I had a dream last night…
Because she looked just like a dream
I had a dream last night…
Because she looked just like a dream
THE SOUNDTRACK FOR FUCKING EVER AND FOR EVERY SITUATION, ALWAYS. AND TODAY. ALWAYS TODAY:
1996 release of baz luhrmann ROMEO & JULIET soundtrack
In its entirety, as it should loop endlessly, consuming you until you get it.
Today, highlighting the track WHATEVER (I HAD A DREAM) BY THE BUTTHOLE SURFERS
The entry begins now, after you listen and you fucking get it. 1996? Still. In the year of our lord 2025, lets get this over with. And now:
I did. Have a fucking dream, of course. Last night. For no reason, there was no thought before. There was no memory, or reminder. No tangible, relatable, physical, object for me to halt and stare. There was no past whispering, gently passing through my mind like a breeze your body so desperately craved. And there was no past booming, passing through my mind like thundering chaos, your body paralyzed, involuntarily you cry, like a howling wind your mind so desperately fights.
Immediately it turned on:
I had a dream last night…
Because she looked just like a dream
I had a dream last night…
Because she looked just like a dream
I was. Angry. Hollow. So it echoed, bouncing in my rib cage. And what could i do? I didn’t ask for or expect this. I dont enjoy waking up only sheer like a spirit. I remember now i am old. And tired. So when does the joke end? Is it frozen in my broken brain, eternal sleeps of someone i used to be, much younger, and he was there. Always. God is alive, and he is a cruel and unnatural god. He gives, and he gives. Only after punishment. Only after ruin. Then god gives a crumb. And that same god takes.
And if youre lucky
God gives you a timeline thats older than you care to remember, and gifts you with the curse of second life. And when you least expect it, warm, comfortable, finally sleep has come to take you… unexpectedly backwards. Against all that is right or normal or sane…god damn it, get back in your bed and you fucking dream and repent. Your gift from god, say thank you. Amen.
I think of my grandmother. My fathers mother who saved me then before the abuse began.
Im 14. We are at a nursing home that I will ironically be chained to in the future for 22 years. The job chose me.
Shes on the third floor, the dementia unit.
We have to use a code to get in, everything is locked incase there is a roamer.
It smells like shit. Laying on top is a thick layer of deoderozing spray that almost smells worse than the human crap.
The residents are in wheelchairs, all in a line.
My grandmother is there, too.
They all are slumped over, various position of thier crooked heads. Some bowed uncomfortably, some leaning all the way back. Some tucked into the side.
Everyone has their eyes closed.
Some mumble words, sometime you can make out a few if you’re really listening.
They are all asleep.
Every day.
What are they dreaming? It occures to me it might be and endless loop of the time they were young, a time that god himself (we have no other reason for something unnatural in this type of manner) cursed them with, forever.
What if
Its a fucking nightmare
Forever a time lost, when they were young women, when it was the most extraordinary time, and thats all they get as they rot in their chairs, just then, over and over and over.
Unless
They’re drugged.
Also a perfect explanation.
Juliet is up in heaven
A pocket full of pills
And Jesus drives to Mexico
To get her prescription filled!
Alice in wonderland, wearing a lab coat. That soundtrack, 1996, and here I am.
A perfectly good uncertified professional doctor.
Or Alice in wonderland with a prescription pad.
She didnt even hesitate, eating and drinking whatever she found.
Alice
Juliet
My grandmother and all of the residents sitting comatose
Me
Trapped in a dream world at random, waking up with confusion and sadness and always why god? You fucking dick.
Time to play doctor, the waking world is real, and what I have is tangible.
I had a dream last night…
Because she looked just like a dream
I had a dream last night…
Because she looked just like a dream
Down the rabbit hole.
I acquired a random handful of something I considered useless during the middle of script day med salad meet up. Just free garbage for being kind with a surplus of controlled anxiety fixer uppers.
I am not a real thing. I do not exist with you, or her or them. My community is vast molecular structures swimming in my arteries and veins. My antipsychotics and antidepressants and my antidepressant booster and my prescription crystal meth uppers and my fall asleep quicker prescription and my anti anxiety controlled substances and approximately 3 pots of of coffee making it 12 cups a pot and crackers or popcorn approximately every 4 days when I feel hunger.
