I am driving through what seems like Texas and arrive at the hospital. Most of me has no idea why I have come here, but part of me seems to know where to go. I open an office door and am ushered into an examination room. A few moments later, the door opens and in walks my nurse, Angie. She was scanning my body and mouth with an odd high tech wand. All the while we were both full of smiles, pleasant talk, and beginning to exude that weird sparkly thing that we brought out in each other that felt so good and was often commented on by strangers when we walked the city together.
Angie departs and the Doc comes back to talk about results. This is the dentist and the news is expensive! They found many loose teeth which probably need to be removed. This would result in either more holes in my grill, which would lead to more loose teeth, or some kind of bridgework.
There was a long wait for the next doctor, who finally arrives silently staring at me. I wait, though I am growing very uncomfortable. The doctor begins to say some cryptic things about Angie, her journey to Texas, her attempts to put her past behind her and heal. I start to try to explain that I did not cause these hurts but the phone rings and the doctor says, “you should get that.” I pick up the phone and it is Angie and she is crying. She is really pissed at me and started to yell a little bit – not so much screaming as a raised voice rich with emotion. She was mad that I had come after her. She thought she had made a clean break from most elements of her old life, but I would not stop. Again, I was unable to get a word in to turn this from a string of accusations and declarations into a conversation. Angie blazed on, picking up steam. This single act, my discovering her location and pursuing her, this was just as bad as what happened the first time around.
Angie ran out, and then the dream got a bit weirder. I was suddenly driving a car with dad riding shotgun trying to navigate endless over and underpasses of generic large Texas city. I don’t know why my dad is with me. He wasn’t there before. I can tell that I am in the same dream time/space. The memories of the encounter with Angie are fresh and still I am numb, feeling too many things for any one to stand out and get noticed.
We are driving in traffic and through what seems like the same series of lefts and rights over and under highways. I find an exit I had not noticed before and got us setup in a warehouse district to sleep and let the traffic die down. I woke first and went to get the car. Once I got in the car, the same route I had just walked was suddenly full of workmen and forklifts and boxes. I drove in circles (the same circle actually) over and over looking for a break in the pattern. This was not a simple trip around the block, but in and out of buildings, around tight curves, and down a few short flights of stairs.
That dream cycle died out with no resolution, and still in the same dream time/space, I am suddenly walking in the middle of a race with very few rules. We are on the highway, but people are scaling the sides of the sheer grassy embankment to climb from the sunken highway up to the city proper and off towards whatever the objective here is. I am swept up in the tide to the grass wall and begin to climb. It is very difficult, made even more challenging when I realize that I cannot properly use my hands and feet because I am stuck inside the new sleeping bag liner I made earlier that day (back in real life). Despite the lack of mobility, I do scale the wall, and find myself right outside the hospital from the first portion of this dream.
Thankfully, this is when I wake up. It is 3 AM and I am sweating inside my bag liner inside my bag. After getting the bedding sorted out, I stayed awake for a long time just feeling odd. I did finally manage to get back to bed and either did not dream again, or by some miracle, just don’t remember what I dreamt.
It is amazing how long some things stay with you. It is amazing how things that you thought you had worked out, don’t always stay worked out. I have been talking with a friend who is handling some of his own troubling issues right now and for both of us one of the hardest things to recognize and grapple with is that so many problems do not have “one time” solutions. So many issues you can’t simply face and fix once. You have to keep looking at them and keep grappling with them and keeping fixing them over and over.
I will probably return to this issue for my own sanity if not for both your edification and to receive much needed perspective. But this is about the maximum length most readers desire for a single post, and I probably need to finish reading that book on blogs/social media and the law first as well. (I did change her name for this post…)
I hope you are all still glowing from good food and time spent with your families, genetic or ones made by choice.