I have a lot of lucid dreams. Some of them are clear linear plot lines that become stories, like my most recently published. I have dreams about the different chapters in my life, particularly different chapters of sports history, as well as relationships. My therapist always says the people in the dreams may or may not represent the actual people. I've had a few dreams recently about my ex girlfriend and I reconnecting. One was focused on my weight problem. The second was steamy. It's not my first steamy dream. I had a steamy dream once about an old crush - I even told her I had a steamy dream about her, which she loved. (she may or may not have a porn film in her past which has caused her a lot of drama in her career otherwise, post being a dancer for Prince).. The most recent dream did a lot of heavy lifting. Actually these sequence of dreams are something I'm processing after watching Tegan and Sara's memoir adaptation. I had absolutely nothing in common with their high school experience. I had a younger brother, and he was without a doubt the kind of assholes they call themselves. At least they grew out of it.... While some of the scenes confronting each other in the doors to their bedrooms felt familiar, the scenarios were completely different. I was "the good girl" despite the fact that being the good girl and telling my parents the truth about where I was, which was never drinking or doing drugs, I was the one who got the most abuse. My brother, the lying asshole, was rewarded with favouritism. When I dated women as an adult, I found myself looking for examples to demonstrate my "lesbian credentials," which put a hyper focus on those experiences of being attracted to girls. When I was five, as I've shared before, I asked my mother if I could marry my next door neighbor, and she said that's not how things worked. Today my father is much more chill about me being bisexual, but with his memory going, he may not even always be aware. The sleepover party where I was watching the blond girl sleep wanting to touch her face. However, I also had significantly more experiences as a teenager being attracted to boys, and none of the kinds of experiences Tegan and Sara had of innocent discovery of hanging out. My brother and I did share the same aversion of talking to each other about any of those experience which the twins shared. My first year of university, was the first experience I had intenstively hanging out with a woman, and feeling intimate level of attraction, though it was never recognized by either of us. I could identify with the high school girlfriend where maybe she also was attracted to boys, and since we were in a religious circle, it was easier not to be more than friends. The girl was a blond footballer from California. At the same time I was also hanging out with a guy who was also a blond footballer from California. In both situations, we shared a lot about music. Go figure. It does feel like splitting my experiences in half to try to prove something instead of being able to integrate all of my experiences more cohesively. It made me think back to who was I hanging out in high school then? I remember meeting this emo atheist and writing in my calendar the day I felt like I met my soulmate, but his atheism wasn't what I was exploring at all. There was the guy two years ahead of me who I asked to a formal dance, and visited him when he went to Uni. I wanted romance, and that's what I wasn't getting when I hung out with any of these guys. I remember driving to see him listening to Eagle Eye Cherry, daydreaming about our first kiss. I do remember being fiercely protective against my mother prying into my feelings for him, denying that we were anything more than friends. He invited me to a kind of couples weekend at the lakehouse of an older guy who was dating the much younger sister of my friend. However, when I went away to Uni, I emailed him to stay in touch and he never responded. Then the following summer when I drove up to visit him at Uni, we had a moment in his room where I was on the bed, and he was hovering over me, and I felt so much desire. Nothing happened. After that I called it off and friend zoned him. Now I think looking back, his fault was not staying in touch with me by email. He's married now with kids. He was a golfer, and that was always a turnoff for me, sadly. The latest heavy lifting dream ties well into processing Tegan and Sara. I was in Seattle in 2004 when their latest released album was all over the airwaves. I was processing a lot that year. My father had cancer. I was trying to find myself again after my first stalker. That year the last guy from Uni who I hung out with, which wasn't healthy, wrote me kind of asking for an apology, and Ghost was particularly apropos. In 2006 he drowned in the Puget Sound, with "heavy undertow" signs clearly posted, always leading me to question if it was intentional, six months after he was "getting his affairs in order" with the email to me. My response to him was that I did not have the bandwidth to process his apology but acknowledged it and would forgive him at some point in the future. He acknowledged hurting me but took no responsibility for his poor boundaries. He was the subject of this most recent dream. He came back from the dead, which I found a bit upsetting, to deal with all of the ways his death impacted me for nothing. However, in the dream, he came back to life to want to pursue something with me. I am someone who gives people second chances, but they have then earn them. In the dream, my ongoing frustrations grew as I walked through the other parts of my dating life and men who expressed overt interest, asked and created ways to spend time with me. All the while the guy-back-from-the-dead hung back and did nothing. It was the closure I needed, that yes, alive or dead, that relationship did not deliver the kinds of things I so clearly deserved and other people were able to deliver. The dream did so much heavy lifting because of the frustration and disappointment I realized I felt toward the situation. The dream magic also helped me understood, yes, this person in the dream represented ghost-guy, but also represented the way I feel about The Guy. The Guy came back into my life in 2006, when Tegan and Sara's collab with Tiesto took off. We met in university era, but did not go to the same Uni, though we moved in the same circles. My ex-girlfriend gifted me with two albums from Tegan and Sara. After I ended things emotionally, we also went to Tomorrowland together, where Tiesto performed, this track included. Where we did zero drugs, (which to this day I have never done), but our group had the biggest joke that one of our friends' brothers was approached by kids asking him for Molly, and he was an off-duty cop.... And then they have taken off, opening for Taylor Swift, touring all over Europe. To me they will always be the awkward women of Oh So Jealous. Before meeting my ex-girlfriend, I think I allowed myself to be more of an asshole, finally. After what I went through with The Guy, I had no more fucks left to go. I remember being at a club where a girl hit on me, who was clearly very drunk. So I thought I was being responsible and got into a Cab with her to go back to her hotel room, where she threw up. She drove me back to my car the next morning, with Lykke Li playing, which was also playing during the first time with my ex girlfriend. Perhaps these later experiences enable me to relate more to Tegan and Sara's earlier adventures. My therapist has talked about being in a place where I can look forward to what I want in life from a partner or relationship, but I can't say I'm entirely sure. Definitely not the things which haven't worked for me. I thought Tegan and Sara's memoir might point me in a direction, but it hasn't given me any more clarity than my dreams have already provided.
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