Dreams can be entertaining, one minute you are hanging from a cliff and the next you are back in your 6th grade class. Or they can be sexual in nature, that desire to be the hunter chasing your prey. Maybe the prey itself tearing through the forest feeling the beat of your heart in your chest as the trees fly by, the hunter always there around every corner. Or dreams can be something more.
Maybe that thing you needed to hear from somebody or maybe, just maybe that thing you needed to hear from yourself.
I'm gonna try to remember this dream in detail, as I just woke up from it 30 mins ago. I don't remember a lot of my dreams just small details of them. Maybe single emotions they elicit from me, anger, sadness, fear, confusion possibly but this one was different. I woke up with a sense of peace. Maybe happiness. I really don't know.
I left a job a while ago, probably 8 years now at a factory in my hometown. It was a good job and I didn't really want to leave it but it was closing and I knew it. The company wouldn't come out and say they were closing but I had seen the " writing on the wall" so I left after 15 years. One of the hardest things I had ever done. So this is the dream.
I find myself back in the old factory in a area I used to work, possibly a break room talking to a coworker. Talking about mundane things that I can't remember right now. The conversation changes to how the place is still open and a lot of the people I used to work with are still there and working and I ask who. I get the district impression the person I am talking to is a man, this man mentions a few of the people, maybe half a dozen and he says a name of someone who I would have called a friend. So I ask where she is working and he replies back in shipping so I say bye and head that way (I know he said the name of someone I knew when I worked there and it was someone I considered a friend but I can't remember it now after waking up) I'm walking back to the shipping area thinking it would be nice if a girl that I really had a thing for was still there (her name was Rachel and she actually worked in shipping) but at least I would get to talk to someone I used to talk to a lot and enjoy their company. Then I run into someone else (this person is different. This isn't a real person but like an amalgamation of at least two people, I can tell it's someone I know but it's not. Not really sure why my dreams do this shit sometimes but it's usually when I know in the dream that I am in fact dreaming. Funny how writing this out is making me think of things that I have never really thought of before. When I do in fact know I am dreaming that's when I like to indulge the dreams and see where they go) so this drop dead gorgeous woman and I are walking to the cafeteria and talking. We sit down at a table. One of those curved hard, wood bench seats that are all one piece. There are two seats to choose from either across the table on the other bench seat or next to this beautiful person, who quite frankly I would intimidated to be close to so naturally it's a dream and I sit next to her. We are talking for what seems like hours and I can tell something is bothering her, like I can feel it in her tone and the inflection of her voice. I ask her why we never talked very much back in the day was it because she thought I was ugly or was it because she thought I was intimidating (those choices and the way I used the word ugly hold significance. I could have said unattractive but I distinctly remember the word ugly. And the intimidating thing, I'm six foot 250 lbs heavily tattooed and have a good sized Beard. When I'm not happy I can be intimidating and for the most part I don't usually look nor am I happy) She sort of turns away from me and whispers "the first one". I tell her it's ok I don't mind if she thinks I'm ugly, plenty of people find me ugly and I get through my day just fine and she starts crying. I try to reassure her and tell her it doesn't hurt my feelings honest, she finds me ugly it's fine (god damn this is hard, this is making a lot of emotions well up) and she says that she is not crying for me it's someone else she is crying for. She has her back to me so I place my forehead on her shoulder and feel her tense up, I say to her "it's ok you can cry I'll just be here. I'll listen and if you want to talk you can and if you don't that's fine too" her body relaxes and she cries for a while. After a while, what feels like an eternity in dream time she whispers "I just wish I could see you smile again and laugh. I used to like to watch you laugh when you didn't know I was watching". So at this moment a woman and her grandson (I know it was her grandson because I could just feel it was, you know dream world) who are waiting in line to get some food at the cafeteria looks at us very disapprovingly. She takes it upon herself to berate me about the girl crying and says something to the effect of I was the cause of this, it was my fault this beautiful girl was crying and I should be ashamed of causing such a wonderful girl to feel so sad. So I turn to this lady and say "it's not my fault, my marriage was over a long time ago". The woman grabs her grandson, huffs and puffs, stammers a little and storms away. Everyone around us is sitting there just staring sort of slack jawed but the girl sitting next to me has stopped crying and she slowly turns towards me and says "she thinks I'm the other woman" (but even with that it's still a dream, a jumble of emotions and flashes of pictures. What the woman who stormed off felt, what was implied by the women's comment to me. What the girl next to me has actually ment. Dreams are very strange) I stammer a bit, I say "no wait that's not what I meant" she starts to smile as I continue to stammer. "I didn't mean the marriage felt like it was over so who cares who I hurt. I just literally meant the marriage is over, it ran it's course it's well and truly over" At this point she is full on laughing as I crack a smile "that really isn't what I meant" I'm laughing now too and she looks at me and says "I know"
That's when I woke up like 2 hours ago, as I woke up I recognized the girl I had been talking to. She was a mix of two people like I said, maybe more. It feels like more but two I recognize right off, one was a woman I used to talk to at the factory and considered a friend. Her name is Azure, probably not spelled right but a beautiful name. I really liked talking to Azure but when I left the place we sort of just stopped talking, she has a twin sister and I knew this girl in the dream had a twin somehow. The girl in my dream had Azure's personality but she looked like someone from another job I had and had the same name. Her name was Joy. I haven't felt it in a long time but I did when I woke up, I actually felt joy. I don't usually put a lot of stock in dreams but when they can make you feel, when you go through most of your day numb to every god damn thing it's nice to know you can still feel. I felt actual joy for the first time in over a year, I can tell you the last time I felt it and what I was doing but it's always so fleeting. I know it can't stay all the time. I know life has it's ups and downs, I just get tired of the downs sometimes. I don't know who will read this but I just wanted to write it, I didn't want to just forget about the Joy of my dreams and how she made me feel. Even if it was only for a brief second, probably because it was for a brief second.