Im 100 pounds and shorter than you can imagine. It seems like medically my body should give up or atleast fill my organs with stones or cause ulcers all over my insides, coughing up blood in a napkin, something black in the toilet, good old dehydration, maybe fucking something
But god cursed me to this vessel, alone, too nuerodivergent to be understood by all the nuerotypicals who surround me, and too nuerodivergent to find a community with my kin. And I’ve tried. But im too divergent.
On paper, im not mentally real. Im a walking contradiction. If physically I should not be of this world (trust me, im healthy as horse, im on month 27 and I still feel like…me) then mentally I really should not be this grown age that I am.
I have an emotional and personality disorder. It makes....my emotions more than yours. No, this is not a flex its a malfunction. It’s brain rot. My emotions are on steroids, I feel everything, and its raw, naked, overwhelming, it physically hurts. And sometimes I can not control when my polars flip and my emotions want to explode but is going to euphoric or deadly? I am all emotion 247. But. I also have another nuerodivergence, the first ones best friend but theyre kind of totally opposite. It makes me follow facts, statistics, percentages, science, peer reviews, journals, research.
Facts over feelings. Ever heard of it?
Half of me wants to react off of emotion but if the facts…the truth is there what choice am I going to make in the moment?
A war ensues inside my skull because my two illnesses don’t make sense. And number two also has a little problem with
Emotional regulation
HOW THE FUCK DOES ONE COPE WITH AN EMOTIONAL DISORDER BUT ALSO HAVE NO EMOTIONAL REGULATION
Its not worth it to explain the utter chaos inside me.
So let me introduce you to nuerodivergence number 3, now we have my magical triad holding hands.
Those fucking kids in captain America putting all thier magical rings together
Thats me, but it doesnt summon a champion to save the earth. Its the beacon of retarded psychotics and if youre not laughing at my life at this point you should.
Number 3 is a bitch because I can sit for hours concoting lists, lost in my head, planning something that makes sense to me. Trying to figure out the order of things and before I can get to what comes first, I snap out of it and 2 hours have gone by. I now want to do nothing. This rattles number two, I have to soothe myself in perched position or do my own repetitive movement ive done my whole life. It was named the butt wiggle, I shit you not, when it was brought to my attention at 14. Before, I thought this was perfectly normal. I know what it is now. And its medical term. I wont say it because saying it does make it retarded. Its most prominent when im sleeping every night in fetal position. Ive done it sleeping next to every man ive been with. The movement when youre not laying down looks more like a slow body rocking, a nervous habit maybe. Maybe Im holding in having to pee. No one has questioned it when im upright
I was 14, it was the first time I never came home, and the first time I feel asleep in a boy’s arms.
We were out, being degenerates, we had drugs and cartons of eggs. I was with my best friend Nicole and our friend Jesse was in her front seat, chucking eggs out of the window of the truck, hitting signs, houses, mailboxes....
The truck was old and had that amazing old car oil smell.
Ditching nicole....my best friend who was in love with Jesse, was part of his plot to have a better evening. But Jesse was in love with me.
And he was what high school degenerate dreams are made of, all shaggy hair and a big dumb smile. The way his eyes got feverish when we were about to do something reckless. A new drug. Steal a beamer out of the dealer lot.
He was one of those kids.
And I silently took it all in because Jesse didnt have to say any words when he was speaking to you. Like the first time he kisses me, crushing, and important, and hard…behind that old abandoned building. Nicole didnt know that and she didnt know anything now about Jesse’s plans to ditch her. And when we pulled into the beach and she got out to smoke Jesse quietly got out and an argument ensued. I got dragged in.
Nicole got mad, she left us stranded, but that was Jesse’s plan.
As soon as she pulled off he threw his arm around me laughing, and kissed my forehead. He threw that old black and yellow jacket on me to stay warm and we took our hours long trek back to the opposite side of the city.
We had youth and humor on our side, it didnt even bother us. We lobbed eggs here and there, smoking and talking.
Until we came upon to a run down apartment where his mom lived after hours of walking in the cold.
Jesse, like all of us, came from abuse and a broke home. He lived with his father, his mother was a drug addict.
Before going in for the night Jesse’s eyes glassed over and told me he wanted to show me something.
Cheshire cat grin.
And at 14/15 thats all it took for young love. We went to the roof and Jesse told me to look.
Right infront of the building was a gas station with 2 cop cars parked at the pump. They were inside the store.
Jesse handed me a carton and told me to throw as hard as possible, its further than it looks.
Jesse, with his carton, hit the mark every time. My eggs fell short until I got the hang of it, and we decided to get rid of all the eggs right then and there.
