White Girl Wasted Audio Recordings
Two Days Sober and Violent Dreams
The sobriety lasted two days. Two damn days. Two nights of missing rem sleep but feeling refreshed in the morning. Two evenings of needing to reprogram, not go to the bar, reconnect with staying home. And then a sports injury happened to the boy’s favorite team. He cannot handle stress. So he started drinking. So I started drinking.
We were pretty moderate all in all. He wasn’t staying up getting obliterated every night. I was pacing. We were being responsible with money.
Then I worked 9 days straight. And on the 9th day I hit a wall of whiskey. I don’t remember if I started crying. I know my friend drove me home. I have the text to the boy about not being able to find my keys to get in. I spent the entire next day on the couch bingeing Netflix. I didn’t drink. I didn’t smoke. I didn’t really sleep.
I didn’t realize how angry and resentful I am currently until it started manifesting in my dreams. Last night we were at a social gathering. Some sort of place that was the woods on one side and then through a series of staircases released you on to dense city streets. It’s this recurring city I’ve built for a while. There’s a central location (where I am now) and a lot of events that take place downtown. There is a grand hotel with a gilded ballroom and grand piano near the lounge that I end up in a lot. I don’t own the place but it’s mine somehow.
This dream in the woods last night had a bunch of people including our neighbors. I don’t remember the context but I started talking politics and policy with a young woman. She has straight brown hair, doe eyes, and was so normal it hurt. She didn’t agree with my progressive values. She only cared about the wellbeing of herself and her handsome husband. I was enraged. I argued, I threatened, I pinned her against a wall and I slapped her. Then I panicked and realized I needed to make things better. I started blaming her for my actions. Justifying what I had done. Pleading with her not to tell her husband. Contemplating how easy it would be to just make her disappear. That thought scared me even more. I fled away from the woods, through winding staircases that transitioned from maple to marble and found myself in a room encased in glass. Flinging open the balcony doors, I stumbled and sucked in the cold, damp, smog of the city. I was safe here. I could hide here. And then I woke up.
These are not the first violent dreams that I’ve had. The violence is never severe or deadly, but it is violence nonetheless. I have this desire for people to hurt as much as I’m hurting. To understand how much existing takes out of me and how tired I am of conforming to their conversations. Then I blame myself for not being strong enough to practice self care and remove myself from these situations. The cycle of stress, resentment, and imaginary violence continues. Rinse. Repeat.