Lately, I've been having similar dreams over and over. It's not the same dream, but the theme is always pretty similar. I recognize that most of my dreams are just me dealing with things that I see in my life, whether I consciously notice them or not.
There's always the not making deadline dream, or the dream of being back in high school even though I know I've long graduated. Simple enough to figure out they are failure dreams. Usually, I get those dreams because of stress at work or because we've had another round of layoffs and the paper is getting worse and worse. So, failure dreams seem appropriate.
These recent dreams are more subtle, but more disturbing. They seem to indicate that either I feel alienated or that I am alienated from people. They even suggest that I'm allowing or encouraging that alienation. And I might be.
I won't say that I'm not. The one thing the scientologists have right and the reason they can really draw in the suckers is that their founding principle is that we sabotage ourselves. What can I do about it? According to the dreams, not much.
Anyway, here's a couple of the dreams I've had in the last couple weeks:
Liz and I are jogging back to a hotel after doing something on vacation. I'm falling a little behind because the trail is a little dangerous and I'm not in great shape. At some point, she gets tired of waiting for me to catch up and says something rude and that she'll see me later. Then she runs off. I tell her to stop and she does, says "why should I?" then turns around and runs away.
I get back to the hotel a few minutes after her and she's already changed into dinner clothes and says, "Hurry up, we'll be late for our reservations." I say I need to take a shower and she says she's not waiting and leaves.
I decide that she doesn't need me there, so I change, pack, pay the hotel bill and leave. The end.
Hmmm. Guess I'm a quitter. On to the next one.
I'm at a big party with lots of friends at a restaurant. We have to pay before we can eat, so we're figuring out the check and one asks how much tip we should leave. I say 15 percent is fine. Another friend says 19, so we don't look cheap. I argue a little that 15 is perfectly acceptable,but everyone now wants 19 so we don't look cheap. I say fine.
As I'm looking through my pockets for my money, everyone slips away into the crowd. I find my cash look up and everyone I came with is gone. I look around the restaurant's main dining room and can't find my group.
So I go outside and look around the back patio. Nope, still don't see them. Everyone has broken into groups of friends. I look around a little more and I notice these groups all have their backs to me. I walk around the front and find that I can only look through the windows of the restaurant now. I see the door, but I don't see any reason to go in if there's no one in there who wants me to be around. So I stand on the front patio and look into the dark past the parking lot and the restaurant's sign. And then i walk away.
Kind of lame. The dreams bother me because in each of them I have the feeling like I've already accepted this. These are memories, not changeable future actions.
Are they just memories? Is it already too late? Maybe. Is there anything I can do?
Well, on one hand, not much. If someone doesn't want to be part of my life anymore I can't really make them stay around. Goodbye and good luck.
However, if I'm pushing people away, that's my fault and I can do something about that. I need to be more aware of how I'm treating people, and I need to make sure I do try to include my friends in my life better. In other words, be more open and make sure that I'm open to them.