We had a case of the giggles, falling over on top of eachother. Me leaning into Jesse. Him palming my lower back. Taking bizarre opportunities in the middle of immature mayhem to kiss my head as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
The first cop came out, looking left to right and shouting. Jesse’s eyes grew wide and told me to duck. Laughing only how teenagers could, we doubled over and made it quickly to the staircase, jumping 2 or 3 steps to make it to the bottom.
Eventually we got to the right floor and threw the door open laughing as we tumbled out, rolling on the floor together before giving me a hand, but we never stopped laughing.
Inside his apartment was dingy, and low dusty lights were on. Above the stove. A small end table. In the living room an old box tv was playing something and illuminating garish yellows on Jesse’s moms face.
Drugs and an over flowing ash tray.
He introduced us, and she seemed nice but she was in pain from cancer.
He ushered me into a bedroom down the hall, then flipped on a light and locked the door.
The room was sparse, just a stained carpet and some blankets and a pillow on the floor, not even a mattress. He had a box 10 inch tv with a vcr attached, and infront of that, another ash tray.
He cracked the window while lighting a cigarette and says
“Well, I only have one movie. Looks like we’ll be watching “idol hands” all night”
I told him it was one of my favorites and I didnt mind at all.
Not going home. Not being with Nicole (she wasnt the greatest friend, so really no harm no foul for being with her one true highschool love besides, we both had an unspoken rule to keep it a secret the way its been.
We sat indian style, with the movie in the background, chain smoking and talking about tonight. The past week. Our life in highschool and abusive homes, and what the fuck we were even doing.
But at our age we didn’t care.
And I remember Jesse telling me a story in which I was listening intently and he stopped, and bridged the gap between space and time to grab me again as if it was the only thing that make sense.
The ash tray spilled, and he didnt care, he picked me up onto his lap and he held my body hard enough as if in doing so it would fix all his problems.
Fix mine.
We didnt know a lot of love or nurturing, it was two desperate kids clinging onto eachother for life.
It was passionate, as passionate as two broken teens could get, bodies and limbs grabbing and pulling, hands in hair holding heads in place, the urgency is something you dont soon forget.
And when he reluctantly finally let go he tried to be as gentle as he knew, stroking my hair out of my eyes, kissing my eye lids, telling me hes waited so long for this moment.
Im a person of few words. I just looked at him transfixed and he answered my looks with his own.
I moved back to my position opposite side, and we watched the movie. I dont know how many times that fucking movie played. We layed down and he stroked my hair....oh how its always been so long and past my waist, and he’d wisper words the whole time while I didnt speak. I didnt have to.
And he accepted that about me.
Eventually we decided to sleep and we took off all our clothes down to the underwear and jesse made a makeshift bed with a blanket on the floor and one to cover us.
It was my first time sleeping coed, and sure, it was everything I expected. We were still too innocent for anything more than kissing and touching, and honestly that was perfect.
We got into spoon position, turned the tv off, and without second thought I got comfortable doing my wiggle.
Medically this is called stimming.
But to Jesse is was the funniest and most charming thing that could have happened.
It was silent.
I could feel his bare chest trying not to rumble, and him trying not to make a sound.
I asked him what was so funny, what was he holding in?
And he told me I was doing the cutest thing hes ever witnessed. He made a sexual joke over how what I was doing would turn out into a disaster and questioned me on my movements.
Well, its just something ive done since I was a kid. I never really thought about it. And now im a little self concious.
Jesse turned me around so we were face to face talking and he kissed me again, something long but soft this time.
“I think youre incredible. I think no one exists like you. Even if you do a funny butt wiggle”
And I pretended to push off his chest in offense, but I was laughing the whole time and he hushed me with a
“No no no, it’s the most adorable thing in the world. It makes me feel like you feel happy and safe with me”
And that was exactly it.
And thats how at 14 my stimming got coined the butt wiggle from the high schools bad kid who was always in trouble and always emotionally unavailable.
And the night went on, eventually we slept, eventually the butt wiggle died down when dreams enveloped me, and when we woke up there he was watching me until I opened my eyes and he gave me a lopsided grin of pure happiness. A night that was ours, and one of the first nights I realized all of my oddities from illness 2 made me appealing and new to a bunch of boys/men who just werent used to being around a full retard. I was a novelty, but I had convinced myself I was special. Gods thanks for a life fucked.
She was on fire last night…
And I was breathing gasoline
I had a dream last night…
And it fit me like a glove
I had a scream last night…
Lord above!!
