In Your Dreams

I've been having the craziest dreams lately.

I haven't been sleeping well, and have been spending a lot of time in the middle of the night staring at the clock in a sheer panic about how few hours remain until my alarm will go off for work.

And I often wake, before said alarm, and wonder that the heck my subconscious is trying to tell me. I have a few theories, primarily since my dreams have been of long-past ex-boyfriends.

Are my dreams the expressions of my....

deepest desires?

subconscious regrets?

unfulfilled plans?

secret wishes?

mental reminders?

underlying nudges?

could'veshould'vebegladyoudidn't situations?

Or...more likely, a triggered memory from long ago that rises up, bubbles to the surface, awakens me with surprise, and fills me with odd feelings.

You've all been there. You have a dream about someone—be it a fight, or a love affair, or a heated discussion, or a telling moment—and when you wake up, you cognitively KNOW that it wasn't real, and that the other person doesn't know what happened, but when you see that person next, you feel odd. Intimate. Strangely connected, irrationally upset, rationally aware, yet embarrassed all the same.

In my recent dreams, I have experienced boyfriends from years, I mean decades, ago; they came to me as they'd be now (married, kids, successful, balding, OLDER) and yet the feelings that I'd had during our relationship were alive and present. One even offered me an extra-marital affair. I didn't partake.

One slightly more recent one, came to me with questions that haunt me to this day—if I hadn't moved away, would things be different?

One in the less distant past finally expressed all of what I'd been waiting for; yet, when I awoke, I felt nothing but relief that he was, in fact, an ex.

What are our dreams trying to tell us? And why do I keep visiting with and remembering my ex-boyfriends of years past? Is this like a drawn-out version of "The Christmas Story" as it relates to my love life?

God, I hope not. If so, I am not going to sleep tonight for fear of which ex-boyfriend will visit me this evening.

But, it does make me wonder what my brain is doing to me—is this a slideshow of the "things that could have been and you should be glad they didn't happen?" or the "see how great life was and you blew it?" or the reminder, in full-color and 3-D, of how badly mismatched we were in the first place?

I have no idea, but I'm not taking Tylenol PM ever again.

That stuff makes you have crazy night "memories."

And you? Don't visit me asking for an affair. In your dreams.