Unresolved anger issues

Everyday I ask myself ‘should I start therapy?’

Let’s take a look at my dreams for example. I assume that dreams for most people, when they’re not nightmares, are mostly nonsensical and benign. For me though, they’re an opportunity to engage in rage-fueled fantasies.

From last night, I dreamt that I was getting a mani/pedi/massage from some high end resort because someone felt that I needed a stress reliever. Don’t know why they thought I needed a mani/pedi, but there I was. Suddenly the power went out so the resort thought it was a good idea for all the patrons to go outside for a jog.

I didn’t like my fellow patrons because they were a bunch of stuck up, rich, white people. You know the type: they wore plaid flannel shirts with North Face vests and thick rimmed glasses. Anyway, the activities director suggested we all go for a jog. Halfway through it, the director announced that whoever finishes their lap first will get all their expenses paid.

Naturally, I bolt for the finish line but some jackass and his wife were in lockstep with me. I eventually run out of steam and the couple cross the finish line first. Afterwards, when I was cooling down, the asshat that beat was annoyed, saying something like “if you didn’t start sprinting, you might’ve beaten me!”

I fly off the handle, replying with something like “maybe if you weren’t such an old sack of shit, I’d kick the fuck out of you!”

Then the dream ended.

The next dream was a bit more unusual. So I was at a Six Flags when I get off a rollercoaster that took you around the galaxy. It was really fuckin bitchin tbh. Unfortunately I walk out the wrong door and accidentally leave the park.

Unable to get back in, a police officer…who’s obviously a homeless guy and not a real police officer…stops me and asks to see some ID. I play along because I felt sorry for the guy, so I take out my wallet and pull out my driver’s license. Right then, I get distracted by ANOTHER “police officer” and the homeless guy grabs my wallet but bungles the attempt at thievery. He drops the wallet on the ground and I shrug. “Look, you don’t have to steal my wallet, I’ll happily give you $15,” I say to him.

But it was all a set up. Some odd gang of sociopaths kidnap me and subject me to a series of tests. They inform me that if I survive, I’ll be initiated into their gang even though they kidnapped me and I never asked to be initiated to begin with. So I thought fuck this and instead of playing by their rules, I instantly begin a reign of terror where one by one, I track down individual gang members and torture them.

The dream suddenly shifts narratives of the same story. Word reaches the CIA that I’ve been kidnapped. Harrison Ford is my father and Jon Hamm is his partner. Hamm informs Ford, my father, that I’ve been kidnapped. But my father proceeds to do nothing believing that he’s teaching me a lesson in “trusting strangers”.

So Don Draper takes matters into his own hands and he’s off to the rescue. Together we torture, mutilate, and kill my kidnappers in a glorious and satisfying bout of revenge.

I don’t know what any of these dreams mean but they are not uncommon. Clearly there’s a deep rage seething inside of me. Thankfully I’m not dreaming about murdering random strangers because that would be cause for concern. But clearly I’m looking for someone, anyone, to start some shit so that I can indulge in some indignant rage..

Dream on!

I’ve said before that I get some wild ass dreams. Maybe it’s the side effect of Cialis or maybe I should stop eating popcorn before I go to bed. But at any rate, these dreams can really fuck up my day.

The latest one involved the guys from Cum Town and an LSD trip that I won’t go into. But it got me thinking about the most fully fleshed out dream I’ve ever had.

About ten years ago, I dreamt about a dictator that summons his advisers to a dinner and everyone had to wear war paint. When the meal was served, the food is revealed to be the pieces of carcasses from the dictator’s vanquished enemies. One guys is served a dude’s face. This alarms the advisers who request foreign assistance to topple the dictatorship.

Obviously, the US responds by deploying an elite task force, led by a commander that was a drama major in college. Unfortunately, other nations have an interest in this country, so they too deploy special forces to take over the government. Without warning, the US task force is killed off by a competing nation and the commander is held captive. To make matters worse, even more competing nations pile into the country, escalating into an orgy of death and destruction.

Good news is: the dictator is killed. The bad news: the entire country is in ruins.

Of course, I’ve added more detail and commentary as time progressed. I really wanted to turn this into a novel, screenplay, etc. US military intervention was, at that particular moment, still a point of contention. Now that discussion has shifted (what a difference ten years makes) so I don’t know if I will ever flesh out this dream into a full blown story. But the nihilist in me still loves it: while outwardly it appears political, the story ultimately turns anti-political by devolving into pure action schlock. Everyone is a bad guy, so you root for everyone to die as you enjoy the spectacle of some poor nation getting blown the fuck up.

So please, somebody write this story into a book, movie, or whatever. Cuz I’m too lazy to do it.

the shape of things to come

Had a dream where I was back in the Army. David Duchovny’s character from Californication was also court-ordered to serve. He was a complete fuckin asshole and I beat the shit out of him.

I tend to do that in dreams because I have unaddressed anger issues.

Unfortunately the Army was doing some time-travel experiments. So they put me to sleep and I woke up in a gutter, shoeless, and covered in piss. I grab some dude off the street.

“What year is it?!” I ask him.

