Have you ever had a dream hangover? You know, the kind of waking dream when you open your eyes you still palpably resonate with it. You can't shake the strong emotions you were feeling in the dream. And it can sometimes stay with you for hours, or even the duration of the day. And these feelings can be joyous, depressive, incredibly sad, or make you feel as if you are grieving some incredible loss that never happened because as far as you know, everything is just hunky-dory. It can even leave you with a light feeling, a calm serenity of feeling everything is just jim-dandy when your senses tell you otherwise.
Well, yesterday, I woke up with a dream hangover, and not the good kind. I was talking to my recent ex-boyfriend, "Gray Beard," and we were in this strange house I didn't recognize. I saw him in this room. I'm pretty sure it was his. There was a large, oddly shaped water bed and clothes strewn about the place. Gray Beard said, "I want to explain to you why I broke up with you." I was amenable to this, so I said, "Okay."
He then proceeded to give me some lame-ass, piss-poor excuse about how I had rearranged a few items in his home, and tried to clean up. By doing this, I was trying to change him on some deep level. Huh? First off, let me explain one thing: Gray Beard is tidy. Everything in his home had a place and he did not like clutter. He wasn't obsessive compulsive, just very neat. However; reflecting back on the dream, I can see that perhaps I was trying to change something about him in real life. There was a particular way I was wanting and needing him to behave to help soothe my personal fears triggered by the fact that I felt repeatedly marginalized by my ex-in-laws. That was my stuff to deal with, not his and I shouldn't have pushed it off on him.
Nevertheless, this thought process did not occur to me upon awakening because I was still hung over. In the dream I read him the riot act. I was righteously angry and felt I had every right to be. I said to him, "You totally misunderstood me and my intentions. I wasn't trying to change you, I was trying to help." Uh - yeah. In real life, I think I fed myself that same line of crap too. I believe I called him a dumb-ass at this point for being lame. He then said he wished to get back together with me and I protested telling him I couldn't possibly trust him because he completely lacked the ability to communicate.
Now this last accusation was true to life. In the real world, he just stopped talking to me. That was it. After a few days I received a text telling me all my stuff was packed up and on his porch waiting for me to pick it up. There was no explanation offered. No conversation. No let's talk and see what we can work out. He just stopped having anything to do with me and I was left with a mystery. Now THAT can make a person angry, and it did me. Hence, the dream and my anger hangover.
So my day was coated with this yucky "I just had a fight with my ex-boyfriend" feeling. And it did last all day. I talked briefly with Kitten (see my character list on my home page) about it in the morning, That helped somewhat. But mostly I walked around feeling really irritated at Gray Beard particularly because he got the last word; and his last word was hollow, empty nothingness. His silence screamed at me.
I faced the rest of my day pretty well and gave myself a good talking to. No point in letting my day be ruined, and it wasn't. Yet I felt these hangover emotions like you do a headache from a real hangover. You get up and get moving because you either have to go to work, or run an errand, or eat and have a shower, or something. Yet that headache behind your eyes is bugging you. So you pop a couple of aspirin or Tylenol, don your sunglasses, and head out to greet the world hoping no one guesses you are hung over. My aspirin was talking to Kitten and my sunglasses were the prayers I said as I passed Gray Beard's place on the way to work.
I can loosely guess at what I may have inadvertently done to push him away, but I think the thing that angered me wasn't that we broke up, but it was being completely, utterly, and totally disregarded and ignored. As if hadn't ever mattered and never would. It was like I didn't exist for him anymore. I would have preferred a messy fight instead of him just throwing up his hands and slipping into a dark cave of nothingness nursing himself on oblivion. I felt like I was playing pic-a-boo with a 2-year-old. They hide their eyes and think that if they can't see you, then you truly aren't there. Gray Beard's special brand of total apathy toward me was one of the cruelest things one person can do to another. It says, "You don't exist to me; you don't matter. I don't see you so you aren't there." It's very ostracizing and brutish.
