About twenty years ago, I was driven to a counselor by my mother and father. I enjoyed talking about myself with him as I still do, only with you now. It’s really the only thing I know ~ me. I can’t talk so thoroughly about anything else. And if I don’t talk about me, people might not fully understand soon enough. Anyway, I enjoyed talking about myself with this counselor fella as I do with you.
Among other diagnostic probes, he asked if I have any recurring dreams or nightmares. And I did. It stopped when I was younger ~ I dunno, eight or so. It haunts me today. It interests me today. It’s brief and vivid.
When the nightmare begins, I’m standing next to the railroad tracks in the darkest, quietest hour of night. Alone. A startling panic ensues when the train rumbles immediately in front of me ~ not at the slow pace city folk is used to, but the bone-quaking stampede of rusty iron that roars through New Cambria. In an instant, the train goes horizontal to vertical. Increasing the roar and without loss of speed, the train is racing for the heavens. As it passes, I see the blank stares of its passengers. No emotion, subdued, like caged cattle. Rattling cage after cage, I watch blank faces be stolen to a black nothing above.
The feeling I remember while standing next to the tracks is that I was supposed to do something, like I was supposed to do something to help those people. And, given the impossibility of the situation, I was absolutely helpless. Even though it was impossible, I still felt responsible, like I’d let those people down.
Shit, I don’t know what the dream’s about. We lived a half-block away from the tracks when I was little. I was probably just slightly awakened by a train passing by in the night, which would explain why it was recurring ~ it happened almost every night. And since I was a raving insomniac throughout adolescence, the reason the nightmare stopped was because I was either wide awake or in some crashing slumber.
Or maybe the nightmare was when this fixation started. The one where I think other people’s lives and their well-being are hitched to mine. The one where I think I can muscle and grind things into changing. The one that defeats me each time something doesn’t change.
She said, “You need to let go of that.”
“What?”
“The idea that people’s lives depend on your being there.”
I nodded in stark realization. I thought I’d thought everything through about me. I thought I knew all there was to know about me. But I hadn’t. How can I get over this notion that people’s lives are directly dependent on my presence or absence? It’s a terrible way to live. I don’t know if it’s the answer to the cleaning the muck outta my well-being, but it’s pretty fuckin’ important.
When people get too close, I tend to keep them at a distance. If I’ve accidentally let them get too close, I really begin pushing them away. Is this my way of avoiding the irrational nightmare of not being able to help them? When it’s not my help that they want, but rather just my companionship, my intimacy, or my good nature? What an idiot.
And I’ve been wondering lately why I do push people away, particularly the ones to whom I’m closest.
And the train rolls on.
I woke up this morning and saw my old friends Matty G and McCatty were my newest Facebook friends. A trip back to some good ol’ days of grinding and drinking my way through college. I was pretty happy then as I am now and equally distraught as I’ve always been. Ahh, for fuck’s sake.
Ya know, another counselor was making checkmarks next to questions a pharmaceutical company was urging him to ask. He asks, “Do you ever think about suicide?”
So I says to this guy, “Yeah, but, ya know, no more than I think about, like, sandwiches. Got me?” Ain’t no way, son. At the end of the day, when the moon peeks between two clouds or I spot a raccoon’s night vision stalking me from afar or I share a hearty laugh with chums about some childish shit, I’m still all about this life.
Wow, another non-typically Kansas, cool, July day. I’ll be outside.
