September 27, 2007
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dreams of uncertainty
5:55 AM. A strange time.
I awoke this morning with my head tilted at a strange angle, my eyes pointing straight at my alarm clock.
Precisely 5:55. The last of the tri-part times. You’ll never see a 6:66 unless you are on an acid trip. And precisely 5 minutes from the next hour too. An altogether unique time of the day. That’s when I awoke.
And with the waking came an overwhelming and disturbing feeling. The feeling that I am about to make a terrible terrible mistake.
It threw me. I’ve rarely felt anything remotely resembling such a vivid sense of trepidation and discomfort. I got up paced around for a while trying to shake the feeling but it won’t go away. All day, until now when I can’t help but write about it. Somehow, in some way, I feel as if the something terrible is going to happen in my immediate future and it’s going to be all my fault.
Wait. Stop. Think rationally about this. It is impossible to know the future. Well, maybe not impossible, but I certainly have never exhibited any signs of clairvoyance or divination. It seems unlikely that I developed any such powers right now. So if I am feeling fear it must be because of something that will happen that I can rationally or irrationally predict. Some conflict that I either know is going to come to pass on some level or I fear is going to come to pass and have some convincing reasons for having that fear even if it is irrational.
The most likely explanation then is that I had some sort of a dream and in that dream I imagined the future consequences of decisions I am already in the process of making, decisions that are about to come to fruition and in my dream I imagined that the consequences were terrible enough that they disturbed me. The only problem is, I don’t remember the dream. I don’t know what it is that I am afraid of. I only know that I am afraid.
Or maybe I do know but I am just afraid to really face it. There are a lot of changes happening or about to happen in my life right now. Any of them could be the thing that is likely to lead to the terrible future I dreamed of.
But I don’t want to think about that stuff. I don’t want to imagine that I might lose or harm some part of my life that I don’t want to lose.
I could veer off I suppose. I could decide right now to abandon all of the decisions I was planning on making and reject all the choices I’ve chosen and just try to do something totally different and unpredicted and unpredictable. I sometimes make random choices to follow my instincts even in cases where others would just follow along.
Who am I kidding? I’ve already decided these things. I’ve already put the balls in motion and I’ve already made the commitments. I won’t back down now. I can’t. I made these choices because I thought they would help me in some way to learn more about myself, to become more than I am now. Maybe whatever it is that I am fearing is a part of that goal, a necessary step along the way. To give up now before I have even begun would make me feel far worse about myself. Far worse.
So to be true, I was wrong about the feeling that I had after I awoke this morning. It wasn’t a feeling that I am about to make a big mistake, rather it should correctly be described as the feeling that I have *already* made one or more big mistakes and I am about to find out the consequences of those mistakes and I am not going to like them.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the future will all be candycanes and lollypops. Only I hate candycanes and I’m not a big fan of lollypops. So for me it could be things I love: all video games and writing prompts. Maybe. Maybe.
There’s no point dwelling on it. I guess I just have to wait and see what the future holds. I’ll do the best that I can to move myself forward as quickly and carefully as possible so I can get past whatever discomfort the future might hold and become that future me I’ve always wanted to be.
