Nostalgia in my dreams

Kristin Woolley was a favorite close friend. It feels tragic that our friendship didn’t survive and that our families could not be friends, but an even greater tragedy is that I don’t care—despite what my brain thinks.

It was only a dream

I haven’t thought about Kristin in years, but last night I woke up in the middle of a dream charged with sadness. In the dream Kristin looked different. In fact, she was a completely different person, but as it happens in dreams I knew it was her. It wasn’t the dream itself that woke me. It was the heavy feelings of loss.

It was late and I spent the night sitting in a recliner reading or planning until the early hours of the morning. I felt eager to be on my way the next morning, and I almost missed saying good-bye to her, but she woke up just as I was leaving and walked me to my car. Unlike other dreams where I experience the dream in the first-person, in this dream I was a god-figure looking down from above. I was privy to my feelings, and my thoughts and I could feel the anxiety building up wanting to continue on my journey.

About half way through the dream, I was paralized with a need to intervene and tell myself (whom I was looking down upon) “slow down, don’t be in such a hurry to go.” The thing that I wanted most to share with the thid-person version of myself was that the friendship would not survive.

“Slow down and make eye contact Marty. Pay attention to the tone of Kristin’s voice, and the smile on her face.” I didn’t, and the friendship was over the minute I drove away. That feeling of knowing that the friendship was over woke me.

I don’t really care

Five years ago I ran into Kristin’s Facebook profile and I immediately blocked her just as I blocked and unfriended everyone that remotely connected me to Texas. So, what buffer did my brain find to trigger a dream about someone that I don’t think of and can barely remember.

The next few hours after waking up I was overcome with the loneliness from the late 90s/2000s. Though I didn’t care so much for the dream, the feelings reminded me that it has been almost a year since I have felt lonely, sad, happy, content or any other emotion that I am familiar with. I am almost always numb. Not even music affects me like it use to. I am tired.

When I wrote this, I was listening to this:

There is a scene in the official music video where an older woman touches an older (drunk) man’s hand while she sings “quisieras andar conmigo.” Somethin gabout it has always seemed so tender to me. I missed this song.