02 December 2004

Reconciliation

Last night I dreamt of reconciling a long-dead friendship. It was very odd because I haven't even thought of this person in probably 4 or 5 years; our friendship ended in a very weird way well over 10 years ago, though some time later I did send out a "peace offering" letter (I know, very unlike me; it was a phase) to which she replied. I think we were both of the mindset, "OK, let's bury the hatchet. But let's not pretend we are still friends either." She ended her reply with something like, "should we ever run into each other, I'd like to think we could say hello and smile."

She lives in another city (last I heard was Vancouver, but that was about a decade ago) and she is (or was) a trial lawyer, so I don't think I am likely to run into her without seeking her out. In my dream, she looked the way she did the last I saw her, though she had dyed her hair dark, and she literally climbed out of a closet (hmmm.. skeletons?) when our mutual friends knocked on the door (they had brought me to see her). In my dream we each looked in wide-eyed surprise at the other, hugged wordlessly, and cried. We then spent some time just hanging out together, walking and chatting like the last fifteen years hadn't happened.

Oddly, when I awoke, I didn't think about it right away. It wasn't until I opened a cupboard that I had a flashback to the dream. And it has been gnawing at me since I remembered it. So was it a good dream? Is it telling me something?Am I being silly?

**
In a similar thread, for your reading pleasure I'd like to suggest a sweet little poem called Old Friend by Janet S. Wong.



3 comments:

Mrs Robot said...

Oh, go on - track her down and send her a letter describing your dream. If nothing comes of it, then nothing lost, but... who knows? Could be interesting. :)

Tim Bailey said...

It couldn't hurt, I suppose. People sometimes grow back towards each other even without any contact. Or so I've heard.

Unknown said...

Actually I have no particular interest in seeing her again. The "olive branch" was part of a major emotional house-cleaning for me. I admitted a lot of things to myself and dealt with some of the thornier issues. The amount of anger and pain wrapped up in my feelings about how we had parted ways was too much for me, so I wrote the letter to bury the hatchet.

In fact it never occurred to me that there was any literal meaning to the dream. I was trying to figure out if there was someone else with whom I should reconcile or if there was a more general meaning (you know, like if you dream of tunnels...)