Every day I wake up terrified that I'm not going to be able to write anymore. If I don't have ideas in mind, I think 'Well, that's it for me...I'm finished. I'm not a writer after all'. Before this summer I wrote about two things over the past three years. I don't want that to happen again. I can't let it happen.
I had strange dreams last night, the first one was about a friend I used to have named Brian (who everyone called Beto because of a high school Spanish class that I wasn't even in). Beto and I grew up in the same neighborhood. In my dream, I was at my parents' house, and my mom told me that Beto had just been there taking up a collection for himself because he was seriously ill. "His face and his neck were covered in bandages", she said.
Anxious to catch up, I ran across the street to find Beto, and when I did, he no longer had the bandages. He didn't look injured or sick at all, but his hair was brown instead of blonde. I tried talking to him but he just kept walking and ignoring me. I was trying to tell him that I didn't understand why we couldn't be friends anymore, and finally he turned to me and told me that the reason we were no longer friends was because he was evil in my presence. He said something to the effect of not trusting himself when he was with me, not being able to use his best judgement, etc.
I told him things were different now. "We're married", I said. He gave me a strange look. "We are?" he asked. "Yes, I mean to different people. We're each married to different people now." We both started laughing and for whatever reason this seemed to convince him that we could be friends again. We had been walking the whole time and were quickly apporoaching the house where he grew up.
"Ok", he said "Why don't you come over then?"
"You mean to meet your wife?" I asked.
"No, My wife isn't even there. She gets a lot of headaches", he said, as if that somehow clarified things.
"Let me go home and change my jeans first", I said, although I'm not sure what was wrong with the jeans I had on.
Beto agreed that he would meet me at his house after I went home and changed. He even suggested what jeans I should wear, a pair that used to be my favorite when I was friends with him that I've been missing for several years.
When I got to my parents' house Beto's family was there to talk to me. I invited them in and we sat on the back patio. The weird thing was, they were nice to me, and in reality his family always hated me. They hated my whole family because my psuedo-adoptive brother had dated Beto's sister while her husband was overseas during the Gulf War. The visit from his family was the strangest thing. My family came out to the patio to join them and they were all talking about what it meant for Brian and I to be friends again, as if we were getting married or something.
After his family left I went into my room to change. At that point, my parents' house was completely different than it usually is. I was standing in front of my closet, trying to find the right jeans to wear, and every time I found a pair that I liked, they would disappear from the hanger before I got a chance to put them on. I was frantic trying to find the right jeans to wear, and time kept going by unusually fast. Before I knew it, two hours had passed, and suddenly all of the friends I ever had were all outside waiting to reunite with me , but it didn't matter because I couldn't find the right pair of jeans.
