Going back…

I have written before about my recurring anxiety dream about being back at school or university. I don’t think (and it’s too late to check) I’ve talked about my other recurring dream scenario – that of being wonderfully abusive to someone in a position of authority. It’s an age old dream – I used to dream of standing before the entire school and roundly insulting a hated teacher, of possessing what in the dreamscape was wonderful oratory skills which tore the loathed individual to shreds. Like the returning to an old place dream, the abuse dream is always different but always the same. Last night merged the two – I went back to the Old Place and found that the board of directors of The Company had moved in. Well naturally it was too good an opportunity to miss. I barged into their meeting and began to insult the lot of them.

Since they were all faceless shits in real life, hiding behind meaningless job titles and absolutely no accountability to their employees, shareholders or customers, the people in the dream weren’t the same faceless shits as in real life. These were generic faceless shits and I hurled abuse at them for what seemed like hours. I have another quirk in dreams – I can’t shout properly. It’s so long since I’ve shouted in real life that I don’t know whether I actually can. I once remember being at a football match (at the City Ground in Nottingham) and calling “Come on Danny” to former red Danny Wallace and the sound of my own voice seemed so out of place amidst the voices of thousands of other people that I don’t think I’ve shouted properly since. I’ve screamed in the heat of the moment but an actual shout – a projection of sound as opposed to an outpouring of emotion – is a distant memory.

So I remember the dream in general shouting-but-not-properly terms until I was told that a director called Peter Pardon (not a real person and a name that I must note down for future conscious use as I like it) was in the lavatory. I began shouting “Peter Pardon is masturbating” around the building to cause maximum humiliation to this person that I’d never met and never even heard of until that moment. I just know I loathed him because he was one of the board of directors. So far so crude. But the punch line – and this dream actually had a punch line – was that he entered the boardroom where I was along with the rest of them and introduced himself. We shook hands and – bearing in mind what I’d been accusing him of – I went over to the nearest director and wiped my hand on his jacket in an exaggerated manner.

Now the reason I’m telling this story – and probably the reason I had the dream in the first place – was that tonight was the first reunion of the old team from the Old Place. I was naturally antsy about going. Bearing in mind my past history at such events – saying I wasn’t going, saying I was and then not going, going and then slipping away and so on – it was only to be expected. I’m writing this having been in for about fifteen minutes. I smell of cigarette smoke, I feel sick after eating far too much pizza and I’m half way between clothes and pyjamas.

It was an odd night. Not because I was seeing people for the first time in two months. For someone as scared of change as me I am remarkably adaptable. I think it will be weird to change from one scene to another and I end up doing it without a murmur. I think it will be strange to revisit the past and I suddenly find I’ve taken it in my stride. It was actually more weird for me to be out of a Friday evening. But even that doesn’t account for the feeling of strangeness. It’s more emptiness actually. For two reasons.

Firstly that one of the peeps there tonight has spent the last couple of months down south helping out the Someone I’ve talked about too much. He’s been with her day in and day out while I don’t even get replies to my emails any more. On the one hand I want to talk about her and on the other I just want to forget about her. It seemed as if it was meant to be and then it became clear that it wasn’t. I’m not good in limbo.

The other is that I found out that a couple that I like immensely have split up. I won’t do them the disservice as to speculate – internally or externally – as to why two such ideally matched people have parted company. It just seems sad that finding happiness is so unlikely and that keeping it is damn near impossible.

And the columnist’s art – that of tying together the strands of their missive in a final paragraph – leads me to wonder whether society has changed far more than people are willing to admit. It used to be a case of job for life, marriage for life. These days we’ve accepted that jobs come and go. Some end because one side wants rid of the other, some because they no longer exist and some because you think the grass is greener elsewhere. No one goes into a company expecting to still be there when they are old and grey. Maybe people need to accept that relationships are the same. We think they will last forever but after a few months or a few years one side wants rid of the other or you think the grass is greener elsewhere. How long can people continue to believe in life long union when all the evidence says it is an impossible dream?

27th February 2004