Did I Do Thaaaaat?

Another dream (for some reason, I'm remembering them the last few nights, sleeping on a hide-a-bed at my bro's house): I had just left a get-together of some sort, and as I was leaving a parking lot, backing out of a space, I found that my brakes were weaker than I remembered, and as I checked my mirrors to make sure I wouldn't hit anything behind me, I just kept pressing harder on the brakes, with mushy results, and even shifting down or to neutral didn't help much.

Have you ever had a dream where you're trying to run down a long, narrow hallway, but your legs don't seem to work, and the hallway just seems to get longer? You know, like in Poltergeist. I think I had a dream like that when I was little. But my frustrating dreams were typically different. The one I most remember was me jumping across or over something and having sudden super-strength, flying into the air, then falling, bracing myself for impact, bouncing high into the air again, etc. Try as I might to either absorb the impact or find a bar to hold on to or something, I wouldn't be able to stop bouncing. I'd sometimes wake up from some reflex, feeling completely frustrated, and sometimes this played out in my head while I was actually awake: a thought cycle I couldn't stop but refused to let go of until I'd forced myself to stop "bouncing", which I don't think I ever did. I eventually learned to just let go of needing to stop myself or insisting I should be able to and instead directing my thoughts elsewhere until the cycle faded away, which (seemingly paradoxically) stopped me from bouncing. Is that symptomatic of obsessive thoughts? Am I revealing too much? ;-)

Anyway, this experience with the brakes was similar. The brakes wouldn't work, and I bumped my rear bumper into a wooden rail on the edge of the lot with a thud. Oddly enough, as it happened, a small green convertible on the other side of the barrier, slightly higher than where I was, jolted as if it had been hit, and though I was sure my bumper couldn't have reached 4 feet through the barrier to cause such damage, there was no other clear explanation, and as I sat there trying to figure out if I should find the owner and explain what happened, even though I couldn't be at fault, the convertible started rolling down the embankment, landing in a dented mess in the parking lot. This was nasty, certainly no cheap fix. I should at least find the owner and explain what I'd seen, even if it would seem like I was to blame. A resident of the complex came out and was apparently taking down my license plate number. Great. Now I definitely had to get out and clean this up.

That resident was nice but was convinced the damage was my fault because it happened when I hit the barrier, and clearly there was no other explanation, he'd said. I patiently spoke with him, not trying to explain how unlikely it was that my bump could've caused such a chain reaction lest I should appear to be only exonerating myself, and he seemed nice and sincere but quietly convinced it was my fault. Long story not-as-long, I ended up running into the convertible owner, who was some scrappy, pothead dude roaming around in his underwear. He put on some clothes and came out to talk to me, casually and almost jovially asking when he could expect payment for damages. I thought it was weird he could be so cavalier and seemingly not surprised, but I pushed away thoughts that he'd somehow orchestrated the whole scene as a way to get insurance money or something. Maybe part of me did fear my barrier bump had caused the convertible to be all bashed up, even though that didn't really make sense. Stranger things have happened, right? I was trying to acknowledge how it must appear and admit it might have been my barrier collision but also explain that this damage was not likely to have been caused by my bumping the barrier, and saying I'd work with him to find a solution. As I was hoping he'd at the very least see that I had truly done all I could to stop my car when my brakes seemingly went out and have some mercy because of it, I woke up, thankful I didn't have that mess to clean up.

Sometimes, it's "just a dream", but I think much of the time, our dreams do have some connection with what's going on inside our minds. And this one I hadn't suspected as such until I wrote it out and thought, "Oh wow...yeah...I think I know where that's coming from." There may be a parallel between this situation and the thoughts which were racing through my head and keeping me up last night in relation to not having all the answers but having seen what doesn't make sense, yet not being able to convince anyone of that even if I wanted to because they'd rather have a scapegoat and a story that doesn't fit together--and the ability to dismiss as guilty someone who challenges that perception--than accept that there's no known explanation yet and not have a sense of justice or someone to blame. Yeah, I know that may seem abstract to many of you, but those of you familiar with the last year of my life can probably grasp what I mean, though very few of you truly sympathize. Maybe I'm feeling a little vulnerable and understandably but (in my opinion) unfairly scrutinized lately.

It's not a huge deal. I'm not bent out of shape over it. I feel quietly confident and reassured. But the tension is surely a source of some stress in my life. We all have them and deal with them.