We tend to differentiate nightmares from other intense dreams by virtue of the sense of fear or terror they impart on our sleeping selves. This dream I had was on shared that same level of psychological or emotional intensity, but there was nothing frightening or terrifying about it.
When I left New England as a kid, my mother told me that she'd taken some of the things I'd left behind, namely my hand-built collection of model airplanes and all the old stuffed animals I hadn't been willing to part with yet. The one exception to that was a brown 'Gund' teddy bear I'd gotten when I was about ten and decided to bring with me out to the Northwest.
Editorial Note: I still hung on to him even into my mid-30's as something I could pass along to my child when they were born. I ended up giving him to my son when he was about two because his mother tried giving him back to me after our divorce. As far as I know, he still has it.
Anyway, the nightmare I had involved me going to my mother's house in Maine and reclaiming the rest of the gang. My mother was nowhere to be found, but I made my way inside and up to the attic. There, wrapped in a couple of old garbage bags, were friends I hadn't seen in more than a lifetime.
The most familiar one was also the biggest, a tan and brown dinosaur I'd named 'Stanley the Stegosaurus,' because that's what kind of dinosaur he was and I knew my dinosaurs well back then, and because by my childhood logic, Stanley seemed like as good a name as any for a Stegosaurus.
And sitting in that cramped, dusty, chilly space, getting reacquainted with Stanley and the rest, I found myself getting blasted by a rogue wave of emotion I could never have anticipated and absolutely could not escape. So much so that even thinking about it now, I'm not ashamed to say, is making me feel it all over again.
Why did it totally wreck me like that? Because they took me back to the point in my life where I was just a little ragamuffin kid who had no idea or even a comprehension that this is what my life was going to be like when I got to my parents' age. At that point, I was still happy and optimistic about life and the world and utterly blissful in my naive dissonance about just how incredibly screwed up it was going to start becoming before I could even blink.
I was still at a stage where my imagination could run rampant and not be shackled in a cage of mental illness and anxiety. Where I could have friends and not constantly worry about what I was going to do or not do that would cause me to lose them.
Where I could be boyishly smitten with a girl instead of having to be completely terrified as a man every time I let myself get anywhere near that with a woman.
At that point in my life, I still had my whole life to look forward to and if you'd told me then that this is where I'd be...that this is who I'd be...I know my younger self would've probably responded with something along the lines of this.
Then I don't want to grow up. Ever.
But grow up I did. Lessons did I learn. Regrets I have struggled with. People I have lost and pain I have felt.
And I know that's why the longer I sat there in the attic, cradling this old thing of fabric and stuffing and memory, I felt it all just start pouring out of me like a waterfall. I don't know how long I cried. I don't know if anyone heard me and if they did, I didn't care.
That little ragamuffin kid who'd been through so much hell just needed to let it out to someone who wouldn't judge him for doing so. The last thing I remember was wrapping my arms around Stanley and just bawling like I haven't in a long time...
...Then I woke up, and I did it all over again.
Just like I'm doing now as I try to get this all down on virtual paper.
I'm not a believer in gods or religions anymore. I used to believe karma was a thing until I realized the people I knew who did things to warrant getting a heaping helping of bad karma never got it, so they never had to live with what they'd done like I have.
But something I have believed in is deja vu, because I've experienced it more times than I can seriously count, and it's always based on something I've dreamed about at some point. I don't mean in ways like I can guess lottery numbers or presidential elections, but seemingly random moments or encounters that trigger a part of my brain that says with a high degree of certainty, we've done this before.
As sure as I am of anything, I know there's a point soon where I will be in that attic. Where I'll find that bag, open it up, see my old friends again and remember, for maybe the briefest of moments, how it felt to be free of all the things that were waiting for me when I had to leave them behind and had to grow up.
And I know that I will sit there and cry like I maybe have never cried before because there's nothing I can do to go back to that time, start all over, and hopefully get it right the second time around.
No comments:
Post a Comment