I haven’t been myself lately, in my dreams. I’ve mostly been men.

"If Your Manhood Comes Anywhere Near My Imagination, I'm Shooting You And Myself."*

-:- -:- -:- -:-

The other night I was a paid assassin who found out his brother and father had betrayed him. (I think I was Ben Affleck in The Accountant.) I’d unknowingly killed one of their (business) partners—I’d killed him knowingly, I just didn’t know they were working together—and now my father was planning on killing me. The last thing I remember is smiling at my father and telling him I’d gutted my brother like a fish.

The really weird thing is, this wasn’t a bad dream.

Last night I was a teenage boy living with his parents and younger sister in a luxury hotel in Germany.

We were there so I could go to this exclusive school, but we had no paperwork—no visas or passports or anything. I don’t know how we got there, but I wasn’t technically attending the school. I was just hanging around, and at the end of the year I was going to take the finals, at which point it would be revealed what a genius I was and I’d get a diploma.

There were lots of scenes of my father evading the authorities, ala Harold Hill in The Music Man. And at the end, after I had taken the finals, we were packing to leave until the scores were announced. Originally I was really excited about going home because I’d have my own room again. But then my parents asked if I really wanted to come with them or would I rather stay there, since they were coming right back in a week, and I realized I wouldn’t have time to myself if I went with them, but if I stayed, I’d have an entire hotel suite to myself.

The rest of the dream was them packing to leave and me wandering around the hotel, riding the elevators up and down. It was all dimly lit, and the walls were aquariums, with exotic fish swimming around.

And then, as so many of my dreams do, it ended with me looking for a private bathroom.

I don’t know what to tell you.


*Pip, The Job

There are times this happens:

I have to read my email or listen to my voicemail, and I can’t.

I can’t.

My heart beats hard and my hands feel trembly and I’m absolutely convinced that whatever I read or hear I will not be able to cope with, that it will overwhelm me.

That instead of a businesslike message, it will be a long list of my failures, not only on the subject of the email, but me as a person. “You are very bad. You are very, very bad.”

It’s worse when I have to make a phone call or send an email. I wish I could drink, I’d have a shot before I dialed.

What is the right tone, what are the right words, to convey a message that will not make me look stupid, pathetic, bad, wrong, wrong, wrong?

I don’t know. So I freeze.

Sometimes this extends to friends. Sometimes I can’t text back because words hard misunderstood, get it wrong, wrong, wrong. And then they’ll hate me forever.

I have a thank-you note sitting on my desk that I can’t bring myself to mail. How bad could a thank-you note possibly be?

But dealing with people is like disarming bombs, and I don’t know how to disarm bombs.

So I do nothing. I ignore simple tasks because my fearful mind won’t let me do them (wrong) and things come due, past due, we’re turning off your service due.

And things only get worse.

It isn’t that I don’t know how to do these things; I know perfectly well. I’ve been the responsible adult for over 30 years. But then I think, what difference does it make? It’s only me.