Recurring Dream
For the past week, I have had this recurring dream. It’s very short, extremely simple, and every morning after I woke up, it baffled me.
I was standing at the foot of stairs that lead to a house in a neighborhood near where I grew up. It was a neighborhood I was rarely in, except for Trick-Or-Treating. I stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up at the house. It was dark. The stairs to the door seemed endlessly long.
It took me a whole week to understand why I was having that dream.
You see, there is significance to that house in my life. When we were in 5th grade, my best friend and I dressed up as a two-headed monster for Halloween. We thought it was a great idea and, in concept, it was. The problem in becoming a two-headed monster? We had decided to one-up ourselves and also become a three-legged, two headed monster.
You can imagine how awful Trick-Or-Treating while doing the three-legged walk was. Add to that, it was pouring down rain and the white makeup we had painted on our faces was dripping off our chins.
Miserable.
We arrived at this house, the house I had in my dream. This house had an enormously long stairway leading to the front door. There were no lights on, though it wasn’t apparent if that was to signal that no one was home, or if it was dark for spooky decorational purposes. As you can imagine, we loathed the idea of three-legged walking up the stairs.
“Let’s skip this house,” my friend and I decided.
Great minds think alike.
{Get it? We had two heads!}
Bah dum chhhhh.
It was in that moment that I realized I was too old for Trick-Or-Treating. With one decision… in one instant, Trick-Or-Treating was a pain in the ass. I suddenly wondered why the hell I dressed in ridiculous clothes to get candy that was usually crappy anyway and if it wasn’t, I couldn’t eat as much as I wanted, since we had candy rations for the next month.What good is a crapload of candy if you can’t gorge yourself of it and get sick?
{I’m kidding, as a parent now, I totally get it.}
This past week has been fraught with realizations that things aren’t as blissfully awesome as they seemed as a child. Someone I looked up to growing up, someone I placed enormous respect on, let me down and made me feel used, and not for the first time. Clint and I decided to strap our budget super tight, which means saying “No” to the fun things we’d like to do, in exchange for financial responsibility. My mom announced her engagement to her boyfriend. I know my parents have been officially divorced since December and I really was expecting this, but it’s still furthering my realization that my parents aren’t getting back together. My family, the way I knew it growing up, has ceased to exist.
Big things, big realizations.
It’s like standing at the foot of those stairs over and over again. My dream recurred until I came to the realization of why it was happening. The night after figuring out the symbolism behind the stairs, I dreamed of a friend and her husband getting married, her whole wedding party (including their kids) clad in roller skates. Jillian Michaels sat in the front row, cheering them on.
That’s more like it.
My crew and me. What can I say? I was popular!
