dream - o2o425: my face is a television where i don't have the remote

There's not too much to the dream.  It's full of strangers.  Strangers in a strange house-- okay, it was my grandparents' house --having a strange party. (Okay, maybe the party wasn't that strange; maybe it was a birthday.  But I don't celebrate my birthday.  Haven't for decades.)  Okay, maybe they weren't all strangers--  I recognized Jayme Reynolds, I think  --but in terms of being people from my lived life, they weren't part of me.

They're watching something.  It's probably Severance season 2.  That's what I watched last night before bed.  The idea of someone loving you so much they'd seek you out, even if you couldn't remember them anymore, it sticks in my throat.  And then someone started saying something nice.  Maybe to do with my birthday.  I don't really remember, because the crying jag hits.  With brimming eyes I split the scene.

The not-a-dream parts of this really outweigh the dream itself.  Because my husband was trying to say something nice to me, yesterday, while we were having a shower, and suddenly my face is a television where I don't have the remote, and someone else is flipping through thoughts & emotions, and it's all on my face, and my husband's watching as I lose control, trying to keep from crying.

Faster than he can say, "Are you okay?" I'm turned away and saying "I'm okay," and trying to reassure him.  "What's wrong?"  And all I have to offer is, "I'm crazy," with a dead man's laugh.  And then we're drying off for bed, and I'm struggling to keep it stowed.  Then the jag hits again, a wave taller than all my breakers, and it's back to being a sobbing mess again.

Because I've never felt this specifically isolated in all my adult life.

When we were in the shower, the crying began because I remembered Siegfried holding my hand when I was in the hospital.  Which made me remember every time I went to the hospital for a member of my family.  Which made me remember the last time I saw my grandfather, and the last time I held his hand.  Which leads to me also remembering the first time my grandfather held my hand, as an infant.  Because that's something I remember.

I don't know how many people actually possess pre-verbal memories of infancy & access them.  Is it a common phenomena?  I can't say.  But I remember.  Maybe because I'm me, and my brain is fundamentally, biologically different from the majority of people.  This planet is hard on brains.  And nervous systems.  And consciousnesses.  Anyway, which crying jag was I on?

The second, while in bed, straining to isolate & articulate the specific "trigger" for the sob-shit I was taking all over myself.  Because the emotional blocks I keep in place to function around people, and the world, it's about as effective as putting a cork in one's ass to stop diarrhea.  I have emotions, but I don't vent them the way(s) I used to.  And a great many of these emotions regard how I feel about humanity.

As the problem(s) with my operating system cause my thought processes to flicker & stutter like fluorescents working with a bad ballast, I asked Sig, "Am I different?  I mean, since the accident?"  Because in the three years since, it feels like I've grown very distant from other people.  Like, I find them fascinating.  I love listening to them.  But because I'm me, there isn't much common ground.

Sig held my hand, and said, "No.  You're still yourself.  But I think you... turned a corner.  Like you found a reason to live?  Not like you didn't have one before.  But times were difficult..."  Which is an understatement.  The last few years have been a strain.  I should probably have a shrink.  But I don't.  I have this little box I type on, and this window on a diminished & darkening internet.

Anyway.  After a bit, the sob-shits stopped, and I went to sleep for a little.  Had some dreams.  Had crying jag #3.  Then woke at 4am, as usual, to the solitude of another day grinding at a physically exhausting job I do not like nor have any interest in, amongst people I don't relate to, speaking as little as may be managed.  Maybe before work I'll make a stop at the Wind Phone.

There's a li'l red british phone box in the middle of a field, a few blocks from my workplace.  Like I told Sig last night, I've stopped there twice before.  Once, to apologize to my grandparents for not being there when they passed away.  They were old, I had been hospitalized anyway, and covid was a brush fire in a parched landscape.  I didn't know they were dying.  It's hard to not feel guilty.

The second stop at the Evanston Wind Phone--  do you even know what a Wind Phone is?  I didn't, but my husband did  --I dialed Sam, an old friend from the Auburn years.  I called him to say sorry for re-purposing his death in one of my books.  The guy in my book bore little resemblance, but I knew what I had done, so: I apologized for the possible disrespect.  And for not knowing him better.

Dunno.  Maybe those talks helped.  Certainly seems more helpful than keeping a dream journal.