Ever have a dream where you wake up crying? It's probably only happened to me two or three times in my life, but each time the feeling is the same; intense, nightmarishly augmented despair. Even after you wake up, during those first few minutes of renewed consciousness, you lie in the darkness steeped in a melancholy so complete that you wonder whether the dream had actually happened. The sadness clings to you even though reason tells you the cause wasn't real. Wasn't it though? Even when feeling something in a dream, you still feel it. You've only imagined the circumstance that created the feeling, not the feeling. The emotion you felt in response to the stimulus was genuine.
In my dream I had traveled back home to New York, to visit my family. It was a surprise and I hadn't told anyone I was coming. After a series of misadventures on public transit, baleful snowstorms and a decimated subway tunnel, I finally made it to the front door. When I'd arrived no one was home, save for my 19-year-old, deaf, albino cat. He came to greet me and I pet him happily. I inventoried my old home, to measure how it had changed in my absence. There was the distinct feeling of being an intruder, a stranger trespassing where I no longer belonged. I felt like a ghost come back to haunt a place that once had meaning to me, but which I was forever estranged from by time. Soon I heard the familiar voice of my sister traveling through the hallway and up the stairs. She was talking to the dogs and opening the door. I ran and shut myself in my old room, to hide myself from the dogs, one of which I had never met. He was rumored to be aggressive, mean. My efforts were in vain though, and smelling my ghostly scent, the dogs immediately approached the door to my room, indicating the presence of a burgling buffoon.
I was uncovered and there was much merriment and excitation. The dogs played at my feet and smiled and wagged their tails ferociously. I bent down and began petting my old dog, who rolled in my affections like a tickled child. It was then that I realized the dog I was petting was the new dog. My dog, the one I knew, looked at me bitterly, and with anger. He bit me softly on the hand to communicate his disapproval of me. An awful feeling swelled in my heart and I reached out to touch him, to try and explain that I had made a mistake, that I had been away too long. This was his message, also. I had been away so long that his heart had hardened. He had to abandon hope of my return and find solace and companionship in a beast of a dog. The beast had gained all the beauty of my former friend while my dog had rusted, inheriting all of his ugliness. Wicked sorrow began wrenching from deep in my chest. No, no, this is not what I had intended, I tried to tell him. I foolishly expected him to wait patiently for my return without considering the loneliness I had inflicted on his soul. Resentment growled from his lips and his teeth shone as he stared lovelessly into my face. Anguish gripped me as I felt the depth of the sorrow which had ravaged and warped his heart.
Tears fell from my eyes and a feeling of helplessness and regret coursed through me like an electric drum. I'd become an energizer bunny of remorse. A hysterical kind of sadness took hold of me and I wept without restraint. Just before I woke I saw tears in his eyes, too, which doubled my dysphoria.
The lesson, I think, is that one should not expect love to remain in absence. It does not make the heart grow fonder. Hearts are not to be held over the head of another; they cannot safely be kept. If love has taught us nothing, it is that it waits for no one.
No comments:
Post a Comment