In the dream, i’m moving back to Pacifica. Dad is trying to talk me out of going back. My new place is actually two connected motel rooms so i have a key for each of the doors. I’m concerned that even if the doors are locked the locks won’t hold and people will come and go as they please and steal my stuff.
This is recurring theme in my dreams – locked doors that don’t really lock, moving back and forth between Pacifica and Raleigh. I think this dream must’ve been prompted by watching How To Be starring Robert Pattison. It was Robert Pattison movie day for Cathy and Scott and Mike and i happened to be there… we also watched Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire followed/finished by Twilight. I didn’t like Twilight much but How To Be was one of those unknown art house type films that i kinda like. But anyways, the role RP played reminded me so much of the youngest child of the family i lived with in Cali for the first few months. Stu was a few years younger than me so probably sixteen or so. Nice kid but i don’t think he stood much of a chance in life being the last of eight children of an alcoholic father and a totally disinterested mother. He was handsome but didn’t seem to have any direction or dreams. When i lived with them, i lived in a camping trailer in the driveway. It took me several days to clean it up and make it habitable but after i finished, Stu used to come in there and chill with me probably because it was the only clean place on the property. The house was a horror. When i first moved there every dish in the house was dirty and in the sink. All the doors had been removed from the cupboard and were propped up against the wall by the refrigerator. Somebody in the house had decided to paint but never got past removing the doors and some of the paint from the walls. I cleaned out every empty cabinet then washed every dish and put it away. Some of the plates had been in the sink so long that spiders had nested in them and laid eggs. I’d never before and have never since seen anything like that place. All the time i lived with them i would keep the kitchen clean as a kind of payment for them letting me live there and because i wanted to be able to use the kitchen too. The garage where the big sink was that i’d sometimes use to wash my hair (because the bathroom was so disgusting) and the washer and dryer. It was a big garage and easily would’ve held two large cars but instead, it was just another place for them to store shit. The floor was covered with clothes. Years of clothes. Clothes that had been rendered into a sort of strange carpet because of years of the washing machine overflowing, soaking the floor, then drying and having new layers of clothes added. I bet it was twenty years worth of rubbish. Amazing. Their house had once been a nice enough house and with property values what they were then and what they still are now, that house was worth a fortune. Sad. The living room had wood floors but those had been torn up and were leaning up against the wall next to an old decaying piano. Somebody had had an idea to refinish the floor but never got past tearing up the floor. That was the first alcoholic (and family of an alcoholic) i’d ever known. Pitiful. The dad would always refer to me as “my favorite daughter” and would always ask for me to come pick him up from whichever local tavern he happened to get smashed at after his day of working as a limousine driver to the stars. The three grown daughters that lived in the house with him weren’t too happy with me; being his favorite ‘daughter’ but they didn’t do a damned thing around that house. Three grown daughters, a high-school aged son, a working mother and a working father and not one of them could be bothered to clean up after themselves. Sometimes i bury away how truly awful an experience that was but apparently seeing How To Be unlocked that floodgate. Oh. The cats. The dad would often bring home animals. The cats didn’t have a sandbox so they just went to the bathroom on the exposed floor of the living room. One time he brought this really cute little dog home. It was snowy white, maybe a Maltese mix. Obviously somebody’s beloved pet. But the dad insisted it was a stray and the dog stayed at the house for several weeks before somehow the dog’s owner got word that their dog was living a few streets away. The dad lied about everything. That was something else new to me. The daughter i moved to Pacifica was exactly like him. I still have never understood why people lie just to lie. I attributed it to the alcohol addiction. Phew. A dream of motel rooms with two keys unlocked some really bad memories. But it’s true that what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. Who i am today is certainly influenced by my first experience away from home. I hope Stu made it out alive and has had a good life. It never was his fault, none of it.
Oh. The locks. I almost forgot about that. How people would come in to the trailer in the middle of the night when i was sleeping because the lock wouldn’t always hold. Sometimes it would be Robin or sometimes one of her male friends. Usually they were drunk and i was sober so i could talk them into going home so i could sleep to get up and go to school the next morning. It’s unsettling to think about. How close i came to being raped so many times. Luckily i have a natural gift with beasts and low-IQ people. That and my angels. They definitely earned their wings many times over during that time in my life. I feel soul sick with the remembering.
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