New dreams

Last night I dreamt that I was holding a baby. A big, fat, rosy-cheeked baby. He was a friend’s, though both the friend and the baby were dream inventions, as they often are. I was giving him a cuddle, and he had both plump arms up on my shoulders, head tucked in, peaceful. I didn’t feel sad in the dream. I felt comforted.

The scene transitioned quickly into another. This time I was on the ground, standing in a lush park, looking up at a grand old building. Standing at the furthest window of this building was a cluster of people, smiling and waving at me. It was my family - my parents, brother, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. I would guess that it was around 2002, based on everyone’s ages. I wanted to go and talk to them all, but I knew I couldn’t. I was content enough to wave at them from the ground and know they were happy there, together. There was an unreal element to my family in that window; they looked a little sepia-coloured, almost painted in. They existed in a way that I could not reach them. I was happy to see them anyway.

Whenever I’m watching a movie, I spend much of the time treating it as a puzzle to solve. I want to unpick the meaning, the lessons the movie has to teach. I want to find The Right Answer. Maybe that’s the former literature student in me - I’ll never forget the time spent in lit lessons talking endlessly about the different meanings of the colour green in The Great Gatsby (envy, money, sickness, and so on…). I was given the impression that there is a right meaning - the author’s intended meaning - and that my job was to uncover it, like an archaeologist chiseling away at earth. I tend to treat my dreams this way too. There must be one true meaning that my subconscious - which I imagine to be smarter than my conscious, apparently - intends for me to discover.

I imagine you, reading this, can quite easily guess at the meanings of those two semi-connected dreams. My subconscious went a little on-the-nose this time.

I have always imagined being a parent. Though there have been times in my adult life when I have wavered on whether I want to, particularly during periods of poor mental health, or pessimism about the future of the planet. In the last few years, I had landed firmly on the side of yes - I would like to become a parent. I knew it wasn’t going to be straightforward. I have a unicornuate uterus (a name far too whimsical for the thing it represents), which poses complications for trying to conceive as well as childbirth. I also have endometriosis, which, ditto. The part I didn’t anticipate until mid-last year was that I could be prevented from becoming a parent by something else entirely.

This is the conversation me and my partner had to have this week. With the state of my health, the unpredictability of my chronic illnesses, and the amount of capacity I have to look after myself let alone someone else, is it feasible for me to carry, birth and then co-raise a child? Where we’ve landed, for now, is no.

My nana died in March of this year. She was the last of my grandparents that I have a relationship with. That generation of family is now lost to me. Instead, the elders of the family are my parents, aunts and uncles. My cousins have kids; they’ve become that middle generation of a family, the place where you are both parent and child at once. We were once grandkids together, the youngest generation, and now we're not. My parents are grandparent age. I know that it 'should' be my turn to create the next generation, before I age out. I feel time passing quicker each year. I feel like I’m failing.

I open Ancestry.com. For years I’ve been documenting my family history, some branches all the way back to the mid-1700s. I look at all those names, leading down to mine. I look at the blank space that follows my name. I can’t stop looking at it.

There was a third dream that bridged the two I shared earlier; I didn’t want to tell you about this one. I walked out of the room with the baby in it. I had started to feel I wasn't supposed to be there. I navigated down unfamiliar hallways, trying to find a way to leave the building. I finally spotted a friend of mine who is a wheelchair user, making her way down a ramp. I rushed over to join her. The ramp was very disjointed, almost non-functional. I couldn’t understand why it was so difficult to traverse. My friend seemed unfazed. I kept taking weird steps, unsure where to place my feet. I don’t quite remember finding the exit to the building, but that’s how I ended up outside.

I didn’t really want to leave the building, but it felt like time. At least for now.

P.S I've been listening a lot to one of my favourite albums, 'A Crisis of Faith at the Death of a Loved One' by Clean Cut Kid. If any of this resonated with you, perhaps you'd also enjoy the album.