Old Dreams

All my life, I have dreamed of being lost in a city at night, walking along unfamiliar streets, through unfamiliar territory with the possibility of dogs, or wolves lurking in the alleys between me and home.

A couple of years ago, I was in Berkley, California going to a Latif Bolat concert. I got off the BART and onto the wrong bus, ending up in the wrong part of town, finding myself surrounded by people who wouldn’t speak to me, not even the bus driver. Eventually the bus driver did answer my question and point to another bus heading the other way and I arrived at the concert a little late, but none the worse for wear. After the concert I had to walk back through a dark park alone and catch a bus on a lonely street corner very late at night. I must have missed the prior bus by just a few minutes, because it was a very long wait and I began to fear that the buses had stopped running and my nightmares were about to come true. Totally unfounded fear. I stopped having the dreams after that. For a while.

Fear of the unknown. Fear of change. The knowledge I picked up as a very young child that things can turn on a dime is buried deeply within my unconscious. I dealt with it by focusing on giving my children as secure a life as possible until they grew up. Now I combat it by looking at life as an adventure, but the old fears are still here, dreaming that people will disappear out of my life for unknown reasons, or that dogs are still waiting to chase me on my way to piano lessons. Old experiences and dreams die hard.

And so do old ways of dealing with these fears. My first reaction is always to run, to leave first before the hard part comes, but I know this now, so I try to avoid that. Life changes, no amount of running away can change that. The constancy must come from me.