A Big Dream

 

 

For the past couple years, I have always had, at quasi-regular intervals, dreams, which, if they are not ‘big dreams,’ are something of more complicated a nature.  For these dreams are so real and affect me so foundationally that when I wake up, I am still somehow tied to the dream an can’t help but to feel that my entire outlook on life has been changed.  And, when I say my outlook on life has changed, it isn’t really as positive as it might sound.  Instead, it is almost always something negative and makes me question exactly how influential our dreams are on shaping our perspective of the world around us.  In my attempt to explain this, I feel like I am doing nothing more than floundering, so I will share with you the last ‘big dream’ I experienced and the aftermath and hope that that will help with the explanation— 

It was one of those dreams where you think you know where you are, but, when you look back, you realize that things were not at all how they had ever been and that should have been your first clue to wake the hell up.  Alas, dreams and reason have never walked hand in hand.  It started with my going to my parents’ house—but it wasn’t my parents’ house, it was my grandparents’ (something I didn’t realize until I woke up).  This entire semester, my mother has been nagging me that she never hears from me and that she never gets to see me anymore.  Since they live just down the road in Three Forks, they expect that I would make that trip more often than I do.  Anyways, this day was one of those days where I was going to visit them, so I arrive at the house.  I remember thinking that things seem kind of strange but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.  I went to the door and walked inside.  Things there also seemed strange but, again, I continued on.  After talking to the family for a little while, my mother finally, by her estimation, had found the perfect time to tell me that I was being kicked out of the house.  At first, I was taken aback by the mere fact that I had been out of the house and living on my own for years.  I tried to understand more specifically what was happening, but all that they would give me was that I was being kicked out and they had made up their minds about it.  After demanding a further explanation, I began to realize that I wasn’t only being kicked out of the house but I was, in fact, being banished from the family.  Again, I attempted to understand what was really happening and why my family, who have always been relatively close, was deciding to ‘kick me to the curb.’  Eventually, they became annoyed with all my questions and decided to leave and told me that if I was not gone by the time they got back, the cops would be called and I would be removed by force.

After they left, I went over to my grandparents’ who, for the some reason, had been moved next door and hoped that they could shed some light on what was going on.  Unfortunately, they had no answers and told me that is was best to “just do what your mom says.”  Realizing that I wasn’t going to get any explanations from anyone, I decided that since I already lived on my own, this wouldn’t been that much of a change and that I would just grab the few things that I had left there and be on my way.

Next thing I know, I had gathered my belonging (more things than I am positive are still in my parents’ house today) and had them all out on the front porch and was about to move them to my car when another complication ensued.  My parents, believing that I would either, not be able to move my stuff, or simply choosing to ignore them, would not leave their house and so, they had called (and paid for) a tow-truck to take my car if I hadn’t moved my stuff yet.  My stuff was already on porch, it was a short distance to the car, but try as I might to prove that I was nearly done and gone, the tow-truck drivers refused to believe me.  I begged them to see reason but they weren’t having any of it.  They hooked my car to the tow-truck and began to pull out of the drive… and I woke up.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t end here.  That dream was on a Sunday night, and so, when I awoke, I was shaken by how strange the dream was and how real it seemed.  I just sat there for a couple minutes trying to get my bearings: I wasn’t banished from my family; my car was still outside; I still had all my stuff.  Somehow I managed to pull myself together and push it all out of my mind.  Later that day, when I was walking home from class I ran into my grandmother on campus.  She works for some branch of the engineering department  and this is the first semester what we cross paths of a regular basis so I wasn’t too surprised to be running into her, but she told me that she was meeting my grandfather for dinner and that I was invited.  Of course, wanting to put off doing schoolwork and not having anything too pressing to get done, I told her I would be glad to go.  On the way there, she asked me if I had talked to my mother lately because my sister’s birthday was this week etc..  I was a little shocked that my first response which, I don’t think it came exactly in the form of words but something more, it was a general disgust that she would talk to me about my mom, a sense of ‘why would I talk to her, I’ve been banished, that ship has sailed, that bridge is burnt.’  Fortunately, I managed to get it together and explain that I hadn’t talked to my mom in a while and that I’ve been busy so I don’t really know what’s going on.  Eventually, I managed to get my shit together and realize that this was all in my head and dealt with that, but that first surge of—for lack of a better word—hate is something that was brought on by this damn dream.  If that’s not a big dream, I don’t know what is.