Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

I had the most intense nightmare: Gary slipped away from me on a walk, I ran after him screaming his name but he ran away anyway and disappeared around a corner. Later, someone who'd helped me search for him showed me a photo they'd snapped of him in a stranger's car, looking terrified. The photo was of him looking out the front passenger seat, eyes big and terrified (heh, he still has two eyes in my dream-version of him, apparently!).

I woke myself up sobbing, brokenhearted. That image, of the photo on a kind stranger's phone, has haunted me all day.

Oddly, I went back to sleep and continued the same dream, something I don't think has ever happened to me before. A random combination of friends -- the kind you get in dreams, that includes everyone from one of your oldest closest friends and someone you haven't talked to since college -- appeared and did mysterious shady things...luckily, the fact that they were being vague about it suited my brain's inability to fabricate much of a plot for this section! And suddenly there was Gary at the front door of the place where I was staying (yeah for some reason this was happening in the U.S. so I had like a motel room), trying to get in. Then I sobbed for different reasons.

Again, the image of him outside the door, looking just like he does when he's waiting for me to open our front door to come inside after a walk, has stuck with me all day.

Also, maybe I've mentioned that lately my brain has been making up for anxiety dreams by being all "hey, would you like a sexytimes dream now??" So that happened too. A lil treat!

Lots of intense emotions in my brain lately.

Also I'm amused that D has this dream version of the city we live in, where the geography is different from real life but in a consistent way and a lot of his dreams are set there. I, on the other hand, am starting to have a dream version of a tiny town I grew up near (pop. 300). It's also different in crucial ways from the real one. One of the first times I dreamed about it, my mom was giving me a lift home from there, berating me all the while about not having a retirement fund. I shouted back at her and reckoned I did a pretty good job of standing up for myself as a crip millennial.

Anyway, now I dream that this town has buses (going past it on the highway anyway!) and I have bikes. Indeed, last night's dream was stressing about how to get my bike off a bus when it was crowded with people -- one of those things that feels much more stressful at the time than it does when the plot is examined with a waking mind. I missed my stop but was still rewarded with street performers doing a play on the main street.

I woke up terribly lonely, from the nightmarish first dream but then just in general -- ironically, I was only actually alone because Real Gary was very much present as usual and had caused such a fuss during the night that he disturbed all of us and D ended up sleeping in the spare bed with him, the only thing that finally eventually settled him down.

But my desperation for social contact wasn't relating to my ability to do it. My attempts to socialize online when I did finally get myself out of bed made me feel worse instead of better: I felt like I was just a little bit off in all my interactions, not quite saying what I intended to, and making choices that didn't reflect the effects I wanted to have on people. It was miserable.

And then I got a text from a friend saying "come over any time after 1!" It had sorta slipped my mind that I'd made this plan for today. I was a little reluctant but tried not to sabotage myself by giving in to my misery when here was the chance to do the very thing I thought I needed. It still felt hard. But I did it!

And it was great to see my friends, L and J who I used to work for. Great to see how things are going for them. J had presents for me: a skein of yarn from a set whose colors were meant to represent the solar system; the one he gave me was "Earth," all greens and browns. "These are Erik colors," he told me he'd thought when he saw it, and I was delighted. Also, some mystery jam. He'd made jam a while ago and had just discovered some more jars of it. No labels though. So I took a jar too. I was sad not to have anything for him, but I did come armed with a list of herbs that mother_bones offered to share from her garden; she grows them because they look nice and they're good for pollinators but she thought someone who likes herbs could make use of them too. And he's very excited about just about everything on the list, so I will have stuff for him next time, including a cutting of one. Meanwhile, we had strawberries with some of the basil from his own garden; delicious.

The walk to and from their house seemed good for my brain too. I downloaded the podcast episode I was listening to, but I never got my headphones out, I just tried to let my brain wander. I think it was good for me.