Night Terrors

The weirdest thing happened the other morning...I woke up with tears in my eyes...and one rolling down my cheek...and I knew I must have been dreaming of you again.

-- Author Unknown

For 15 months I've been plagued with dreams of an old friend. I haven't seen him since I was a kid. These dreams usually wake me up at 3:33 in the morning and it's driving me slowly insane.

Since the winter of '06, I started keeping a dream diary in the hopes that I can get some insight into the workings of my inner mind.

It's pretty bad. I've been told I scream his name. How frickin' embarrassing. Luckily, it's a common name. I guess if I ever get married again, I'll only date people with that name.

Hey, is your name John Jones? NO? How about you? NO? You?

Just kidding (and no, his initials aren't J.J.).

I've done the usual hypnotist things. Command myself to block out his face, go into trance to find out what I need to remember so that I can move past this phase, try to pinpoint how he made me feel so that I can find that emotion within myself. Really, I've done all the usual things and, well, it does no good.

I still dream of him. The worst dream was of him drowning. The second was a visualization of a car crash. That could mean so many things!

I read Freud. I read Jung. I went through all the psychology text books at my disposal. I learned that people dream of relationships from their past when they encounter the same problems in a current relationship. That couldn't possibly help me. It wasn't a very serious relationship. I was just a kid.

After the first year, I broke down and contacted a psychic. She said he was a twin flame and that we had an empathic bond. Scary. She said that this has something to do with the upcoming change in consciousness that will occur in the year 2012. That sounds far too complicated.
According to another psychic my soul twin is a gay man. I offer this as proof of God's existence. God really loves me, doesn't he? I'm afraid of commitment and my other half likes men. I guess things couldn't be more perfect!!

Now, if only I could move on...and get some sleep!

***

Edit 7/22/2008 Well, I learned over the weekend that this man still breathes. At least, he didn't die in a fiery car crash. Thank goodness. In any event, I'm sure that he's benefiting from all that praying I'm doing for him. And, yeah, I actually understand the drowning thing. He listens to a song that contains references to a deluge of water.

The subconscious mind is a blast, is it not?

I still don't know why I had all the bad dreams. But, now that he wrote to tell me that he's living - they've stopped. I'm sure I'll get the answer soon enough.

In any event, I'm so happy!

Good-night!

I should be a creative genius by now...

I thought I'd forget you, but I guess I forgot to.
Unknown

They say you never get over your first love. I don't know about that. Mine was a nice guy (unless he was with me). I inspired him into madness, weirdness, and things that I don't quite understand.

It's hard to forget mine. He was beautiful, I thought he resembled Michelangelo's Statue of David. When we broke up, I went to live with my Grandfather. A kind and thoughtful Aunt actually bought a huge bust resembling Michelangelo's sculpture for my room because she knew I liked it. That thing drove me nuts. It was so heavy.  I could never move it, so I ended up throwing dirty laundry on it so I could fall asleep. That didn't help me forget him.

My first love was also a character. They say that he became well known for his fashion sense his senior year of high school (it was the eighties, heck, we were all weird). I don't know whether that is true. I do know that it's hard to forget someone that everyone else keeps bringing up.

I do know that my spouse and I had a nice little tiff over him some years ago. I was on my way home from the hospital and our day old daughter was in the back seat. We saw an impossibly beautiful man wearing a unique outfit crossing the street and my husband remarked.

"You went to school with him."

Really? I asked.

Yeah, he said before invoking the name that shall never be spoken.  He named my high school sweetheart.

I turned on him like a rabid dog. I simply remember asking him if he liked being married to me and liked having a daughter. Of course he said yeah. I can be scary when I'm irritated, cranky, and in need of rest.

I reminded him that the man he invoked did the equivalent of pushing me out of the way of a speeding train (and he did, too). I'd be dead if he didn't know me. I remember growling "You will never speak ill of him again and you will thank him if you ever see him, got it"!!


Okay.


Well, fast forward several years and our world has fallen apart.

Now, every time I break up with a man I have to process my previous break-ups. Thankfully, I've only had two. So, now facing a potential break-up, I'm thinking about the two men from my past and how things get so screwed up.

The problem is that I still care for them.


This time it's worse. There are nightmares. I'm finding relics of the past that I've got to get rid of. I'm running into old friends. I'm remembering too much and somehow it's probably good for me.

I'm thinking that I should learn to sing or pick up the guitar. Perhaps, I can use this emotional turmoil to create something that is helpful for someone else.


But one really nice thing has come from all this emotion. My husband has realized that I would never allow anyone to badmouth him.

That's right!!

How dare anyone criticize my choice of associates, past or present?

They helped me be the person that I am today.

Thanks.

Computers can replace men, who knew?

Every once in a while, I'll have one of those conversations with a friend. You know, those conversations where you become privy to private details about the wonderful, energetic reason that she and her boyfriend glowingly grin and their neighbors blush.

Well, anyway, as she was telling me about their late night love song bringing down the house I felt an emotion. What was that? Hot? No.... Embarrassed? No.....Lonely?....Gosh, no... Jealous? Bingo, that's the one. I realized that while I was happy for her, I felt a little jealous.

I'll admit, I had to work hard to squish that negative emotion down because my dear friend finally found the happiness that she deserves. Really. I mean it. I found my happiness and scared my sunshine away. I had my fun. It's her turn, gosh darn it.

I hung up. I thought about ways to make myself feel better. Yep. I get more sleep and that's a good thing, right? My neighbors can't blush around me either. Heck, I must look like a very uptight conservative...but...

then I realized that my neighbors do hear screaming in the middle of the night.

My laptop sits by my bedside.

It has Vista.

It drives me crazier than the hottest guy on the planet.

Ugh!!!

Hey, Pick that Up!

Dish Chicken: The game a parent plays when a child refuses to pick up after him/herself. In this game, the parent takes a hands off approach and leaves the dish on the table waiting for the child to pick it up, rinse it off, and put it in the sink. This game can last for days as smells continue to crescendo. The goal of the game is to see who can tolerate the visual and olfactory products of the object the longest prior to giving in and cleaning said object.

The child usually wins.

Other notes: this game can be played with other objects such as dirty socks and underwear.
It can also be played with roomates and spouses.