(Note: this post is more than a little incoherent. I had woken only minutes before, and had only had a couple of hours of sleep. The HE/HIM etc. refers to the villain of the dream, in case that wasn't clear.)
Would you?
You wake up a 3:40 a.m. and feel refreshed, unbelieving that it's only been a couple of hours since you fell back asleep. Why not? You've been living in real time for half a day over in the sleep world. You aren't tired.
Would you stay home if the dream was so vivid, so real. If it ended with the only possible ending, you being very nervous because there was no where to go and death was likely? (And maybe it ended because you don't know what happened after you died?)
Would you stay home if, during the dream, as you climbed a ladder and rued not staying home, no matter how silly it seemed, you could remember, in the dream, everything you dreamt last night? In other words, in the middle of this dream, where you've just had to say good-bye to your dad for a long while, and he KNOWS there is something wrong, and you can see how angry he is not to be able to help you, and there you are now, climbing up the ladder to be completely in their world - the abductor's world, remembering how the last night you dreamt all of this already, especially the part with the ladder.
And you think, in your dream, isn't it funny how many times your odder dreams have come true? And you think, still in your dream, sick because you know they know where your dad lives, WHY didn't you just stay home? What was so important that you had to go in today?
It's not possible to have a dream come true exactly like the one I had just now. My parents don't live apart. My dad doesn't have a girlfriend, and if he did, it wouldn't be the mom of one of my students. (And that student didn't come to me yesterday and complain about my dad leaving her mom... although, come to think of it, she did talk to me about something else, and she almost never does that. Talks to me, that is.)
I was on Sahara, I think, and some big cross street, in the dream. Or maybe I was on DI. This guy was going nuts at the intersection. He shot a woman's head off two cars up. He comes to my window and he yells at me but somehow I'm not picked. I get away, but I see in the rearview mirror that his real prey now has her head blown off. It's someone I was just talking to. And I think, "I guess now I don't have to take her check to (I forget who)," which has something to do with the previous dream and now I'm carrying two checks to... for... I don't remember. I think they were $10 each. And I said I'd write one for $10 too because... something snarky.... I don't recall.
I don't know what happens next. Maybe I've forgotten this part or maybe it's just a bad transition. (Shame on me and my lack of logical dissolves.)
There are three of them, or should I say one of HIM and two of his many followers. I'm in the room with another woman - I don't know her well. We're both captives but not bonding. The phone comes to me - I am supposed to call my mom then my dad. HE has certain ideas about respect and doing what is right. I have already decided to try to please him, show deference... I calculate that I will start nodding slightly now and again as if, YEAH, what he's saying IS a fundamental truth. I get it now. I'm only getting out of this by getting way in.
I don't understand his phone. It has so many buttons. But he's very patient with showing me it. I joke gently about not having a proper cell phone myself and being a bit stupid about these things. (Alas, true.) I call Mom first. Now the dream is fading and I can't remember if she knows or doesn't that something is wrong.
Then I have to call Dad. I don't know how, but now I'm with Dad. He lives in a little motel room. But, I heard he had at least a suite? With the girlfriend and her kids? Oh no, that's over. (He likes the girlfriend. Her teenagers, unrelated people I know in real life who are very sweet, have been a bit much for him.) I want to open the room's closet. (I don't remember why now.) He doesn't want me to. He says it is messy. I say, "it's because everything's gone, isn't it?" He says, "I'm going to sue them." We both know he's not going to sue whoever he was paying to store his worldly goods. I think of the theft of my storage unit contents years ago and sigh - I should've known that the rest would somehow, eventually disappear. You can't hold on to everything. (Dad's worldly goods, in my dream-mind, include all of the childhood/family stuff that's with my parents now.)
We're in chairs and I'm trying to make him feel how much I love him, but I know HE is listening on the phone. (Even though Dad and I are together in person.) As I talk, I put a finger to my lips and shake my head slowly. Dad understands the signal immediately. I didn't just show up to say all of this without a reason. This is when he looks ready to burst with anger - he can't do anything and risk getting me killed.
Right about then, one of HIS minions shows up, a female, and I have to play along that my ride is here. We leave and I see the other car, the one with the guys who will watch my Dad's house and make sure he doesn't do anything. I know he will do something, and I just hope he does it away from an open window or tapped line. I wish I'd never put my finger to my lips.
It's a car. It's a plane. It's a strange evolving thing with a ladder. I have the thoughts I discussed above. I'm mad at myself for not staying home like the dream I'm now living warned me. I turn around and there are chairs, minions, kitchenette?, and HIM. We're traveling. He's not stupid. Maybe he already knows that I betrayed him and that any agreement to his madness on my part will just be calculated for my eventual escape. He has all of the power and this is not going to end well. Why didn't I just. stay. home. ?