Im thinking about all of this…
My dream, where im haunted.
My illnesses that made me “special”
Him.
Jesse
Dr. Julie.
Alice.
And the only way to forget my dream i didnt expect or ask for was by taking medication from prescription salad swap and I didnt have to think twice because my tolerance.
I didnt have to think twice because the goal was to put my ghost that haunts me as a ghost, back into the past or universal ether where it belongs.
I mean, don’t judge me for what I do to survive. Imagine your life is marked by what your brain percieved as the time in your life happiness was present, and real, and love was something that existed for you.
A childhood fucked,
And as an adult, the most peculiar thing.
You dont know any more if it was real or fake, if they existed, if you created their being as a coping mechanism to keep going.
Your brain says
You experienced this… happiness. Love, even. And it was ....so extraordinary.
Yes, with my emotional disorder I feel everything so profoundly. But due to trauma, I dont feel happiness, atleast in a normal respect. But for years on and off, it was there. It was more than anything I could handle. It was everything I missed for 20+ years,
It was another human so unnatural, it made it mean more.
That he was insane, it made it genuine. Because by no means should he (at that part of his life) been able to intertwine his life into mine in a way… I lost all sensibly.
I dont know now if it was real, or made up
The ultimate worst of it.
So. Drugs it is.
And whats a nerve pain killer anyway?
I have no hope, but im going to try.
I wait the appropriate hour for it to breakdown and become one with my central nervous system.
And curiously,
It knocks me on my ever loving ass.
Im high.
That goal is never to get high.
Its controlled in every way, its only enough to make me function like a normal person in society. It allows me to function at peak performance.
I highly misjudged this mystery pill.
Its a downer, but not my downers I prefer.
I cant even explain how I feel besides tilting, the whole world topsy turvey, but im still warm and comfortable.
This is good.
I tell myself.
This will be good at the dentist.
Until I walk into the dentist, high out of my face.
Juliet is up in heaven
A pocket full of pills
And Jesus drives to Mexico
To get her prescription filled!
It doesn’t really matter, all of my medical professionals expect the unexpected from me, and we have a very unconventional way of handling buisness.
Like last trip, my full blown panic attack with 3 assistants all rummaging through my purse for my anxiety meds. 45 minutes of me calming down.
Yeah, theyre all used to this.
They cover me with the weighted xray vest because the pressure calms me down and keeps my arms from moving.
My legs are still shaking, predominately by my feet, and im “butt wiggling” to find my center of comfort. Its quite the sight to behold.
Ive realized the numbing needle is the biggest point of horror, and she doesnt give me a heads up when she stabs me in the roof of my mouth (which prior ive never had done).
The pain is momentarily excruciating.
I instinctively elbow her arm out of the way, but shes a professional and nothong phases her.
The appointment is long, im cursing, theyre poking fun, the nerve pain meds are not helping in any respect.
And they didnt help with the dream either.
Eventually were done, my first dentist trip accidentally blitzed. All because i needed an out for the dream that comes in pieces.
Can you imagine, just living your life unsuspectingly, and at random youre thrusted into a dreamscape of yesteryear, the longing haunting of it all. Im there. And hes there.
And were young again, but its also a different scenario we never lived.
There was a grand staircase outdoors....
They often take place out doors.
And hes speaking to me then, and I feel so me, and so happy, im tip toeing from step to step and listening, hes laughing.
The rest comes and goes, I think this is part of the suffering as well as my memory thats gone.
He looks like a photograph of himself, taken from far far away.
Its usually the kind of day only a chemical enhancement would get someone like us to appreciate. Its warm, the pockets of lights are thrown precariously around the setting. Where I can catch you in a ray and you look like a child. A teen. An adult.
Parts of you ive never known, and there is a symbolism there but its lost on me.
You think what I do and say is so mundanely nuance and I think that what you do and what you say is so life changing, it was on the tip of the worlds tongue this whole time, and only you had the words. It made total sense.
It made the questions on if I made all of that up even worse when I woke up.
Oh, and when you wake! In my peripheral I can see clips of the dreams, but theyre cloudy and leaving me. I can hear echos of conversations, i can see your being as if you were just there and not decades prior. There is so much I want to say and ask, that you never have and never will grant me answers to. I hang my head, identical to what youd see on a movie, and just feel totally defeated.
Is this my trauma bond, to something I invented? Were you ever there, was it anything remotely close for you or was i just led on to belive? One of us has to be the proverbial asshole.
