Lately I’ve stopped taking Prazosin because it seemed to be making my nightmares worse. It’s for the opposite, and in PTSD patients has been effective in reducing both the severity and the frequency of nightmares. But if it did work in the beginning, then it stopped and, in fact, seemed to give me a rebound effect. Horrors awaited every time my eyes closed. I told my doctor, and she said I needed my sleep. I was fighting it. So she discontinued the Prazosin and prescribed Trazodone, a sedative. It’s only a PRN, to be taken as needed only.

Sometimes it works. The nightmares have changed into some weird shit, and when I was given that in the hospital, I remember that my dreams did get more bizarre.

The other night, I dreamed that Kane (the wrestler) had gotten me into the WWE, and since I am old, I protested.

He assured me that Vince McMahon could use me as a gimmick character for a season, and then I’d be done. It sounded like fun. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long enough for me to get into the ring.

But it was nice to have a zany dream instead of a nightmare, and be able to remember it. It’s hilarious stuff.

Last night, I hit the wall early. I tried watching a movie, but I was out minutes after turning it on.

This time, I dreamed that I met Kerry, a teenage crush. She was grown, we hit it off, and I finally got the chance to find out what it’s like to kiss her. My emotions were as if I had been transported to some fairy tale. I told her that all my life, I had loved her.

That’s basically true. Her family moved to the neighborhood in the early 60s and I had been smitten on first sight.

As we grew up together, I never really had much interaction with her. But I was never going to anyway. That wasn’t in the cards.

I’ve loved a handful of women in my life. Some I dated. But the ones I loved the most, I never spoke to often, and I never told them how I felt. In third grade, which I had to repeat, the first time it was Barbara. We were inseparable. We even kissed. A lot. When she moved away, I was broken.

The repeat year, it was Lee Ann. She was beautiful and fun and I dared not go near her. I knew, even then, that I never wanted to feel a broken heart again.

But I also knew that something was wrong with me. The kids in my class never asked me to play ball on recess. They shunned me. Always. And I was constantly in some sort of trouble. My sense of humor never got any laughs; it was macabre and warped, and unless they had been through what I had, they would never understand me on any level.

Kerry was smart and by junior high school, was blooming into an awesome beauty. I knew that she would become somebody, as smart and as popular as she was.

It made it extremely painful to see that I, on the other hand, was sick. That I would never measure up, never be good enough for such an amazing young woman. Not then, not ever. I left her alone. After the end of the last semester of school year 1975, I never saw her again. Knowing that it was better for her if we never met again gave me some weird sense of honor: I’d only have messed up her life. You don’t really love someone if you’re going to put your needs above theirs. That ain’t love. It’s vanity and selfishness.

There would be one more woman that I would meet in my life who was way too good and beautiful and kind for me. Her name was Peggy, and I would have turned a beautiful and delicate flower into a mess. I loved her so dearly that I would have left my wife for her in a second. But I never told her how I felt. First, because the words that describe that kind of feeling do not exist; but more importantly, that love was so unbreakable that to this day, it’s still with me. And I wasn’t good enough. I knew it. I was becoming aware of just how fucked up I really was. I last saw her in the autumn of 1986 when my father’s business finally folded for good. The look she gave me was full of contempt, and I still bear that pain. And the memory of it is stamped in my mind.

Sometimes, things work out for reasons we don’t understand, and sometimes they don’t work out for reasons we do understand, especially if we are honest with ourselves and take the best interest of another to heart, holding their needs above our own. That, dear friends, is love, the best kind, the most pure kind.

The dream about Kerry was passionate, and good, and I’ll take that over my grisly nightmares any day.

As I stood outside today, smoking a Marlboro, I thought back to the days of junior high, when I loved one who could never know, and I grew more sick all the time.

One day in sculpture class, I had some warm wet plaster in my hand for some reason. Ronnie Howell was sitting beside me, and he was instrumental in my delinquent behavior, always knowing when to egg me on. In fact, he even occasionally laughed at my sick humor and stunts.

Watch this vintage commercial:

One version had men in a locker room. One gave the other a “five” and shaving cream was everywhere. The black man says, “Hey, man, that’s real hot lather!”

I turned in my chair, imitating the black athlete, slapped the hand with plaster with my hand that was free, and said, “Hey, man, that’s real hot lather!”

To my horror, that shit went everywhere, and a teacher’s aide was right there!

She was a sandy blonde with a killer body, wearing sprayed-on jeans, i mean, tight, and before the world heard the expression “camel toe”, I was looking straight at one, eye-level, not a foot away.

And I had just splattered plaster all over that camel toe!

Horrified, seeing a suspension in my immediate future, Ronnie Howell roared with laughter. I looked up at the aide to see how angry she was and apologize, but she was laughing!

A dream brought back a flood of memories, none really that bad, about junior high school and unrequited love that, today, lets me see something in my past that was noble and good and not about myself.

And I’ll take it.

Any day, I’ll take it.