Last night I had the following dream –

I was asleep in a highrise  apartment.  In the next bedroom was my step-son, age 5.  I woke up and my ex (in the dream we are still together) is in bed with me, trying to cuddle.  I ask him “what are you doing here?  I thought you were spending the weekend with your girlfriend”.  I don’t think he answered.  Sometime later we’re standing in the kitchen and I feel the ground drop.  It feels like a carnival ride, the drop after you reach the top of the hill.  I am the only one of the 3 of us who feels it.  I wonder if I imagined it, so I say nothing.  Suddenly, the building starts to sway.  Then it starts to lean, severely.  It is clear the building is on the verge of collapse.  I yell “we’ve got to get out of here”.  We leave the apartment and head for the stairs.  I am terrified.  It is a life & death decision.  If we take the elevator we can get out of the building quickly, perhaps avoiding the collapse.  However, if the elevator is compromised by whatever has happened we could be trapped.  If we take the stairs it will be much longer before we get out of the building, so there is a greater chance we will be in it when it collapses.  I am alone making the decision and I choose the stairs.  We make it down several flights and I look around and my step-son is gone.  I am frantic, but my ex seems not to care.  A minute later my ex is gone.  I am alone, terrified as the building leans further and further……… I wake up.

I woke drenched in sweat, thinking what the heck??  Why am I still dreaming about my ex.  Then I thought about the dream and realized it was a parable.  It sums up my entire relationship with him.    I was always a bit surprised when he was actually there with me.  I seemed to be the only one who knew when the bottom dropped out, and I was definitely the only one horrified when my stepson, his biological child, left us to live with his mother.  And when we were on the verge of collapse it was always I who made the major decisions.  And now, I am trapped in the place we’d made our home.

I hate dreams.