You, for knowing what effects you were purposely causing, for specific instances.
Me, for being a fucking tool.
A stab of embarrassment. To be asking all of this now, without my place or time, but no one else gets the urgency, not you or them or her or jesus himself.
I want to know if it was the truth or a hallucination, because I could live with the truth, I think I fucking earned and deserve it, and I think its the key to exorcising your ghost.
As a ghost, with a ghost, I dont have many options available. But I think this may be what unlocks the trapped time loop of seeing you every few weeks since my youth an eternity ago.
Sure, it was once a year
But since god is a god of love
(Whatever the fuck that means)
They’ve been promoted to once every 3 months or less
It was once a year, yes. Its much more often than that. And the always followed by the hollow feeling of why…why do I get to be haunted and you get to be what you always were. In and out. Abandonment. Moved on in the best way possible, never to be plagued in this manner.
You must know happiness.
You must have known it many times in your life.
If people would understand I didn’t, except that era of you there with your hand extended, you there in a dark basement with the computer glow, you there in your room, a bar, a parking lot, with others, alone. My cousins wedding. A hotel room. Your friends house. An abortion clinic.
Im home, my mind is swirling, and im depressed.
My plans as Alice has failed and nothing is slowing down anything, time is speeding up.
I. Am embarrassing. A sad creature. I don’t think you realized all I asked of you was nothing more than to save myself, redemption, clarification, the ripping of my body in half. It could have been bad, and id eat that shit gladly. But why? Why was it such a deep contrast, why was it allowed. And it whispers in my head
why wont you make it stop when you have the ability. To just let it be known I was retarded, you made a terrible mistake, there were mental connections not compatible with normal synapses and I had a disconnect.
Why did you play along, why am I doing this still to this day.
Sick of this yet.
Imagine your only perceived happiness, an utter coping mechanism. To know it would allow me to lay it to rest, and in doing so the ghost of the dreams that haunt me.
Im not owed a god damn thing, its probably not my right, but how is there not enough empathy to atleast put me out of my hallucinating misery?
Im just talking out of my ass I think, this took me days of putting this down and picking it back up to write. Im just trying to do my best with what I have, and therapy isn’t quite doing all it should since im missing 2 specialists. After my emdr specialist was pumped about intake and had a full game plan about diving into my trauma head on…after this being the most hated and feared form of therapy you could put yourself through....she wrote me a message half a week later stating shes not comfortable having me as a patient because I have too much trauma than shes comfortable in her qualifications to help.
So.
Fuck me.
Going to try a new approach with cbt therapy and to fuck all with the trauma.
To be fair, my trauma is my childhood.
In a manic frenzy, I mentioned it was you.
I am trauma bonded in certain respects, but thats not on you, thats all me baby.
Id give the world to be neurotypical....or even slightly neurodivergent instead of severely broken down by my main 3. To have clarity at 40 if my whole life was walking hell or if I did have something that was special in a way it was mine and I can hoard that feeling and notion while I battled the rest. Or was this all for nothing?
Its monday now, the dreams and Alice were last week.
Im not looking for a power surge, im looking to unplug an unsightly buzz zapper thats hardwired inside of my chest.
Its mine.
Mine alone.
I dont know a lot, I dont have tons of answers to the worlds mysteries.
Ive been in a lot of communities for my big 3 and im sorry to report I remain on the outskirts there as well.
Everyone else’s light is as it should be. Natural.
Some people, probably like my personal ghost have no light at all.
And ive spent my life searching for anyone, male, female, anyone at all.... who also has a florescent and garrish blue glow they hide. It was just me.
It was always just me.
I float around this house, with it full.
With everyone asleep and me, left with the insomnia.
I am an unmoved ottoman. A loveseat.
That standing lamp in the corner.
I stopped speaking after I noticed it doesnt truly matter if I do so or stay silent.
I am made up of the ectoplasm seen in black and while photos, crawling out of mouths during a seance.
A spector, curiously haunted from the same exact thing.
And its not up to him, or her, or jesus christ to make me feel sane in all this.
Julies dont get an explanation.
I cried to my mother for years asking
Why was i chosen and not my other sisters.
Eventually this fall she told me, and my denial was finally shattered.
Simply because I was hated, not wanted, and the biggest regret.
Im a big girl now, I can handle the truth.
But its not my place to ask or to seek.
I guess
I’ll continue on as a phantom. With a phantom by ways of dreamscapes.
Until then
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