dreams

I feel like the one of the reasons I don’t write on this blog anymore is that I feel a stronger need to process what I feel in a more private way where I don’t feel I need to abstract all of my feelings in order to develop some sense of catharsis. I share this blog with enough close friends where if I added any details to my writing they would immediately know what or who I was referring to. I find that there’s something distinctly more effective about writing “I had a dream about X yesterday, who I haven’t talked to since Y” versus “I had a dream about someone I don’t talk to anymore.”

Anyways, I woke up at 2:41 AM from a dream I had about someone I don’t talk to anymore. Immediately, I pulled out my phone and started playing “Don’t Wanna Live Forever” because that was the first song that came into mind to capture my feelings. It’s not that that song had any particular sentimental attachment to this person, but I really liked the idea of not wanting to live, especially if someone else isn’t there. Then I scribbled down some notes about how I dreamed about needing a tattoo from this person, and how she drew it from my shoulder to my hand, which I also needed her to remove because I didn’t want any design that would not be covered by my dress shirts. Super weird dream.

I’m sure you could find some meaning in this dream. I’m not really searching for any beyond how silly it is that my professional anxieties surrounding how my boss might discover my tattoos seem to also have space in my dreams. Usually, I would take some time afterward to figure out what I was feeling, but instead, I pulled out a printed earnings call transcript from Bloomberg and began highlighting all the commentary I thought was relevant to get back to a client request later. I guess that’s adult life.

A couple of nights later, at 3:43 AM, I woke to a different dream. I also talked to a different girl I haven’t spoken to in a while and congratulated her on something (intentionally redacted, but very important within the dream). I wasn’t sure of the exact contents of our conversation, but I just remember bumping into her in a bathroom and chatting with her about a series of topics (not redacted, just forgot). We were able to laugh some stuff off about our past in a way I’m not too convinced we could do in real life. Not because anything traumatic happened, just because our intense connection just exists in the past now.

I used to hate having dreams like these because it just highlights how much my life has changed since I’ve been intimate with these people, but lately, I’ve started to appreciate these dreams for what they really are: an honest reflection of my feelings of loss.

In some ways, I find that dreams can be tremendously cathartic spaces, where I am able to rehash out some emotions I wasn’t sure I was feeling in an environment that is entirely authentic with how I continue to be affected by people in my past. In the conscious world, I have become more-or-less better at rejecting how I feel in the spirit of productivity. But the emotions that I feel after the dream — the bittersweet regret and longing — highlight how rare certain relationships were in my life, especially in retrospect, and how moving forward in my life means that losing another intimate side of myself I had with someone.

Different periods of my life have different coping mechanisms. During it was college, it was mostly writing because it’s the most accessible medium of creation at any given moment of time. I feel like I’ve gotten significantly less creative now after graduating college. Now that I have a Bloomberg Terminal, I guess my new favorite coping mechanism is reading 10-K’s and earnings call transcripts.

I don’t really like this phase in my life. It’s fine. I’m trying really hard to make it fine. I really want to like this phase in my life, but there’s something still lacking about it. I’m not sure if I feel as beautiful as I did before. I need a little more time to hash out some things before I reach a time in my life where I have to accept my life for what it is.