Good maybe

I had a dream at the beginning of the week.  I was living in a city, a large city that had modern buses and old buildings.  It reminded me of Ann Arbor and felt like someplace I would be happy, at least for a while; I felt surprised I had made it to a place like that and somehow invidious that I had made it there.  But current me, the one in the dream, had been infected, somehow as always, with the desire to leave - something was off and I had to get out. 

I started to take said buses as far as I could, until eventually I would return to the city center, in a continuous loop.  On one trip I had fallen asleep, but on others we had simply turned onto a street we had taken before, returned.  In dim restaurants, my friends listened politely as I tried to tell them what was happening, unsure about me or what I was saying.

I was dating someone who felt far away in the dream, removed somehow, a man who looked at me fully, trying to get to where I was.  He thought I was smart, I felt on a guttural level.  We walked by an old-style tv store, with various screens displayed in the window.  I stared into one of the concave screens and saw a mirrored oblong space ship.  "That's it", I said, realizing we weren't on earth but were instead floating in space.  

I tried telling everyone that would listen but no one would.  

// 

I woke up tired and groggy, and I sat with the dream the entirety of the next day.  What am I trying to escape, I wondered.  My friend at work said it sounded like I was caged.  I told her I didn't think dreams were predictions, but rather subconsciousness rising.  

//

In other places, it was only a matter of time before I heard my words parroted.  People stole from me constantly, at time in my career that was pivotal and traumatizing.  It felt abusive honestly, the way those experience stole from me, but it was always a younger or older woman, somehow who I thought was maybe more marginalized than me and so I let it go, confused.  Usually, I chose the quietness and peacefulness of space than confrontation, because so frequently there was nothing there that I wanted anyway.  Take it, I said with raised hands, as I slipped away.

I'm not sure people are smart enough here to understand that I have good ideas, clever enough to steal, but I also think that maybe I'm holding back, saving what I have for my own children, my own relationship, a type of savings investment.  People get things in an open way, far from the type of confiding I used to do.  That's good maybe.