Dreams

It's so strange where our mind will go when we have no control over it.
I've always been one to remember my dreams.
I remember learning once about lucid dreaming, and I thought that would be super cool. Since then, I take note each morning of my dreams. Sometimes I cringe, sometimes I blush, but many times they are just routine things I do in my life. Yeah, even in my dreams I'm not that exciting.

In the last month or so, I've been dreaming of my extended family.
I know I've mentioned in the past my 'feuding family'.
Of course, families that are 'feuding' have quite the stories.
Usually they go on their normal daily activities and only hate each other when they have to see each other.
MY family on the other hand shared a yard with our other half of the feud.
The thing was, it was an adult feud, and it had nothing to do with the kids in the family.
I had cousins close to my age, and we were best friends. We played together every day, all the way through high school. I even rented an appt with one of them. Yep, that ended in our own feud, but you can see that all through our lives, us kids tried hard not to let our parents mistakes affect our lives.
Well, fast forward 10 years and I don't talk to any of them, ever.
There are 4 cousins, and 2 are men and quite a bit older.
The other 2 women, my BEST friends growing up are no where on my radar.
Now, I have seen one of them in the past year, a couple times actually, but it was weird, and she was weird and she didn't say a word about the fact that I had kids with me...uh, MY kids which I have no idea if she even knew I had. Yeah, there was no congratulation card sent.
The problem with feuding adults when there are children in the picture is that while there is no intent to involve the children, children are involved.
Children are smart!
While we were young, we'd visit my aunt and uncle on holidays and then come back to my parents. My parents wouldn't come with.
We'd see all our other aunts and uncles arriving for the big she-bang, but we'd be at home, watching through the window.
When we'd go for our mandatory quick visit, we'd see all the presents our cousins got from our aunts and uncles. My brother and sister and I would never get any.
So, of course, as we got older it affected us.
We stopped going to visit.
We started getting bitter.
Why wouldn't the aunts and uncles visit US as well.
It was then that I decided that I would make our holidays special, even if it was just a small group because there was too much hurt in the eyes of myself as a child.

WELL, back to my dreams...
I've probably had 5 or more dreams in the past month about my extended family.
Except, it's today. We're all adults, and we're all still so bitter.
It always winds up that we're hanging out with our cousins and then the phone rings and my sister answers it. It's my aunt telling my sister to send back 'her girls' because the party is about to start. She looks out the window and sees all of our family (minus my immediate family of course) standing in the yard waiting for the 2 girls to come home.
My sister loses it, tosses the phone to my older cousin and starts crying and tells her "YOUR family is waiting for you."
Then, the girls stand up and walk out without looking back.

I know it sounds silly, but it's as if all the time growing up and saying "we'll NEVER become our parents!" meant nothing and really, we did become our parents.
I thought I had purged all of these guilty feelings out of my system, but my dreams have reminded me that I haven't. And the guilt is another silly emotion, because I have nothing to feel guilty about. I was a beautiful child as was my brother and sister and we deserved the love that we didn't get. But guilt is funny like that.
I feel like I'm still that little girl looking under the Christmas tree and not seeing my name.
It's just SO silly, and I'd like to believe that I've risen above my youth.
I'm a mom, a wife and have a great relationship with my family, as well as Dave's family.
But obviously, something is still inside of me trying to get out.
I just wish it would stop because I'd rather dream about something a little more uplifting! :)