Sweetness

I actually wrote this a couple weeks ago without publishing it



My friends keep showing up in my dreams recently.

You'd probably expect that to be a very happy or positive thing. But maybe you'd even know me well enough to think to ask, "Do you mean friends or acquaintances?"

The truth is that the imagery in the dreams makes me further question that myself. Who are these people to me? Should I be doing more to keep them in my life and show them how I feel? Or is it time to drift apart?

The first dream I had this semester that terrified and stuck with me was about someone I still think of as a friend... and though I know it wasn't really her in the dream, I have to wonder what it means.

At one of our old "group" gatherings she was waiting for me in the bathroom. My sweet dear friend. And she had something important to tell me. She said, "You know, you've been a terrible friend," in that high sweet sugary voice.

Then she grabbed me by the hair and shoved my head into the filled bath. I was inhaling the water, losing consciousness, lungs bursting with water or crushing from lack of air, and then she pulled me out and slammed my head against the wall. Why was the tub full? Someone was probably bathing a drunk person. The water reeked of vomit. I almost drowned in someone's vomit water. And I started crying in the dream.

When I woke up, I just kept wondering if this meant I should try harder or if it meant I needed to get away. Then I dreamed again a couple weeks later, this time about another person whom I had missed for a while.

I saw my friend and he was walking with his friends. I ran to catch up, keeping my eye on his back (which I'm certain couldn't be anyone else). I wanted to hug him and laugh with him at silly things and make weird jokes. But just as he was in arms length and I could feel my voice about to call his name, I hesitated.

Still running, I slowed down and watched as my outreached hand slowly became further from him... No, as he went further from it. It wasn't like I was walking away, or that I wasn't trying... But I suddenly felt like it was really ugly. I'm trying to pull him away from his friends, trying to hold onto him as my friend and trying so hard without him knowing or even minding seemed so vulgar. We weren't even that close to one another. He was just the nicest most pleasant and sweet person to me at a time when I was so confused and hurting myself for no good reason.

I just wanted to hold onto that. And this awkward struggle, it was so unnatural. It was like I was trying to pull him out of the world he belongs even just for a second to say, "Hi". And to do so much was such a waste, and it was so pathetic of me, and I finally saw how ugly it was.

Can I hold onto you as my friend, even as a memory? Even if it means I stopped trying and I just let you go without any effort? We aren't friends anymore in our lives, but in my heart there is a you frozen in time as my sweet friend from a memory.

Sometimes I get mad and bitterly joke, "I don't have any friends", or in frustration I ask people around me, "What is friendship?"  Am I a bad friend? If I don't know what friendship is can I really even be bad at it?

It seems to me now that if I have to ask, then I really don't know.