So yeah, I had some angry dream hangover yesterday. Perhaps it was a good thing for me to go through that so I could process the break up better and learn something from it. I learned about myself - It's not my job to try and change others, not even if I'm scared. And I learned something about him too. Although his apathy and lack of caring was hurtful, I learned I don't want to spend my life with a man who can't function on the most basic communication level because it pisses me off.
Well, yesterday, I woke up with a dream hangover, and not the good kind. I was talking to my recent ex-boyfriend, "Gray Beard," and we were in this strange house I didn't recognize. I saw him in this room. I'm pretty sure it was his. There was a large, oddly shaped water bed and clothes strewn about the place. Gray Beard said, "I want to explain to you why I broke up with you." I was amenable to this, so I said, "Okay."
He then proceeded to give me some lame-ass, piss-poor excuse about how I had rearranged a few items in his home, and tried to clean up. By doing this, I was trying to change him on some deep level. Huh? First off, let me explain one thing: Gray Beard is tidy. Everything in his home had a place and he did not like clutter. He wasn't obsessive compulsive, just very neat. However; reflecting back on the dream, I can see that perhaps I was trying to change something about him in real life. There was a particular way I was wanting and needing him to behave to help soothe my personal fears triggered by the fact that I felt repeatedly marginalized by my ex-in-laws. That was my stuff to deal with, not his and I shouldn't have pushed it off on him.
Nevertheless, this thought process did not occur to me upon awakening because I was still hung over. In the dream I read him the riot act. I was righteously angry and felt I had every right to be. I said to him, "You totally misunderstood me and my intentions. I wasn't trying to change you, I was trying to help." Uh - yeah. In real life, I think I fed myself that same line of crap too. I believe I called him a dumb-ass at this point for being lame. He then said he wished to get back together with me and I protested telling him I couldn't possibly trust him because he completely lacked the ability to communicate.
Now this last accusation was true to life. In the real world, he just stopped talking to me. That was it. After a few days I received a text telling me all my stuff was packed up and on his porch waiting for me to pick it up. There was no explanation offered. No conversation. No let's talk and see what we can work out. He just stopped having anything to do with me and I was left with a mystery. Now THAT can make a person angry, and it did me. Hence, the dream and my anger hangover.
So my day was coated with this yucky "I just had a fight with my ex-boyfriend" feeling. And it did last all day. I talked briefly with Kitten (see my character list on my home page) about it in the morning, That helped somewhat. But mostly I walked around feeling really irritated at Gray Beard particularly because he got the last word; and his last word was hollow, empty nothingness. His silence screamed at me.
I faced the rest of my day pretty well and gave myself a good talking to. No point in letting my day be ruined, and it wasn't. Yet I felt these hangover emotions like you do a headache from a real hangover. You get up and get moving because you either have to go to work, or run an errand, or eat and have a shower, or something. Yet that headache behind your eyes is bugging you. So you pop a couple of aspirin or Tylenol, don your sunglasses, and head out to greet the world hoping no one guesses you are hung over. My aspirin was talking to Kitten and my sunglasses were the prayers I said as I passed Gray Beard's place on the way to work.
I can loosely guess at what I may have inadvertently done to push him away, but I think the thing that angered me wasn't that we broke up, but it was being completely, utterly, and totally disregarded and ignored. As if hadn't ever mattered and never would. It was like I didn't exist for him anymore. I would have preferred a messy fight instead of him just throwing up his hands and slipping into a dark cave of nothingness nursing himself on oblivion. I felt like I was playing pic-a-boo with a 2-year-old. They hide their eyes and think that if they can't see you, then you truly aren't there. Gray Beard's special brand of total apathy toward me was one of the cruelest things one person can do to another. It says, "You don't exist to me; you don't matter. I don't see you so you aren't there." It's very ostracizing and brutish.
So yeah, I had some angry dream hangover yesterday. Perhaps it was a good thing for me to go through that so I could process the break up better and learn something from it. I learned about myself - It's not my job to try and change others, not even if I'm scared. And I learned something about him too. Although his apathy and lack of caring was hurtful, I learned I don't want to spend my life with a man who can't function on the most basic communication level because it pisses me off.
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