E S C A P E
I am prone to vivid dreams, most of which are based up the same recurring theme. Escape. Escape from my current life. Escape from the place I live. Escape from people I have loved and who have hurt me. Once, an escape from this planet into the outer reaches of space.
In these dreams, I most often travel to places I know well that are far from where I live now but that have changed in the years since I knew them. At first, I am overjoyed to have returned and cannot wait to find the people and places that connect me to my past. But what was once a place a comfort has degraded into an ill-fitting landscape where those who once knew me and cared for me have all but forgotten my existence. And when I remind them with a story or anecdote, their memory is only faint if at all. Roads that once led to former homes have changed and I am suddenly lost with no clue of how to find what I am searching for.
I must do impossible things to find my way - steer cars up steep bridges that will launch me toward connecting roads if I gain enough speed, walk thousands of miles through steep rocky terrain on a narrow path walked by others like me on their way to past lives, ride on airplanes that seat thousands and whose destinations are unknown to everyone aboard, swim across ice cold deep water from one continent to another as I am still trying to learn to swim, wear a spacesuit and jetpack in the vacuum of space to find a planet that isn’t dying - but I always fail.
In my waking hours, I think of these dreams and what they mean. I am disturbed that my subconscious self is never able to find what I am in need of before the dreams end. I am not surprised by the recurring theme, not at all, but the failure over and over again is what hits me hardest.
I am estranged from my family, the one I came back home to be near after many years of living far away: my mother and, by proxy due to enmeshed family dynamics, my siblings and their children. The reasons for that estrangement are numerous, and I often feel as if I should have known this would be the ending when I decided to come back after so many years living two thousand miles away. For years, I fought against the feelings that come from being part of a highly dysfunctional and emotionally damaging family, wanting to keep even harmful relationships with people I love because they are family. It was all I knew to do.
I feared the stigma attached to going my own way and the deep sense of loss that I would have by disconnecting to the very people I was supposed to always be connected to. I was trapped in a cycle that went back generations and that had led others I love into broken lives that have never seemed to repair. I fed that cycle every time I ignored mistreatment to keep the peace, believed the false apologies for wrongs that were endlessly repeated, overlooked behaviors that harmed not just myself but others, sacrificed my peace for their chaos.
When the toll became too much and I realized that continuing relationships that harmed me kept me from nurturing the relationships that healed me, I had to separate myself from the ones I have loved my whole life but who refused to grow in the direction of repair. Nothing about this separation was easy, and I spent countless days, weeks, and months afterwards feeling like a complete failure. Not all cases of estrangement are the same. For me, I still love and care about the people I cannot have a healthy relationship with, and I wish that I could be a part of their lives. Not a day goes by that I do not think about them.
In my dreams, it is the people I have chosen to be in my life that have forgotten me or that finally reveal they never really chose me. They are friends I made along the way when I was younger and living in places I chose to be instead of where I was born. Our relationships were genuine and meaningful. And so when in my dreams they reveal the supposed true nature of our relationship, I am heartbroken and confused. I struggle to make myself known to them again, but it is as if we never knew one another.
Even the landscapes of these places turn against me as I lose myself in sudden labyrinths full of dead ends or recursive paths that go nowhere. Landmarks are missing, mountains have moved, distances have become immeasurably further. I am alone to figure out how to find the place and the people I once loved. And I always fail.
In spite of how the dreams end, I am always glad for them. Fragments of memories I have long forgotten or misplaced surface during these dreams.
The sound of sea gulls chasing the ferry.
The view of the fish market from the street above.
The noise of the sea pulling tumbled rocks back and forth at the shore.
Conversations with the watercolor artist who loved physics.
The mathematician who had a conversation about the theory of relativity with Einstein as a young boy.
These memories provide some consolation to the otherwise jarring nature of the dreams themselves.
What I have come to realize recently is that the people who have actually harmed me are never in these dreams of escape, not as fellow escapees nor as people I am journeying toward. Neither are the places attached to them.
Instead, I am trying to reconnect with a part of my life that healed me, that taught me the real value of relationships built on mutual trust and understanding. And the failure in those dreams is the fear of losing the connection to that part of my life.
I am not dreaming of escape; I am dreaming of connection to a family that does not exist for me.
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