The last three weeks have been so frustrating I can hardly stand myself. A combination of really pissy things happened all in a row. One of my good friends was diagnosed with leukemia. Then I awkwardly tried to reconnect with another good friend. (Awkward on my part – I tried to be reserved about it and then unabashedly fell all over myself, from which I am still trying to recover). Then the asshats at my job started to get festive. Then I had lunch with my grandpa at his assisted-living center. All the while, I’m having these very surreal dreams that stick to my brain like duct tape during the day and I can hardly think of anything else. When I step back and try to figure out what is really going on with my precarious mental state, it seems like:
- I don’t want to die.
- I don’t even want to get really old.
- I don’t want to work with asshats.
- I don’t want to lose the few friends that I have.
What if the choices I’ve made are the ones that get me exactly what I don’t want? Even though I would say I don’t choose to die, I did choose to be a smoker for 20 years. On the other hand, that could be useful in terms of not getting really old.
Layering the dreams on top of this is really creepy because in the dream, I meet up with my (now awkwardly renewed) friend on a steep cliff and there are other people in my life milling around aimlessly, like they do in dreams. Then I experience something that has only happened to me once before, when I had to put my dog down a few years ago (I told you it was creepy). At the moment she died, I swear to you that I felt her soul pass through mine. It made me draw in a sharp breath and I thought I might have a heart attack right there and go with her. There’s no good way to describe the feeling. It was intensely painful and intensely joyous at the same time. Well, in my dream the same thing happens when I meet up with my friend.
It was the first dream that convinced me I should get back in touch, maybe there was something going on that I was supposed to help with. But things are going great with my friend and I’m still having that dream regularly. I try not to read too much into those things, but like I said, this one is really tough to shake off.
So I do what I am best at – pretending. I pretend everything is fine and I pretend to like my job and I pretend that I’m not terrified of getting old and I pretend to be the happy, successful woman that everyone likes. And when I wake up in the middle of the night feeling like my heart is going to jump right out of my throat, I pretend it doesn’t mean anything.
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