Wednesday, January 5, 2011

What Dreams are Made of

I dreamt of you last night.
You, the man that was in my life for so long. A friend. A friend that I am no longer allowed to talk to because our significant others don't understand how our years of friendship override a few on again-off again moments somewhere in the middle. I used to dream of you a lot. Over the years though, they have dwindled down to once or twice a year. But they are always vivid. And I can always feel you.
Anyways. I dreamt of you.
I was back at the 'Berg. I was in the training room. The training room looked as it always has, but when you walked outside of the training room, there was marble everywhere. White marble with thin, stretching lines of the lightest gray. Far from the Seiberling that we spent so many years in.
I was in the training room and it had felt like it had been years since I had been there, probably because it had been. I was working with the head of the program, a man I had never seen before, but he seemed to be a combination of the male professors we had had over our 4 year career there. He handed me a yellow legal pad filled with complicated equations and told me to start completing them. I had never seen anything like them. I looked at him and told him that I never came across anything like this in my pharmacology class. He smiled and sat down next to me at the treatment table-what we always used for desks while in the training room, and began to show me how certain things canceled out so that you could balance the equation and know how much of one substance you were supposed to use in relation to the other substances. It looked like some kind of cortisone equation. It was the only thing I could think of anyways.
I hear something behind me, so I turn around and there is a whole class waiting to start. There was Paul, Brock, Greg, Seka, and Tess. All sitting on stools in a close little group. And right behind me was you. I smile with surprise and touch your knee and say, "I have a lot of catching up to do. I don't know anything anymore." You don't meet my eye and you give a short, mean grunt. I'm hurt and embarrassed so I quickly turn around. You aren't you. You aren't the large, muscular man I love. Your light green eyes aren't shining. The smile that I love so much is not there, no crinkling around those eyes. No cocky laugh like you always had in the training room during football season. That laugh is what made me fall in love with you. You are the shell of yourself you became when you attempted to wrestle at 181 pounds our senior year. Your muscular 225 pounds wittled away into a gaunt replica of yourself. You were a bear to deal with during that time. But I would be too had I only had rice to eat and too many pounds to shed between football season and wrestling season.
I turn my attention back to the treatment table, but you are laying on the one in front of me. Greg is laying on the one next to you. It was definitely football season, but you were at your sick wrestling weight. Greg looked like his usual husky self. Our two trainers that were also football players. All of a sudden needles came out of the wall over the table. It was like something out of x-men. They guided themselves into both of your hands and started pumping something into you. While I stared in fear and disgust, everyone else stared in excitement and anticipation. I didn't know what was going on, but I didn't like it. I kept asking where the 'Berg got the money for this technology, but everyone either didn't hear me or chose to ignore me. When I turned back around you had transformed into some type of monster. You were twice your normal height and your body was rippling with muscles, but the veins were popping out and your skin looked a sickly green and appeared to be slimy. You looked like some type of a ratfink monster drawing. I was instantly scared, but everyone around me was congratulating themselves. Greg looked similar to you, only larger. And he looked excited about his transformation. Flexing his muscles and such.
You looked down at me, you eyes bulging from their sockets. Those eyes I love so much. And I saw YOU. You looked scared but I saw the love in them. Your giant, overgrown hand reached for mine. I took it. My hand could only attempt to grasp two of your fingers. Everyone stopped and stared and then started laughing. Brock exclaimed, "Maybe you two will last longer than 6 month this time with this." I didn't get it. Then someone explained that the drug, whatever it was, caused the user to express his emotions clearly and fully.
I knew what they meant then. Our biggest problem as us being a couple was that we couldn't fully express our emotions to each other for fear of rejection from a person we cared about so much. It was our demise. Our downfall. We were too scared to lose the friendship we had established. Oh, if we only knew then what we know now.
I knew then that you needed me to protect you. You didn't like what they were doing to you. But I had no control over what was happening. Before I could do anything, you were taken away-apparently to the locker room, only it wasn't where it has always been.
The remainder of the dream I spent searching for you. Running down marble hallway after marble hallway, everything looking the same, yet so foreign. I was frustrated and scared and helpless. I knew I would never find you again. I found a bathroom, locked myself into a stall, and cried and cried and cried.
I woke up when I had convinced myself to go back out and continue my search, just as I opened the bathroom door.
Gone again.

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