13 September 2015
I don’t know if it’s something about getting older, but not only do I dream less, I have great trouble recalling my dream these days. Given the amount of times I forgot my stand up set on stage, I suppose it’s no great surprise. When I was a kid that was never a problem. In early January, it’s the thirty-second anniversary of the greatest sequence of continuous dreams I ever had, in which I played a starring role in a sci-fi fantasy in which my co-star was early eighties reggae star, Eddy Grant. I’m not even a Sci-Fi fan, but even I was hooked by those dreams. For years I prayed that I would once again experience dreams on a par with that. Of course, I could dream-fly back then, something that allowed me to evade capture at the hands of the Gamorrean Guards on the QE11 in the second episode, which I came to regard as the strongest, in the epic sci-fi dream serial.
I lost the dream flying during the darkest days of the Great Recession, circa December 2010, so after three decades of flying and evading capture in my nightmares by taking to the air, I mustn’t grumble.
While dreams are far less frequent these days, what I do know is that occasionally, if rarely, I have the odd dream that can’t simply be dismissed as a dream. At least not to me. These ‘dreams’ feel so different, tapping into your most hidden thoughts, that you wonder how on earth did those thoughts find their way into your dream, and how did you find yourself sharing them with people you lost long ago? What is the point of such a dream? Is there a message there or are you just reading too much into it?
Losing loved ones changes you. It’s all too easy to lose your way when someone that had a major role in your life, who was there every day, is no longer there. It also toughens you up too, Too much I think. You can become cold. Distant from those around you. Personally, I’m okay with that. I could never go through what I went through years ago again. Even if you’ve been through it once, when it happens again, you realise it can still hurt you and you’re not perhaps as hard as you thought or even hoped you were.
Sometimes I think I would give everything up to have that old life back, and being the easier person that I was, and I would, but not if it meant having to go through the pain at the end of it all again. Things are easier this way. It may be five minutes after writing this, I feel differently. The point is, overcoming loss a mindset. You get used to those people never being around again. You find ways to fill up the emptiness in your life. Somewhere in your heart there’s a warm space untouched by the losses in which sits the little affection you have left. That little space serves as a storage unit for all your old memories, keeping those memories safe for you should you ever want to revisit them, much like flicking through an old family album. They help you remember the good that those long departed brought to your life. It reminds you that you were loved, but you rarely allow yourself to access this space because you still have the rest of your life to go on. Life is about overcoming these hurdles. You grit your teeth and you go on and it’s very rare that these ghosts bother you. And I think most people who’ve experienced grief would settle for that.
But how do you explain some out of the blue encounter in a dream with the person that knew you best? Who instantly doesn’t buy that wall you’ve built around yourself? Who berates you for what you’ve allowed yourself to become? You turn to face them, knowing they’re the most important person there ever was in your life, and you fall into their arms fifteen long years after you were last able to do it in real life, and you hear yourself say the words, “Estoy triste.”
What is that?
What is the point of such a dream?
Was it even a dream?
At the end of all this, if there is an afterlife, do you get the chance to discuss what this might’ve been with your dream co-star?