“The Memorials”

This blog is fourth in a five-part series titled “The Dream”, a write-up I did of a very vivid dream I had. Even though it wasn't specifically about the Disease, the dream’s subject—feeling  different, inhuman—is something all those of us who suffer from addiction can relate to.

* * *

By the time the party had come to an end, the sun had risen and it was the next morning. I walked through the surrounding woods with one of the other guys, [dude]. There, among cedar and pine trees, he showed me the memorials from previous years' parties. It was a graveyard of sorts, a place of remembrance.

Laid out one right next to another in long rows were miniature, condensed versions of the previous parties. Fifteen by twenty feet in size, each was bordered by two-by-fours half-buried in the ground. Two small globes, fist-sized, were in the middle of each, spaced about six or seven feet apart. Each memorial looked like an overcrowded diorama, but with no background. Everything about the party--all the people, the buildings, places, and the events--were contained there in miniature form in that modest space. They were snapshots, three-dimensional cartoonish versions of the whole of each affair, abridged and combined into a single, captured moment. I could sense that everything that had taken place at each party had been recorded--saved like a file, if you will--by the two small globes.

As we walked slowly down the rows, I could see the people in the dioramas who’d been at the parties, their faces set with looks of joyous celebration, having the time of their lives just as we’d had. We came across one for which the memorial was blank, and I frowned. The space was there, but no figures--only pine needles and the dirt of the forest floor.

“What happened that year?” I asked [dude]. He replied simply.

“We tore it down.”

“Why?”

“Too crazy, wild; out of hand.”

He was dismissive but sad and I, too, felt the loss of the absent memory. I realized I was beginning to mourn the passing of this year’s celebration. I’d had so much fun, such a good time. I’d shared in something special.

We continued walking. Occasionally, there would be another missing diorama. I don’t know exactly how many we passed; dozens and dozens, at least. It was like walking past generations of gravestones. In time, I saw the emergence of the people I had spent my evening and night with. They appeared first as children, and then with each year their exuberant faces, smiling and laughing, got older.

Making a turn, we looked back at the row parallel to where we’d been walking. A blank plot was there. The two fist-sized globes at the center had started glowing, and pieces from the world around me began shrinking, being folded into this year’s headstone as the ‘file’ was created. I realized that even the forest we walked in would become part of this year’s memorial; it was merely the setting of the party, the unused basic land background for it. And it didn’t really exist any more than anything else did.

[Woman] was there; I’m not sure how long she had been. Perhaps she was following me and [dude], keeping her distance behind us, watching me as I absorbed the magnitude of the graveyard and the immensity of what it represented. The weight of her crush on me showed in her face, and she asked me what was wrong, seeing the frustration on mine.

I confided to her about how I’d met so many people, and so many women I’d been interested in, and yet unable to do anything about it. I think I was trying to talk about how the whole world around us was literally vanishing. But she could sense what I was really saying--that I had let opportunities pass me by. I had been too timid to make a play, put myself out there and go for who I wanted. As much as I had opened up during the night, enjoyed myself, let myself relax and just be, I hadn’t been able to let go of that last bit of insecurity.

I don’t recall the exact words of her reply. Maybe she tried to comfort me, maybe she tried to tell me that it was my problem, not hers, but she cut herself off in the middle and retreated away from me, wounded, unable to contain her sadness at our not being together. The pain of the hurt I’d now caused her added to my sense of loss.