I have this recurring dream. Actually, most of my dreams are recurring. I'm the type to obsess over something; replaying it endlessly in my head, never satisfied with how it turns out. But I digress...
So, I had this dream last night. In this dream, I am just turning 21. I'm out drinking with my friends, getting utterly wasted, but I'm miserable. The more I drink, the more depressed I feel and the more self-loathing I feel (familiar territory, there...). Somehow I manage to get back to my apartment and I pass out on my bed. As I drop on the mattress, my last thoughts are about how many regrets I have and how pathetic my life is.
I wake up (in the dream) and it's 7 years earlier. I'm in my old bed at my mom's house. I FREAK the fuck OUT. Apparently, my mind has leaped backwards in time by 7 years, back to the day after my 14th birthday.
I won't bore you with the dull minutia, but essentially, the plot is that I have to relive high school. Only this time I have the brain of my 21 year old self, all grown up and self-knowledgeable. I get to do things "the right way." I say all of the things I've always wished I had said, I do all of the things I regret never doing. And it feels FAN-TAS-TIC.
Until things start to go wrong. Like the main character in any time-travel story, I start getting cocky. I try to abuse my knowledge of the future. Of course, as soon as I start doing that, events begin to diverge from what I "remember." Everything spirals out of my control and some pretty terrible things end up happening. All because of me.
It's one of those moral-of-the-story type dreams.
My dream-self learns that trying to manipulate people is wrong and that I should have appreciated the way my life turned out the first time. The dream progresses to me graduating, my life completely different from how I meant it to turn out. I'm an emotional wreck. I ruin my chance to meet my (future) fiance, I lose a lot of friends, and the entire course of my future is heading into uncharted territory (resulting in a paralyzing fear). I can't get anything back the way I think they should be and I've become hopelessly lost in sorrow.
I go to sleep on the night of my 18th birthday contemplating suicide and...wake up 21 again. It had all been a dream (within the dream). ((Oooh, how meta!)) My lesson learned, I can now go about enjoying life to the fullest and living free of regrets.
Wow, my subconscious is preachy. Thank goodness not all my dreams are like that. Yuck.
But, my brain has a point. And it is an attitude I do try to maintain. Sure, not everything has gone the way I would have wanted, but every step I've taken has led me to where I am today. Even the steps that seemed like I was wandering aimlessly. Even though I really hate those corny moral-at-the-end stories, I guess I can appreciate that my brain is trying to tell me to ease up on myself. No need to keep kicking myself over "could've-beens." It's just not worth wasting my time on.
Thanks, brain. I love you, too.
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