women in my social circles – they tend to be thoughtful and wisened. Not many men I know interact with that kind of ‘shields down’ authenticity.

And I have, in the past, been fooled by those who speak the vocabulary of the healed and the wise but operate in disregard for others. I have, at times, not been nearly guarded enough. Dreaming like this can engender a false sense of… connection. But I’m learning that just because I read someone doesn’t mean that message was for me or they are either.

This was also the first time that sharing a dream has left me exhausted. My thinking brain turned off and I spent the rest of the day busily going about my tasks on autopilot. Working, cooking, cleaning. It wasn’t until I had a moment of quiet before bed that it struck me how meaningful the whole thing had been.

It was recently suggested to me that I could monetize my presence here by getting sponsored by brands I use. You know, share my beauty routine or anti-aging hacks and be a really-for-real influencer. And y’all the hilarity of that.

I told them that beauty industry would be horrified by me.

If you see me wearing mascara and it’s not currently like, mom’s night out, it’s from yesterday. Because I don’t wash my face. And it’s not like, Ohhhh, facial cleanser is so drying, it’s that face washing, outside of a full-blown shower, is a sensory NIGHTMARE. Get water all over the sink and in my hair and down my forearms and… no thank you. I’ll sleep in make up and SPF before I’ll make myself do something so offensive right before bed. Look at me, protecting my peace.

See? I’m a nightmare.

My skincare routine consists of a single product. OneSkin. There. No gatekeeping here.

I brush my hair 50 strokes every night. Just like Caroline Ingalls. I do have a fancy brush, but I mostly use one of these cheap Goody pics because it’s good for the scalp. I think. And I will sleep in a cap just like Ma, too. Only, mine’s silk and not cotton because when the same hairs have been on your head for like, a decade (how gross does that sound?), you gotta avoid friction.

I have an estrogen patch because I am not going gently into that good night, thank you very much. I think this helps my skin. I can’t prove it.

Also, I don’t drink alcohol anymore so do with that what you will.

But here’s my very best beauty hack for this middle age madness. That chin hair you can feel but can’t see it even in the school pick up line where the light is the best? Mascara. Give your chin a little swipey-swipe and you’ll see ALL the hairs, not just your tormentor. Pluck away, friend. I use tube mascara and it works great. But I can’t speak for traditional mascara.

***

But if you’ll allow me to share some beauty tips I’ve gleaned from women around me, I think you’ll find them beneficial.

Wanna glow like you just rolled in a meadow of fireflies? Be kind. I could not be more serious. The kindest most open-hearted people I know are also the ones who look like they’re lit up from the inside. I’ve learned that they’re not always happy. They’re not always performing. But they are always kind. The best part about this is how contagious it can be. Borrow someone’s light. Then let it change you and watch your light light up someone else. I do not care that this is cheesy because it is true.

Live authentically, even when it’s scary. Fear is not a sign that something is wrong, by the way. It’s a sign that it’s new. Do the new and do it scared. Stop playing roles just to make other people comfortable. Be so much yourself that when people come into your life who need you, they’ll find you (you probably need them, too). Bring your silly, your weird, your loving, your creative and open self to every interaction and let it sort the real ones from the rest.

Be invested in other people’s happiness. I don’t mean people-pleasing because lord knows, that was aging me faster than smoking ever could. I mean, chase joy and give joy. Be curious and engaged and interested in people. Strong community ties, by the way, are what’s going to keep us young. I mean, we’re probably still going to have crepey necks, but we’re going to have our pick of besties who will pull the skin back in photos for us.

Now, pretend I tapped my fingernails on some plastic jars and off you go.

I am unbearable to watch tv with.

Not in the old person way where I interject “oooh, isn’t this the guy who was in that movie that we saw that one time in the theater when the popcorn was burnt?” Although, that’s probably coming for me soon. I apologize in advance.

My personal affliction is keen pattern recognition. Doesn’t matter how well-written or how well-directed (in fact, the better done the production, the more likely it is to mimic real life patterns that my brain has scanned and parsed), I don’t just know what’s going to happen, I know what they’re going to say as it’s happening. That’s a very long sentence. I know.

I’d say it’s as annoying for me as it is for anyone sitting with me, but that’s not true. I fucking hate surprises. So it doesn’t bother me one bit to know what’s coming. And I married a man who hates spoilers. But I’d bite a hole through my tongue before I could hold in every prediction.

I’m sorrrrrry. But I’ll do it again.

Pattern recognition, paired with a deeply intuitive nature, means people don’t surprise me very often, either. I know I’m not the only one who walks into a room and can read immediately what the vibe is. I know things without knowing them. If I have a dream about you, you can bet it’s coming true in one way or another because I am dialed in. Vibe is everything. And I can usually sense if the person I’m talking to is being genuine within a few sentences. Usually.

But when people do surprise me, especially when they let me down, I don’t recover easily. I get so hurt and so angry at myself. How did I miss it? I should have seen that coming. Case in point, Artie. I should have seen ego, entitlement, and aggression but I missed it.

Or maybe I just didn’t want to see it. My particular handicap is that I want people to be…good. At least not hurtful.

