The Dreamcatcher

I was laying in bed getting to sleep, when for some reason my thoughts turned to Mike Meyer. Not the comedian, but my high school friend who shared my birthday. And from him, it was a short mental leap to his at-the-time best friend, Jeff Dobbelaere.

Which brings me to the point of this little story, something that I'd pondered on my drive home today but neglected to mention earlier, even when I talked with Trisha for half an hour.

I had some very vivid dreams last night. And the sequence is revealing in regard to my psyche.

First, I dreamt I was at some bar and met Amber (recall, the girl Id just spent a few hours talking to in real life) in the crowd. She'd taken my hand and had me follow her, but lost me when I bumped into Jason Wyrwicz.

Now, some background here: I'd known Jason since we were in 4th grade. We were friends in junior high, and then we both ended up displaced from the public school system to Catholic high school together. There, in some sense, it was geographic proximity and shared ostracism that maintained our friendship. Eventually, we both ended up at Northwestern (along with the aforementioned Mike Meyer) and our friendship was again more based on friendship than tortured high school bullshit. We were DJs together, and I did learn a lot from him. I was fucked in the head a bunch, even though I never drank at that time. Just like I had something to prove and lots of anger, but both the proof and the anger were self-directed, I think. Anyway, at some point Jason joined a frat, drank his life away, and I never saw him again except a few times on the street.

Back to my dream.

I was trailing Amber through the crowd when I bump Jason and lose her. I look up - yeah, Jason was inches taller than me - and there he is. And then Jeff showed up too, I guess because my mind placed it back at my high school reunion in June.

Dreamscape shift. Now I'm driving on a winding blacktop driveway amidst green lawns at night. And parked on these laws, all over, are cars. A parking lot for some large indeterminate gathering. And all I need to do is back off the driveway into a parking space and then I'll meet up with Amber again (don't ask, because I don't know)...and I'm unable to hit the brake. My foot cannot press the pedal. The car is going in reverse, out of control, and I scrape one of the parked cars. I require intense focus to mash my foot down on the pedal, from practically outside the car...and it slows but still moves on inexorably. Eventually I grind it down hard and it comes to rest.

The last time I had the recurring dream motif of being unable to brake was three or four years ago when I really felt like I had no control over any aspect of my life. I didn't figure that out until after they'd stopped.

For it to recur now seems to indicate a deep-seated fear of losing my emotional control. I feel like I'm still kinda fucked up in the head.

Plus, I'm so tired right now, I'm starting to feel depressed.