I'm pitching for a new direction
Pinch me when I wake
Don't tell me my dreams are fake
You leave me to lay, you touch me deep,
I don't sleep, I dream
---REM, "I Don't Sleep, I Dream"
So last week, right? Had me this dream.
And in the dream, I’m getting ready for work. For some reason, I’ve crashed at the Commander’s place. I’m in his bedroom, which looks nothing like his bedroom in real life, but I’m in that dream-state where you intuitively know things you really shouldn’t.
And I’m changing, and then I hear two voices in the kitchen. Again, the kitchen in the Commander’s abode is on the other side of the apartment, but in the dream, it’s adjacent. So I hear two voices: male and female.
And I know both voices.
The Commander’s, obviously. But she’s there, too. Voice I hadn’t heard in a while. Turns out, two months to the day, in fact. But I know it all the same. And I’m not sure if I should go out or not. If she knows I’m there. If I’m supposed to know that she is.
And for some reason, I decide to shout the Commander’s name out. But instead of his name, her name comes out instead. Comes out sorta sticky, hard to pronounce since those syllables haven’t really been said in that order from my lips in quite a while. Then there’s silence in the kitchen.
Then the door to the bedroom opens up. And she’s right there.
And I know she’s come back to me. The Commander’s in the background, not quite smiling, but definitely content with the way it’s all played out. She’s now walking towards me, and I think to myself, “Thank God…thank God this is finally over.”
Right then, I woke up. Well, as Radiohead might say, “Nice dream.”
I had thought a lot before this dream that, in one way or another, I wasn’t doing this broken heart thing right. That I was getting over the whole thing too quickly, too easily. The histrionics I had anticipated were largely confined to the first 48 hours, after which I made sure I was as busy as possible. Hardly 24 hours went by without me doing something: I published a book, went to bars, went on dates, took two trips…hell, I did everything but participate in the gay marriage debate up on the Hill here in Boston.
And all the while, I wondered why I didn’t feel worse.
Kind of a morbid thought, I know. I mean, I didn’t pull an Opus Dei and wear masochistic clothing just to get a tear out. But all the same, I had started to wonder if I truly had felt what I felt during those brief few months in the winter.
And this dream came along, and for me, it put the whole thing in perspective. There’s no reason to hide it since it’s no longer hidden from myself. In fact, I touched on it a bit earlier without fully taking my own advice. I had only ever fallen for someone in this way once before, and I’m simply not the same person anymore. Doesn’t mean that feeling of lack is any less intense. Just means I deal with it in a whole new way. Before, I could turn on, tune in, and drop out. Drink away a few weeks of my life, make it to the minimum number of classes, hand in assignments you know can make a “B”, and hold on ‘til the next cast party.
Well, doesn’t work that way now. I’d prepared myself for a similar experience, only to find the real world had other plans for me: job, family responsibilities, rent, loans, you name it, I had it. And the option to simply “shut down” no longer presented itself to me the way that it did roughly seven years ago.
So yea, seven years ago. Do the rudimentary math and you’ll learn that Jenny’s not the precedent here. I don’t mean to devalue her or my relationship with her, I’m just saying it’s different. The last time hit me within 24 hours of really courting this girl, and resembled nothing so much as a sliver of cold on the back of my throat. I had never felt it before, but I knew nonetheless what it meant. This incarnation was more like replacing the space where my heart lies with a ball of crackling fire. It burned brightly, and hot, but not enough to hurt. Just enough to warm me from head to toe and make me feel invincible.
And when I didn’t feel consistently cold in the aftermath, well, I wonder if I had only deluded myself. Wondered if I had instantly purged her like some emotional bulimic. But the dream last week showed she’s still there. Still present. Two months haven’t kicked her out of the system, and maybe another two months won’t either. Impossible to say, really.
She’s in there, mixed in with Sliver Girl and Jenny and all those women who filled the gaps of those three. We don’t all have baggage, but we all have history. And some relationships we don’t hold onto so much as absorb, I feel. I’ll always have the things this last girl said to me on the phone, and the looks Jenny would give me that let me know I could do no wrong, and Sliver Girl’s blue-tinged skin the night I told her I loved her. I have and will always have these things.
As for this last one, well…she’s a dream from which I’m still waking up. She’s part of the everyday, if never really on the surface. They all are. They’re in my morning commute, my nightly writing, and all parts in between. And most often, they are in the songs that I listen to on the radio, my Discman, or streamed onto my computer. They are everywhere, and keep me bittersweet company all the while. And some people might not like to hear that, and maybe wish I wouldn't write that, or wish I'd try harder to move on from that, and really, at the end of the day, it's maybe not the best thing, but it is the true thing, so that's that with that.
Soon enough I’ll have a real hand to hold, but it’s pretty gosh-darn clear that this isn’t the time for that. In the meantime, though, I’ll dream a little dream…and turn up the stereo…
"Avalanche"
I found your photograph in a cardboard box in a magazine
I can't remember you, remember us or anything
I taught you how to feel, but you just feel numb
They taught you how to feel, but you just feel numb
She comes apart in the avalanche
Fades out like a dance
Crawls back into bed
When it's over
When it's over
When it's over
And it's over
I watch the window and listen for the sound of cars
I can't remember the last time that it was yours
I taught you how to feel, why do you feel numb
They taught us how to feel, but we just feel numb
She falls apart in the avalanche
Fades out like a dance
Crawls back into bed
When it's over
When it's over
When it's over
When it's over
She falls apart in the avalanche
Fades out like a dance
Crawls back into bed
When it's over
And it's over
When it's over
---Ryan Adams