The other day, I watched my dog race to the back fence, just so excited to greet whoever was passing by at the time. It was a man who was friendly and a dog who was…not. The dog barked menacingly but my silly human in a dog suit just stood there, tail furiously wagging. I said, to no one in particular, “That dog has no self-preservation instincts.”

Ahem.

Mental Health Instagram loves to point out that highly intuitive / highly sensitive people are that way because it’s a trauma response. Yes, I had to intuit a lot as a kid to gauge my own emotional and physical safety. But that can’t be the whole picture. I think some of our personality traits are honed by experience rather than created by them. I see it in my own children and they live in a stable, loving environment.

I firmly believe that high sensitivity is a feature, not a bug. But damn if it doesn’t require you to also develop some solidly aggressive self-preservation skills. And that, unfortunately, has not come naturally to me. I just want to stand at the back gate furiously wagging my tail.

I arrived on the mountain by 3:00 and decided to fit in a hike. In the Rockies, afternoon storms would have persuaded me not to attempt it, but here, the California sky was clear and it was breezy and warm. The manager at the inn across the road advised me on local hiking routes. Muir Woods was down the mountain, a six or so mile loop I’d save for the next day. It was the reason I’d chosen Mountain Home as a base in the first place. I couldn’t wait to see the redwoods.

“It’s…challenging coming back up,” he warned. So in light of the late hour, I chose a closer destination on the same path, filled up my water reservoir and headed out.

I was steps from the inn when I ran into Artie. A wiry old man of almost 80 who seemed unsure of where he was going. I was standoffish with him at the start. He tried to tell me I was mistaken about where the trailhead was (I was not) and I read him for a guy who didn’t like to be wrong.

We made polite introductions but I stayed several feet ahead, only looking back when I needed to repeat what I’d said. His hearing aids, he said, didn’t always work so great. At some point, I passed my turn off, and Artie suggested I continue on with him to Muir Woods. It was a pleasant hike to the national monument, he assured me. I thought, why not. My legs were fresh. And if I knocked it out that afternoon, I could return to climb Tamalpais the next morning.

Artie sweetened the deal. For the pleasure of my company, he’d happily buy me a hot chocolate at the visitor’s center. I agreed.

We hiked down the mountain, him doing the lion’s share of the talking, mostly about his wife, who had passed very suddenly not that long ago. I asked questions and shared bits about my own life. The hike was beautiful and several times I had to stop to pet the moss on a tree or gape at the trees towering over us.

As promised, when we reached the bottom, he bought me a hot chocolate. I picked up souvenirs for the boys. A sticker for my water bottle. An ornament for the tree. We sat in the cool canopy of ancient redwoods while he spoke more about his late wife, their grown children, and his grief. We toasted to her memory. It was disarming and very paternal.

In that moment, I thought about how I’d tell the story of meeting Artie. It would have been with a certain degree of warmth, I think, that now will be missing from the retelling.

The way back up was laborious for my travel companion. Artie was thirty some years my senior, so I lead slowly, stopping when his breathing sounded coarse. Late afternoon was yielding to evening and I had some concern that we wouldn’t make it up the mountain before sunset.

When we did finally reach the inn, Artie asked if I’d like to join him for a quick bite. This is when I should have politely declined. I was tired. I’d have rather driven down the mountain for a real dinner. Alone. But I didn’t want to be unkind. So I joined him at a table on the inn’s wooden deck and ordered a sandwich.

Halfway through dinner, it got weird. Artie had a glass of wine. And I wonder if that didn’t change his intentions, so much as…unlock them. He was midway through telling me how he met his late wife when he stopped and declared how beautiful I looked in my glasses. We were kindred spirits, he said. I was immediately on edge. I sat further back in my chair.

A breeze blew through and I took the opportunity to tell him I was cold and was done for the night. The inn’s manager was hovering nearby as we said our good-byes. I turned an offered embrace into an arm’s length side hug. “Drive safe,” I said. And that’s when Artie, declaring me so lovely, pulled me close and aggressively kissed my face. I pushed him off of me, astonished.

Before I could register what had happened, the manager intervened and it was over. He ushered the old man out the door and I was left to figure out just what the hell happened. Had I been too friendly? Why had I not just said no to dinner?

Why was I making his bad behavior my responsibility?

My face burned where his coarse scruff had scratched me. It didn’t stop burning until I sat in the bath that night and scrubbed him off of my skin with a washcloth. I wish I could have washed away the entire afternoon. It is impossible to explain how awful it felt.

As I climbed into bed, I sent an SOS to a girlfriend. “Why are men….” I trailed off. Why are men. Then I turned off the light and fell asleep feeling disturbed.

Artie and I had exchanged email addresses, and in the next day, he emailed several times. I sent them all to trash. When I was on my way back to Colorado, he sent a final email, apologizing for “offending” me. He’s used to being very affectionate with family members, he reasoned. I stopped reading there. The entitlement was infuriating. Whatever he meant by it, that was irrelevant.

The trip, so long in planning and something I’d looked forward to so much felt so… tainted. The sticker I’d probably never put on my water bottle. The Christmas ornament I couldn’t imagine hanging with any fond feelings. “You did that,” I thought, and deleted his apology. It was not my job to teach him how to behave. Nor was I in the business of absolution. Why are men, indeed.