***
I've been up for 30 minutes. I feel as alert as I did then, when I hopped up and checked the clock and even looked outside because it didn't seem like night. For 29 minutes, after I paced and while I typed, I was sure I'd put in for a sub (it's not like I don't still have a nasty cough - no voice at all by mid-day yesterday), go in early, set up the lesson plans (too many subs don't bother to listen to the recording or check the website when they get the assignment), then come back.
Even now I don't doubt the strength of the dream or the wisdom in obeying it. But, time is a funny thing. What if the dream is really talking about Monday? Maybe fate cannot be avoided?
Or what if it will all go down when I go in early? A case of doing something to avoid a fate and instead walking straight into it?
Now, I keep thinking of the kid I wrote up earlier this week. I don't know him well - he's only been here a few days after getting kicked out of his last school. The first day he was here, right before Spring Break, I didn't see him until the end of the day. He hadn't been in class that day because he was in the dean's office, being suspended, so I wouldn't see him again until the end of the week.
Like the guy in my dream, he's big, he's black, he's charismatic, and he seems smart. The guy in my dream was much older, though.
When I wrote this student up, it was the kid's third day in my class. (He came back one day after the suspension, tardy, and disrupted my other kids all period as they sweated to turn in the big quarter project due that day, then we had spring break, then he was absent, then he came back on this day.) He jabbered to a seatmate all through my presentation, but not about anything to do with the notes we were taking. (Fair enough, others were talking, but it was spurred by reactions to the PPT slides.) I had to ask him to take his hat off three times. He, in the calm voice of a guy who believes he has all of the control (like the guy in my dream, who knew he did), told me to just "chill out."
I would've written him up during class, but the presentation was a tight fit, and I decided it would be less of a time loss/distraction to everyone else if I just asked him to be quiet over and over (we're talking full monologues here, not side comments) as needed and not if I stopped the presentation and did the full write-up.
After class, he stayed while I wrote the referral, but he kept trying to talk me out of it. (It didn't help that he kept saying he just had "a little business to conduct" with the guy next to him.) I tried to stay upbeat, told him that it was because I cared and wanted to call in the pros (the deans) so we could all work together and get him on the right track so he could be successful at our school. All the way to the deans' office I kept this up, complimenting him with one side of my mouth and outlining problems/possible resolutions with the other. We got there, and he refused to go in. He turned to go to lunch. I verbally stopped him and said that he needed to go into the deans' office now. He refused and turned away. I was about to lose him in the crowd. Thankfully (a million times over), a dean came around the corner and I grabbed her/him. (Let's stay vague.) "Hey, I've got someone here who needs to be in there (point) but instead is trying to go there (point)." That's me, Captain Articulate.
S/he asked the student to enter the deans' office. He kept up the charm, saying he had to eat lunch. S/he didn't smile. "I've asked you once. This is my second request."
He didn't smile any more either. In he went, a different person. The jig was up.
I turned in the paperwork, bantered with the secretary, and remembered to turn in another piece of paperwork. I said something (now forgotten) meant to be cheery-yet-stern to the student, now in the waiting room, something that is meant to convey the hope of a team-oriented solution and lack of personal dislike but at the same time brooks no nonsense that his behaviour needs to change. (I often wonder if sometimes I'm so soft and laughable because I know how hard I can be and how difficult it is to undo the damage.) "Whatever," he replies. I (idiot) take it in stride with a similar comment. "Whatever." All of his charm is gone.
I retrieve his paperwork to add all of this. I really don't ever want to see this guy again. He's gone the next day (Wed) and then Thursday I see my copy of the paperwork in my box. Suspended. I don't know how long, because he still hasn't been added to my class database so I can't check future attendance.
Other than seeing the finished paperwork yesterday, I didn't think about the kid again after the trip to the office. Not until a few seconds after I woke up this morning.
(If I had the time, I'd be mad that someone who was kicked out of one school, came to ours, was suspended on his first day, then comes back for a day, misses the next school day, and then is suspended again the day he comes back is still even in our system. There is a problem here. It's not going to be cured by another vacation from school.)
I need to go get ready if I'm going to go in early and put in the plans. I'm not sure what time the building opens; hopefully I won't have to wait around. Hopefully I'm not doing something silly. No, wait: hopefully I am.
Here's weirdness: at no time in the dream did Mike even enter my thoughts.
I don't like any of this.
I'm being an idiot.
The kids were just going to read today, anyway.
My throat is still sore.
And I'm popping ibuprofen since yesterday because of a wisdom tooth flare-up.
Personal illness, definitely.
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