You know how in the movie A Christmas Carol, George C. Scott’s character is visited by the spirits of Christmases Past, Present, and Yet to Come? And at the end of all of it, you’re not quite sure whether it was just a poignant dream to convince Scrooge to be less of a heartless bastard, or whether it was (in some supernatural sense) real? For argument’s sake, let’s call it an extremely realistic dream-like experience, from which comes enlightenment along with receipt of the blatant message that Scrooge will die alone if he doesn’t fix it all, like RIGHT NOW. Fast forward, Ebenezer gets the point, wakes up on Christmas morning, buys an I’m-sorry-I-was-such-an-ass turkey for the Cratchetts, Tiny Tim lives, cue the happy ending, roll the credits, etc. etc.
Dreams can be completely idiotic and nonsensical, or they can be full of powerful stuff. Sometimes it’s a combination of the two. But, like Scrooge figured out, it’s important to focus on the take-away. That’s what I’m trying to do here.
I’m at it again lately: dreaming about Ghosts of Friendships Past. Unfortunately, I can’t literally reach into my head and surgically pluck them out, and since these particular friendships are years past their expiration dates and truly define the term “lost cause,” I’m left asking myself what exactly I’m supposed to do with the emotional hangover who stubbornly refuses to stop couch surfing my subconsciousness.
Some people say dreams don’t mean anything. You dream, you wake up, you carry on without a second thought. I think those people are full of crap. Our brains are complicated places. There is enough internal drama happening when we sleep that some therapists make entire careers out of dream interpretation. And if you’re a dreamer like me, you understand why. Because dreams can actually feel real to the dreamer. If you’ve ever woken yourself up out of a scary dream trying, usually in some weird, garbled way, to cry out in vain for help, you know exactly what I mean. In the moments after you awake, you aren’t quite the same. Your heart rate is elevated, your ears pricked to any unfamiliar sounds in the night. You might feel scared, temporarily unable to move, or depending on the dream, even sad. Simply put, it feels real.
My recurring dreams about old friends tend to evoke a slew of emotions both while I’m asleep and after I wake up… joy, nostalgia, anger, sadness, regret, sometimes relief. What I haven’t felt from any of it is closure. So I’m trying to figure out why.
Recently I began to realize that the older I get, the harder it is for me to form new, meaningful, adult connections. I’ve intermittently talked to other adults about this and they tend to largely agree: making legit adult friends is seriously tough. No, I don’t think I’m going to die alone, and I hold my husband, my son, and my handful of friends dear. Those people–particularly Paul, who gets a huge gold star for best husband and best friend–are crucial to my sense of wellbeing and happiness with my life, and I’m not trying to discount them. Those relationships are not lesser, but different. And there is a part of me–a very real part–that deeply, soulfully misses the type of friendships I had in high school and college.
So, what is it about the coming of age years that encourages instant super-glue-like bonds between people? Maybe it’s being thrust into an unfamiliar setting far from home when you go to college, or navigating your way through a somewhat hostile environment (high school, I’m talking to you here) that causes people to befriend each other quickly, relentlessly, fearlessly. It’s the “we’re in this together and no one’s getting out of here alive” mentality. You silently and mutually agree to have each other’s backs as you survive on a diet of Boones Farm and Papa John’s, listen to the Barenaked Ladies, and debate whether to major in psychology or political science, naively failing to understand that your career choices are going to suck in either of those fields. You wear holes in your Birkenstocks as you boldly trek toward your future, you leave your dorm room door open at all times except when you’re sleeping, and with your friends–your tribe–you semi-blindly yet optimistically grope your way into adulthood.
And then one day you’re there. You’re an adult. And you’re surprised to realize you haven’t talked to your old friends from the trenches for years. Maybe decades. You have new friends, but it’s become increasingly difficult to get your schedules to align so you can make plans, even to just meet for coffee (because that’s what adults do). You have a crazy job, or they have a crazy baby, or whatever combination of adulthood symptoms have befallen you both causes you to not see each other as much as you’d like. You mutually promise “to find a time to get together after the holidays” or you say you’ll try harder to keep in touch, because let’s face it, it only takes 30 seconds to send a text and you know you’re as guilty as anyone for not doing a better job at it. You vow to do better. But life marches on.
And at some point, while your brain is working overtime planning home improvement projects, scheduling meetings and dentist appointments, packing school lunches, and planning what to have for dinner, your subconscious self has started to yearn for the Days of Friendships Past. Maybe that’s where my dreams come in. Because those dreams are quite possibly the last vestiges of the friendships that reminded me who I was when I first learned how to make friends, and how those people ended up–without my even knowing it was happening–becoming like my family. And without them, it feels like I’m missing a piece of myself or a way of living that I’m afraid I’ll never get back, but didn’t realize I was losing until it was too late.
Everyone has those friends, and some people are lucky enough to hold onto them through all the clumsy phases of post-college life. They are the friends who know you well enough to let themselves into your house without knocking; they meet up with you without feeling like they have to shower first; they text you anytime ANYTHING happens, regardless of whether it was a dumb meme they just saw or something really serious. You are their person and vice versa. You are a constant presence in each other’s lives. Your dorm room doors are always open.
Part of me wonders if those days and those friendships are largely behind me, or if maybe there’s a trick to figuring out how to create similar bonds in middle age and older adulthood–a trick I am still learning–or whether it’s even possible. I don’t have the answers. But I do know this: I miss my old friends.
With that, I’ll leave you with a few lines from a song I love by Jasmine Thompson:
I miss the good times we had
Now I don’t know who’s got my back
And somebody told me to light up every room
Make them remember you
But nobody here knows what I’m going through
No, they never do
I miss my old friends
‘Cause they know when I need them the most
I made some new friends and they’re cool friends
But they don’t know
What I do, what I got, who I am and who I’m not
I miss my old friends
I miss my old friends
If you figure it out let me know. Not to be a downer but it doesn’t get easier as you get older – you learn to live with it with each new move or life change. You learn to accept it and remember the old friends fondly and keep them in your heart.