My Subconscious is a Melodramatic Asshole

I've always had an over-active imagination.  My parents used to tell me this as a child; I was never sure if it was an accusation or a means of comfort, though.  I would tell them about my fantasies that I could step through the TV screen or into the pages of my books and actually go to the Max with the rest of the cast of Saved by the Bell, or go on crazy adventures with the other girls in The Babysitters Club.  "Oh, Eden, you and your over-active imagination," they'd say.  Or I'd ask to stay up late to watch a bad Made for TV scary movie (which, oddly enough, also featured Tiffani-Amber Thiessen in a cheerleader's uniform, but she was running away from her psycho-abusive, newly-estranged stepfather instead of trying to decide who to let take her to the prom, Zack or Slater), and my parents would tell me, "You know you can't watch movies like that because of your over-active imagination.  You'll have nightmares!"  And when I begged and pleaded with them, and they finally relented, admonishing me to not come crying to them when I had bad dreams, and then I woke up terrified in the middle of the night because Old Mr. Zimmerman was standing outside my window with an axe in his hand and revenge in his eyes, they'd tell me, "Eden, it was just a dream.  Mr. Zimmerman doesn't even exist, he was a character in that movie.  And the man with the axe outside is just Hubert here to cut down some trees in the middle of the night for no reason.  My, what an over-active imagination you have!"  (We lived on a farm--just in case you were wondering why there was someone around named "Hubert.")

So yeah, I was never sure if having an over-active imagination was a good thing or a bad thing.

But last night I had a series of horrible dreams that culminated with me dying in some cabin in the mountains.  DYING, Y'ALL.  And it wasn't even a normal slasher-movie-inspired death, like the dreams of my youth (I once dreamed my sister got bored, so she decided to cut off my mother's head, dipped it in cement, and then chiseled out the features.  I'm not even making that up).  Last night, though, I dreamed that I was so upset about something that my body systems just began to shut down.  I literally worried myself to death.  Apparently it's true:  I am my grandmother's granddaughter.  Shit.  The weird part was that when I first noticed something was amiss it was because I was incredibly cold, and nothing I did could warm me up.  When I asked one of my former sorority sisters, who is now a doctor (and incidentally, with whom I wasn't really close during college, and haven't spoken to since--why was she taking up real estate in my dream, I wonder?) what the hell was wrong with me, she says calm-as-you-please, "Well, your body is so worked up that your internal systems are shutting down.  Your organs will give out, and then you'll die.  I'd say you've got a few hours left, at most."  And then she hands me a blanket to help with the chills (it didn't, THANKS FOR NOTHING, HAILEY), and goes back out on the deck to enjoy the garden party that apparently had been going on, or maybe had just started in the dream.  It's hard to say.  Dream timelines are always all kinds of fucked up.

But then--and here's where it gets really crazy--David shows up.  David, of the on-again-off-again-broke-up-with-me-and-then-I-went-to-the-crazy-hospital-because-I-apparently-have-the-emotional-autonomy-of-Bella-Swan relationship that I so lovingly blogged about earlier this spring.  (That's right, I read Twilight.  Fuck off.)  So David shows up, and is busy teasing me and not listening to me and getting wasted with the other guests of the party and then hanging upside down from door frames and taking his shirt off instead of paying attention to the dying girl on the couch wrapped up in the unhelpful red chenille throw. (The funny part?  This is not my sadistic subconscious making this up--that shit happened during our time together.  A LOT....Not the death part, though.  The not listening, getting drunk and/or naked part.  I mean, I'm not Shirley MacLaine, y'all--I can't die a whole bunch and then come back.  That's just silly.)  But when someone finally tells him I'm dying, he becomes all kinds of attentive, and wants to come sit with me and take pictures with me to "remember our time together."  And THEN?  I LET HIM.

When I finally woke up from this David Lynchian dream (at 6:45 am on a Saturday, I'd like to point out--my internal clock hates me), at first I was really upset.  I mean, I just spent the last however-long thinking I was dying, and worried that Ex-Boyfriend David was too preoccupied with his own shenanigans to spend time with me during my final moments--it really hurt my feelings, y'all!  But then, as my sleep-addled brain finally caught up with itself, I was all, "Oh, heeelllll no, I didn't let that boy come sit on the couch with me and take pictures of me just because he thought I was dying!  He didn't want me when I was alive.  Why, for fuck's sake, would he want me when I was dead!?!"  (Apparently I'm still carrying around some angst from that relationship.  I really need to work on giving that up and setting it free.  Maybe I'll spend today listening to the Angsty Girls to get it all out; Ani, Tori, Amy and Emily, Alanis, and Kate will be my soundtrack.)

And I don't know--maybe it's the stress I've been under lately.  We've been down to 2 tellers at der Bank this week, and so I've been working 10 and 11 hour days for the past week and a half.  PLUS I'm getting ready to go on a trip to London where I am in charge of 50 middle- and high-school students for 10 days.  (On purpose.  I'm doing that on purpose.  Because I'm stupid.)  I hadn't seen Best Friend and Non-Husband for nearly 2 months, and was beginning to suffer serious withdrawal symptoms, until we had a reunion on Thursday, and had a great time laughing about bachelor parties and raptors and Titanic, and because of a misplaced modifier, we began coming up with plot lines for a rerelease of Titanic 3-D that somehow spliced in certain scenes from Jurassic Park.  (These are my friends.  It's okay--you can be jealous.)  Plus, if I see one more Facebook status update from the people I went to high school with saying things like, "Five years ago today I married my best friend!" or "Hannah's potty trained and it only took 3 days!  Look at this picture of her on her super-cute baby potty-training toilet!!", I might just call up Hubert to see if he can go wield his axe on these people's computers and cameras.  Don't post that shit, people.  It only depresses the rest of us.  Also?  I don't need to know about other people's bathroom capabilities, toddler or otherwise.  Some things are meant to be private.

All this to say, whether it's stress or simply my mind playing really sick practical jokes on me, my dream life is--at present--a terrible place to be.

In other--totally unrelated--news, I ran across this blurb today (also from a Facebook post, but it's legit--this is the kind of drivel the Facio-libre was made for.  Thanks, Zuckerberg!).  I post this in honor of my friend, Abby, who almost had a date with a potential Nickelback fan, but clearly should have made a date with Josh Gross of Boise, ID, instead...even though the commute to Memphis would make a second date nigh on impossible.  YOU'RE WELCOME, ABBY: