Dreams

I’ve always had very memorable dreams. And I’ve been lucky(most of the time) to wake up and remember them. Even as a kid I was an avid dreamer, somehow mixing The Little Rascals, bowling, and The Muppet Show into one hallucinogenic experience in my pre-teen brain. There are still dreams that I had when I was in elementary school that live rent-free in my head today. I won’t bore you with them here, but let me tell you they were doozies.

As an adult I never stopped dreaming. Not that dreaming as an adult is some great thing, but I’ve talked to a lot of people that say they don’t dream at all as adults. I’m sure they probably do, but they probably never make it up to the surface before waking from that sleep. Or maybe they’re just not interesting enough to remember(no Little Rascals, bowling, Muppet fever dreams I suppose.)

What am I getting at here? Well, a few months back I just sort of stopped remembering dreams. Not only that, but to my knowledge I wasn’t dreaming at all. Like my brain sort of shut off after business hours and wasn’t cooking up any wild narratives about being back in high school, falling from a building, or finding hidden rooms in my childhood home. I really noticed it when I started feeling bad. And once I started having the sort of hyper-ventilating episodes while I was asleep I think laying down to rest became sort of a trigger for me. I’d have to prop myself up in bed, and couldn’t lay even remotely flat anymore or I’d have an episode. Turns out it wasn’t me hyper ventilating, but my heart struggling to not drown in fluid.

But since I got out of the hospital and am feeling pretty wonderful the dreams have returned. That makes me happy, to be honest. As an adult my dreams have been sort of been where my subconscious brings the real world problems to me and I work it out in some way. Sure, I’d still have the weird dreams that made no sense. But stress dreams tell us a lot about what’s bothering us in our day to day. And I think since my illness my subconscious has been telling me to deal with relationships that have gone south in my life.

Mainly, my extended family on my mom’s side.

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I used to be close to all of them. I hung out with my cousin like he was a best friend, not a relative. We both started playing guitar around the same time, and we liked a lot of the same weird movies growing up and during high school. He was more outdoorsy than I was; he liked hunting and fishing and camping and all that jazz. I, did not. But that didn’t stop us from finding middle ground in music, movies, and humor.

Around 12 years ago things kind of changed. My aunt and uncle had a July 4th get together at their place. My family went, as did my parents. At that get together things seemed, just off. There wasn’t the same conversations. It was more fishing and hunting chit chat, and all of my cousin’s kids kind of completely blew off my kids. Everything seemed kind of lazy. We got there at the time we were supposed to, yet nothing was even remotely ready. My one uncle who was supposed to bring drinks called and said they weren’t coming because they were just tired from being at Cedar Point. Not a big deal to everyone else, but it seemed rude to me. We spent a lot of money on fresh fruit, while my mom brought a dish as well.

And instead of grilling hot dogs on his gas grill, my uncle just decided to start a bonfire and let us cook the weiners over the open flames with sticks we foraged from a pile. My family just felt invisible to the rest of them.

I know, it sounds like I’m just being picky or just a party pooper. But my parents saw and felt the same thing. I could’ve been okay with singeing my knuckles over an open fire if my kids hadn’t been so snubbed. But they were, and so fuck cooking hot dogs over an open fire while there’s a perfectly good gas grill on the porch.

We left that get together early and have never been to another get together.

Fast forward to my post-hospital stay and the dreams I’ve been having. I’ve had quite a few with my cousin in them. We’re either driving around, or we’re at a house where there’s a bunch of people hanging out. One of them we were in his old Nova and I was putting some sort of dish together with canned beans and corn in the glove box. They aren’t bad dreams, just strange. Like I went through this medical crisis, and now my head and heart are saying maybe it’s time to get over those feelings and maybe reconnect with someone that was a huge part of my life up until my late 30s.

We did reconnect for a short moment back in 2020. I’d heard through my mom that my cousin and his wife were getting divorced. It kind of surprised me, but then it kind of didn’t. They could be a volatile couple, so after 20+ years I could see something breaking down between them. I reached out to him to see how he was. We talked about getting together at his house for a beer and reconnecting. But then Covid decided to come into my life. We said we’d do something after I healed up, but then when I was healthy he ended up getting it. He said he’d be in touch, but that never happened.

I’m not going to reach out because of these dreams. It is what it is between me and my extended family. I’m close to my parents and my brother, and of course to my own family. That’s what matters to me the most. And I’ve got three or four great friends that are in my life. I’m good. But what I’ll take away from those dreams with my cousin is that I shouldn’t get caught up on hurt feelings. Don’t let misunderstandings or things left unsaid stop me from moving on and being happy in my life. It’s not worth walking around with resentment for something that more than likely was nothing. It’s only weighing me down. All that emotional and psychic baggage just sits in the mind and eventually settles in your heart.

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I’m in a far better place than what I was in 2014. I’m much more comfortable with being honest and processing feelings like that. And honestly, not going to family get-togethers was good for me and my brain. Everybody grows up and moves on, me and my family were just quicker to realize that. We can be happy with our little group, and our little group has grown into quite the community with my kids and their significant others. And everyone has four-legged friends as well.

I’m good with the community and family closeness we’ve created.

If I ever do hear from my cousin I’d be happy to reconnect and catch up on the last decade or so. But if I don’t, that’s okay too. There’s always those dreams.