An odd two-part dream last night. In the first part, friends haven’t heard from me for a week or more contact my brother, who has keys to the house, and they come in to find me . . . well, not dead, as I (and they) expected, but gone.
My car is missing too.
They soon learn that I have disappeared, vanished, fallen off the grid and gone Elsewhere with no notice to anyone.
They are shocked. Was I running from the law? Was I in witness protection? Had I left to start a new life? Had I been kidnapped—and if so, why in the world, since I’m not worth anything monetarily?
In the dream, Mom has died some months earlier, and I didn’t have a dog or anyone who depended on me for their survival. I think I have stopped newspaper and mail and cut off cable TV and utilities, and emptied my meager bank account. Yet no goodbyes to my dearest friends, my clients, my family. Not a hint that this was in the offing. No clues left as to my whereabouts.
A few months after my disappearance, I leave a cryptic, unsigned, untraceable comment in Indigo Bunting’s blog that tells her (and probably no one else) that it’s me, which sets her into a frenzy for a while until it’s obvious there’s nothing anyone can do to get me back. But at least she knows I’m alive and seemingly safe and sound.
I wake up a bit, and try to think why I have dreamed this scenario. Is it a reaction to stress in my life? I certainly wish from time to time that I could run away, but the vast majority of my stressors are internal, and when you run away, the one person you don’t get to run away from is yourself. I value my friendships almost more than anything on earth, and I love my work and my clients, so leaving them without a word doesn’t make sense. Do I want to gauge their reaction, to see how they would feel if I disappeared or died, to see how they really felt about me? But I think I know how they feel, honestly. I’m really quite secure in that.
I go back to sleep, and have part two of the dream. I’m somewhere out west, or west-ish, not necessarily the True West, as I call it, but west of here. I see myself looking at my surroundings with an odd expression, a face that is not exactly blank, but certainly one without any strong emotions like wonder or relief or anxiety or desperation or freedom or exploration. I look vague, and vaguely confused, as if I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing or where I’m going, and I’m not having much fun.
Funny, I couldn’t interpret it until I just wrote it down. It’s a general feeling of being directionless, a little rootless. Once Mom dies and my sense of immediate Purpose fades away, I’m afraid I’ll find myself without meaning to my life, on a vague search, but without knowing quite what I’m looking for.
Though I don’t like the part about leaving everyone I love behind. I don’t like that one bit. Maybe it’s my fear that I won’t be able to be where my friends are, and won’t be able to take them with me, and I’ll end up this solitary little tortoise.
I’d like to wake up now, please.
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