Atonement

A couple nights ago I had a fantastic dream. Every friend from every stage in my life that I had fallen out with or that I had simply grown apart from was there. Basically it was everyone I wanted to see again but that I wouldn’t see in real life, even if I were still in the same country.

How did the dream start? By some mysterious figure I was ushered to some nondescript building next to what looked like a futuristic version of Haifa’s Carmelit. Except this time it wasn’t underground, but rather aboveground encased in glass tunnels. Anyway, I came into this building, a one-room building, and in the one room it was kind of dark and mysterious. Kind of Indian design. And there were tables with packets of papers and books and so forth. Just paper EVERYWHERE.

Hearing me come in, all the people in the room looked up. “Holy shit,” I thought to myself within the dream, “it’s everyone I ever fought with and never made up with….and some other people I haven’t seen in years!” There was a temporary moment of awkward hesitance, and then everyone burst forth offering apologies, whether for something they had done to me or for not keeping in touch. Basically, in my dream, every person gave me exactly the kind of apology I would have wanted in real life. Exactly. 100 percent.

I forgave them all, and then asked forgiveness for everything I had done to them. I wondered out loud why we hadn’t done this sooner, and then everyone told me, “We would have done it sooner, but we wanted to first find a way to make everything up to you. We decided the best thing to do would be to edit everything you ever wrote and compile it for you.” WHAT?? AWESOME.

All laughing together happily, me and my crowd exited the room…which had now become a bizarre kind of gypsy/circus tent on the outside. Somehow we had been transported back to my elementary school, and we wandered out to the traffic circle (in elementary school it was sort of like this forbidden “jungle” that we all would die to play on), still talking and catching up. I looked around and saw that there were Christmas decorations everywhere. Pretty much, everything was awesome.

One person, with whom I have been more recently fighting/growing apart from, decided that the group apology wasn’t enough, and so we separated from the group and got back on the futuristic Carmelite. We were just about to start our conversation when suddenly I woke up.

Fuck. Still confused and half asleep I hear someone screaming in French, “WHY DID YOU TAKE MY THING?”

Dammit. Dammit.

Waking up was maybe the worst feeling ever. To feel like every fight with every friend I’ve ever fallen out with was finally resolved…and then suddenly to realize that NOTHING happened. …just shit!