Dare to Dream and Be Crushed

Complete defeat weighed on me this weekend after I had another failed round with the recalcitrant part on the AcMo shop car.  I made insignificant progress, but I did manage to create new areas and levels of soreness throughout my arms and backside due to the unorthodox and quite uncomfortable working position required.  I suppose my subconscious had decided to predispose me to failure after that.

Early this morning I had a dream that turned into a terrifying nightmare.  I tried to scream for help, but my mouth wouldn’t work.  I fought so hard to wake myself from the mental torture, but my mind was insistent on punishing me and refused to allow me to wake.  This wasn’t the usual dream of being chased by psycho clowns (they don’t scare me) or unusually large spiders (they scare me when they are on me) type of nightmare, but instead an emotional attack for which I am was defenseless.

One of my long-time friends popped into my head this morning.  When we first met I didn’t like her because I thought she had a bad attitude.  She displayed a sharp wit that she was quick to deploy on fools.  It almost wasn’t fair to others.  Her cunning deviousness cratered many stout minds over the years as well.  I recall the Pixy Stix incident in which the victim’s bedroom was turned into a pop-up candy store.  That was far more entertaining to us than doing homework.  It didn’t take me long to realize that my initial dislike of her was because we have similar personalities.  Once I realized that, we became fast friends with what I believed at the time to be an unbreakable bond.  She was always the first one I called when I had a soft target upon which I needed to exact revenge.  She could come up with an effective and simple plan that would do maximum damage.  I’ve given up the revenge days, but we had fun at the time.

She used to make Hungarian pinwheel cookies and share some of them with me.  I loved these cookies and always looked forward to receiving them around the holidays.  We have drifted apart somewhat over the years, and now I don’t get the cookies.  There are a plethora of other reasons we are friends, but my selfish stomach particularly liked that perk.  I’ve tried finding replacements, but none of the other cookies taste as good as hers, so I’m left to wait, hope, and pray (you have your deities, and I have mine coated with powdered sugar) for a batch that never materializes.  At one time I thought she could have been my soul mate—not because of the cookies—but I was wrong.  I would bet that people have based their proclamations of soul mates on qualities far more trivial than baking skill.  Independent of what I thought and what I thought I wanted, we had and still have a strange connection that I can’t explain.

I do my best to avoid thinking about her because it is painful.  I still remember the day I awoke and told myself there would never be anything more between us than what we already had.  Time and distance apart made what should have been obvious to me from the beginning quite clear on that morning.  I think I had refused to accept reality because reality sucks.  I was surprised that forcing myself to accept the truth didn’t sting as much as I would have thought.  What did sting was the phone call I received from her within minutes of waking that day.  She had called to tell me that she was pregnant with her first child.  It was as if she knew I had given up and she wanted me to know I had made the right decision because her life was on a diverging path.

The nightmare I had early this morning involved her.  It started out as a pleasant dream.  I was minding my own business when she appeared and said that she had important things to discuss with me.  She started by saying that she had made a mistake, and that she saw a future for us as a couple.  This may sound innocuous enough to you, but you had to be there to get the full effect.  I knew the situation was wrong, but my mind wouldn’t let me change the channel.  I tried to explain that she was better off without me, and that I was not good for her and not at all what she needed.  She wouldn’t listen.  I tried to run but my feet wouldn’t move.  I was trapped and it terrified me.  She played the manipulative devil trying to lure me into something I knew wasn’t acceptable and it took all of my willpower to abstain.

I was stuck in a dream that had turned into a nightmare, and I couldn’t escape or wake myself.  Everything turned when the monsters appeared.  That was the final straw.  My fear ramped up to an unsafe level and I was finally able to startle myself from my painful slumber, but the tortured memory remained.  This was a Monday full of defeat from the moment it started.

Just like all of those other monumental moments in our strange and long friendship, she contacted me this morning not long after I stumbled out of my slumber.  Once again it was as if she knew I had a dream about her and she was compelled to taunt me by reminding me how amazing she is and that we were never meant to be together.  The only thing that makes sense is that I must be transmitting signals to her over great distances in my sleep or that she is somehow intercepting signals that aren’t intended for her.  I am afraid I might need to start wearing my signal protector while sleeping to prevent this from happening in the future.  It’s hard to focus on anything else when she pops into my head.  AcMo refuses to run itself, so I need my thoughts to be here and on the mission at all times.

I don’t know how to shake this feeling.  Sometimes it just seems like there is an external force that is only interested in mocking me and causing me to fail.  Even when I push these thoughts behind the wall, they crash through at random and inopportune times.  I think I need to use a memory wipe or two so that I can make a fresh start to this week because I don’t want the theme for the end of 2014 to be defeat.  Is this the calm before the storm, or the darkest hour before the dawn, or something worse?  I need a Hungarian pinwheel cookie to get this bad taste out of my mouth right now.