“6025,” he said.

“6025? Why aren’t we exploring space?!”

The man began to cry. “We just plum forgot about it 🤷‍♂️,” he replied.

The future didn’t look that much different from the present. Except that people were much taller, more androgynous, and looked younger.

People were attending grade school in their 30s. The world grew so complicated that it took several decades before anyone could become “adults”.

I was getting some strange looks.

“You don’t have to be bald, ya know?” the receptionist lady told me. They made me go to therapy to update my appearance. “Male-pattern baldness was eradicated centuries ago.”

I wept for joy. “Please move my hairline forward and don’t make me a redhead 😭😭😭,” I said.

I had a full head of hair but I was still short as shit.

As I was driving through Chicago to get to O’Hare, the roads were paved with with old, derelict cars. This system wasn’t perfect though. As I went under an overpass, an old 1950s-style truck fell from the bridge and killed several motorists.

I was fine though.

Honestly, this future sucked. One thing was pretty accurate however: material conditions made life so comfortable that people viewed fiction as more of a reality than reality itself. The only struggle people had was the ones provided by entertainment.

Therapy to cope with the death of a beloved TV character? Sounds about right to me! 😀

we’ll always be together in electric dreams

Ever had a dream that made you wake up laughing?

So I was at a writer’s workshop where some dude was trying to get under my skin. Then we became best friends. Tom Brady also showed up because he was trying to get his acting career started. Why he was at a writer’s workshop was never explained.

Then, like a ghost from the past, appeared an old friend. In real life I haven’t spoken to him in nearly 15 years. His brother was actually my best friend and our friendship ended in the worst possible way: in a courtroom (we both lost btw). It’s one of my biggest regrets, and in truth, I dream about him often.

But his brother shows up, and I confide in him that I think highly of his sibling and I miss them both. In fact, I tell him that I am at this workshop because I am writing a fictionalized version of our friendship.

The Brother tells me that I can’t do that. I ask why and he disappears into a bookstore. I go looking for him and I find him with three small children. I ask him again why I can’t write the book. He tells me that his brother’s dead and that one of these children is his son.

It was a poignant moment in the dream. It reminded me of the passage of time, how we were once small children, and how we are now creating the next generation. I tell the Son of my best friend that I too have a son, how fortunate he is to have his uncle, and that his father was a good man.

The Brother disappears once again, and I help the Child find his uncle. As I walk with the Child, he tells me to not have regrets, and that he hopes to meet my son. I tell him that “that’s a very nice thing to say,” and that I hope they meet someday too.

Finally, we find his uncle standing outside. He’s with two men in suits. I tell the Brother that per his wishes, I won’t write the book. One of the men in suits spoke up and said “that’s a wise decision.”

“Are you an attorney?” I ask.

He nodded.

“What if I changed all the names and events? Can you sue me then?” I said.

“Well clearly he (my best friend) is everything that he’s not,” the lawyer replied. Whatever that meant.

I look over to the Brother. “Did you invite these guys here?” I ask.

He did.

“Well fuck it,” I said. “I’m writing the book.”

I then pointed at the lawyer’s shirt like he had a stain. When he looked down, I lifted my finger up to his face.

“Fuckin loser,” I said.

Then the dream ended.

what dreams may come

I’m a hard sleeper.

Nothing can, nothing will, wake me up. Construction, gun shots, home invasions, house fires, nuclear holocausts…nothing.

So I get to have incredible dreams. Last night, for example, I dreamt that I was a football player buried deep down the depth chart. The team boarded a plane en route to a game with the pilot both coked up and drunk. The pilot thought it would be cool to do a barrel roll in a passenger plane which caused some concern. I brushed it off and took a nap. When I awoke, the plane had to make an emergency landing onto a road but ended up crashing into an apartment building. No one was killed,miraculously, and the people in the building didn’t think anything unusual about it because it was in Mississippi and apparently things like that happen all the time. Nevertheless, one player thought this was the perfect opportunity to exact revenge…for whatever reasons…on the head coach and a few other players. So it was up to me, some nobody, to save the team.

Once when that was done, I had to book a flight home but chose to fly to London, England instead. The price came to $20,000 and I didn’t have the money. Then the dream ended.

There were dreams on the periphery, one which includes me fighting a rabbit in Monument Valley and sending it to a highly mechanized version of hell.

I guess dreams are just a hodgepodge of shit stored in our heads and when we sleep, our brains randomly throw things together which we later attempt to make sense of (or in my case, project a story onto). Does it ever mean anything? Probably not.

At least not most of the time.

But I do have recurring dreams. Not dreams where the exact same things happen, but they share similar themes, people, places, etc. I suppose that there are shreds of truth in these kinds of dreams: a revelation of regret, dread, loss, and so on.

I find the subject of dreams fascinating. It reveals the chaos that exists in our own minds. Even the purest of people will experience a gruesome nightmare. Despite their outward practices in real life, even in their minds they will produce true horror. That emanates completely from them. We try to project some sense onto our dreams, but the fact is that there isn’t any whatsoever.

We do the same thing to our reality.