Teenage Dreams
The night before I found out Zac died, I had two very vivid dreams. In the first dream, Doug and I were in a high school together, being chased by terrifying zombies. It was like an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and we were uncharacteristically badass, bashing zombies up and running fast through the halls of the high school. As we were running up a staircase to get to higher ground, Doug was viciously attacked. I ran and tried to fight off more zombies but the dream ended with Doug biting me viciously and I shook myself awake trying to get out of the dream. I half woke up and tried hard to shake off that dream. It was really scary and too real.
I fell back asleep and found myself in the Shrieking Shack from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. My cousin Ross, who is like a brother to Zac and I, was there along with several other family members. Teenage Zac was standing on a creaky, battered staircase yelling at all of us. From my memory of the dream, he was saying some pretty mean stuff to me. Stuff like “you’re such a loser!”, “what are you doing?”, “why won’t you listen to me?”. It was awful, the whole family was very concerned. I woke up startled but my first thought was, at least he’s alive.
But he wasn’t. Some have said to me this dream was a visitation, but I’m not sure about that. I think this dream was my own subconscious dealing with my relationship with my brother. This dream was a gut instinct that something was terribly wrong and I was very angry about it. I am very angry about it, present tense. In six more hours, in the middle of my work day, I would get the call from Zac’s former partner that Zac was gone.
As I’ve been working through the grieving process, I’m having other dreams. The dream that I made it to Los Angeles in time and got him to rehab. That we spent the last few weeks dealing with all his “terrible secrets”, and in the light of day, the secrets just aren’t that terrible. That we faced his financial crisis together while he sobered up again and melted the black viscous fluid of self-hatred to a manageable puddle on the floor. I clean up his apartment and take care of his cats and visit him at rehab. We deal with his relationship problems. It’s all very hard and ugly and I resent him so much that it makes my head hurt and my hands shake. But at least he’s still fucking ALIVE.
