Only In My Dreams
I'm in my wedding dress, but I've
forgotten to wear the special, super-low cut bra that I bought
because it would remain perfectly concealed under my strapless gown.
Instead, I'm wearing a regular old ratty bra that I'd typically have
on underneath a cable-knit sweater during an off laundry day.
Everyone can see the straps protruding out from my sweetheart
neckline. They droop loosely over my shoulders like unruly stands of
fettuccine. The band of the bra sits a good three inches above the
back of the dress, like a faded white censor strip placed on the
wrong side of a topless women.
I'm at the altar, and I know the bra is
all wrong. More than all wrong, down right ridiculous. But I've come
this far, and I can't go back. I hear a low roar as the crowd of
guests takes in my unorthodox underwear, and I flush a thick scarlet
as the tears hurl out from behind my eyes. This is all wrong. How
could I let this happen? Why the hell didn't one of my bridesmaids
stop me before I put one toe outside the dressing room? This is
unbearable. I have to get out. I turn around and run, as laughter
pounds at my ears. Even JT lets out a little chuckle. I run past pews
of hysterical guests, who only roar louder at my escape attempt. I
flee past my parents, who can only shake their hung heads in shame.
This is by far the worst moment of my life.
Until the next time I have a
wedding-related night terror, that is.
My dreams have always been bizarre.
Either they're so realistic and in tune with something I've been
thinking about that I catch myself a week later realizing something I
thought happened, didn't. Or they're so banana-sandwich insane, I'm
afraid to tell even JT their plot for fear he'll decide to leave me
at an inopportune moment, like say, mere seconds after I recite my
vows to him.
Wait, that was another dream. And I
woke up with a knot in my chest, tears on my face and a horse voice
from screeching after him as he took off with a faceless,
scantily-clad wedding crashing bitch.
Wedding planning is wreaking havoc on
my sleeping brain, and I have no way whatsoever to stop it.
Last night, I had a dream that JT and I
were walking on a path in a beautiful forest. Sunlight streamed
through branches of tall trees surrounding us. I thought we were
alone until a woman walked past us. We all exchanged pleasantries,
but her smile lingered a just moment too long as she nodded in JT's
direction. As she walked on, JT suddenly stopped and turned to me. He
confessed he'd always harbored a secret crush for this mystery woman
and wondered if I'd be opposed to him pursuing it now.
“But we're in the middle of buying a
house!” I exclaimed. “And we're engaged!”
“I know,” he said solemnly. “But
I really want this.”
Stunned, all I could do was nod. The
instant my head ducked in agreement, JT was off like a bullet,
chasing after his future happiness.
I woke with a start, then shook JT
awake to relay my most recent subconscious episode.
“Hmmm,” he said, rubbing sleep from
his eyes and yawning. “Was she hot?”
He's really got this reassurance thing
down.
Truthfully, his nonchalant response
more likely stemmed from the fact that I'd woken him with these
nocturnal tall tales no fewer than three times. In the last week.
There's truly nothing to be done to
stop these bizarre scenes from running through my mind. All
my life, my dreams have run the gamut from introspective to
nonsensical in extreme waves I have no control over.
When I was younger, my dreams were so
strange, my parents encouraged me to keep a dream journal. A sample
entry:
Nov. 12, 1997
Last night, I had a dream that I was
in this jail place and all of the sudden, Leslie Nielsen came flying
out of the sky. He had a gray suit on. When he landed, his head fell
off. Then me and this other person were trying to stop Leslie Nielsen
and this other really pretty dark-haired woman from doing something.
We were on their shoulders pulling their heads off, but they were
still alive. Toward the end, we were all laughing about it.
The what? So
wait, Leslie loses his head once, then it regenerates, and I and
“this other person” try to rip it off again? And who's this
dark-haired woman? Priscilla Presley? You know what? It doesn't
matter. We all laugh it off in the end.
The bottom line is none of it really
means anything. In the weeks since I've become engaged, I've dreamed
that my Mum, in a fit of rage over me not sending out the invitations
in a timely fashion, forced me to run an obstacle course while
wearing my wedding gown. I dreamed that my ceremony was moved from my
parents backyard to a tree house, and people, especially the
grandparents, were furious that they couldn't scale the branches to
get to it. I dreamed that no one came to the reception and JT and I
ended up with 130 plates of chicken Marsala to eat on our own. It's
all nonsense.
Yet, in some way it's serving some
purpose. Because while I'm tormented in my dreams, I remain calm and
collected in my waking hours. Things are going well. Details are
falling into place.
Check with me in a few months*. I can
only imagine the dreams I'll be having then. Probably something along
the lines of JT swapping his tux for my wedding gown, rallying the wedding party to participate in a
celebratory game of rugby in my parents' backyard, then hooking up with the caterer.
I'll be in the tree house, looking for
scissors to cut these damn bra straps.
*This was written about four months before the wedding. And yes, the dreams did get worse. I actually think I exhausted my subconscious, because about a week before the wedding, they finally let up. I think my brain had its fill and was all, "ENOUGH." Either that, or it simply ran out of horrifying scenarios to throw at me.
No comments:
Post a Comment