What dreams may come
I had one of those moments today - moments I think we all have from time to time - when I remembered a dream I had forgotten upon waking this morning. I didn't recall details: more just a moment, a feeling. I was looking out the window at work, watching the snow spinning down wildly, listening to a Placebo song saying something about shaking off this mortal coil when I remembered.
I dreamt that someone was dead. Someone I used to know (or thought I did) and that either I had just found out, or was remembering that I already knew. Had somehow forgotten this fact. Don't ask me how.
I know what it was. A few things, really, besides those rapidly and randomly firing neurons beneath the tethers of sleep. I had been talking to my mom, and the topic of her ex-fiance came up, the one who (loyal readers know) just passed away in September of a freak stroke at age 53. I'd been checking on his kids on Facebook, seeing how they were doing, snooping if you will. Sarah, his daughter, only a year younger than I, had posted a bunch of old photos of him, as well as shared a link to another's album of pictures from the memorial paddle out put on by some of his lifeguard and surfer friends. They smiled and laughed and cried and rode the waves and gave the shaka and held up pictures of him, for him. It is so strange, that he's gone. Unreal. Most of the time, I don't believe it.
But my dream wasn't about him. But someone else. Someone who, if he were dead, I would never know.
There's this sort of helpless rage when you find out someone you knew has died. Even if you didn't talk to them anymore (perhaps especially if you didn't), even if you were angry with them, you become angry. Furious. Confused. You deny it. You weep and yet, you don't believe it. I don't recall crying in this dream, but for that brief moment, I remember that anger--that rage. That bubble of disbelief. It was absurd. Someone who does not exist int he bubble of my life anymore - who doesn't touch my existence in any tangible way - can't be dead. It's selfish and self-centered. We are all the star of our own lives, a story our inner monologue narrates, a saga our daily life frames and contains. But it isn't true, and when something - someone - deviates, we are angry.
Think of your worst enemy. Your former best friend. Your first kiss. Your first date. Your first love. Your first tormenter, who tripped you in the hall or pulled your ponytail. If he/she/they died, and you somehow found out, how would you feel? And if you never found out, you could live in blissful denial - something like the feeling of immortality for all those that surround you. When our eyes close, the world around us... vanishes.
The writing continues, and so the dreams come. I can't fight them off, and I can't deny them. All I can do is put them in a box: the world of fiction, a world I create. A world that exists only in my imagination. A world that grows only as my fingers put it to the page. A word I can control, at least to a point. A world of escape. A world of absolution. A world of life and immortality, one that persists beyond the final page (still so far off, now).
A world of catharsis. Of memory.
I dreamt that someone was dead. Someone I used to know (or thought I did) and that either I had just found out, or was remembering that I already knew. Had somehow forgotten this fact. Don't ask me how.
I know what it was. A few things, really, besides those rapidly and randomly firing neurons beneath the tethers of sleep. I had been talking to my mom, and the topic of her ex-fiance came up, the one who (loyal readers know) just passed away in September of a freak stroke at age 53. I'd been checking on his kids on Facebook, seeing how they were doing, snooping if you will. Sarah, his daughter, only a year younger than I, had posted a bunch of old photos of him, as well as shared a link to another's album of pictures from the memorial paddle out put on by some of his lifeguard and surfer friends. They smiled and laughed and cried and rode the waves and gave the shaka and held up pictures of him, for him. It is so strange, that he's gone. Unreal. Most of the time, I don't believe it.
But my dream wasn't about him. But someone else. Someone who, if he were dead, I would never know.
There's this sort of helpless rage when you find out someone you knew has died. Even if you didn't talk to them anymore (perhaps especially if you didn't), even if you were angry with them, you become angry. Furious. Confused. You deny it. You weep and yet, you don't believe it. I don't recall crying in this dream, but for that brief moment, I remember that anger--that rage. That bubble of disbelief. It was absurd. Someone who does not exist int he bubble of my life anymore - who doesn't touch my existence in any tangible way - can't be dead. It's selfish and self-centered. We are all the star of our own lives, a story our inner monologue narrates, a saga our daily life frames and contains. But it isn't true, and when something - someone - deviates, we are angry.
Think of your worst enemy. Your former best friend. Your first kiss. Your first date. Your first love. Your first tormenter, who tripped you in the hall or pulled your ponytail. If he/she/they died, and you somehow found out, how would you feel? And if you never found out, you could live in blissful denial - something like the feeling of immortality for all those that surround you. When our eyes close, the world around us... vanishes.
The writing continues, and so the dreams come. I can't fight them off, and I can't deny them. All I can do is put them in a box: the world of fiction, a world I create. A world that exists only in my imagination. A world that grows only as my fingers put it to the page. A word I can control, at least to a point. A world of escape. A world of absolution. A world of life and immortality, one that persists beyond the final page (still so far off, now).
A world of catharsis. Of memory.