I'll go back to October of 2020. Later I may include memories of earlier dreams. lucid dreams. repeating dreams. nightmares.

but here is where i start.

october is the month of death and the most trauma for me. i have a trauma list. living in a "first world" country most of my life the trauma list is not your typical first world experience, though I have never starved (though I have gone without food and worried where my next meal would come, or when, but never grossly worried), I have been homeless and slept in very cold and dirty dangerous conditions, lived in squats without heat in the dead of chicago winters, but I have never been a person to have ever seen war or been the victim of a war torn land. that is real trauma. I've never lost a limb, although i almost lost my foot or even possibly my lower leg, almost lost my hearing, and have been temporarily without site, and I've seen and been victim to many types of violence, and I've held my life partner's dead body in my arms, and watched people take their last breaths, both from tragic and sudden circumstances and naturally. i've brought back friends from overdoses with and without Narcan... early on I had the stuff the paramedics carry, the syringe based, intradermal/intramuscular kind, before they started giving out the nasal spray. I still keep both. When it didn't work once i went into survival mode and gave cpr though i had never been trained. somehow i instinctually knew enough to bring that person back. i've never failed, though had close calls and lost many people to overdose when i wasn't there or it was too late. The first person actually we brought back by shooting saline in a vein, before ever having access to Naloxone.

I won't put my trauma list here, that would be daft and is not purposeful. it exists for therapeutic reasons. perhaps before i die and i write an actual memoir that is not a documentation throughout my poems collectively, that trauma list will take form.
for now, I will say my life has been difficult and painful, physically, psychologically, emotionally, mentally, etc. I've had some of the worst nerve joint muscular and just plain radiant pain i can imagine... surgeries were by far the worst, especially the first leg/foot surgery when i woke screaming and did not stop screaming for about 30 minutes, amazed i did not pass out as i howled, cried, and prayed for death, and nerve pain when my scalp and forehead were stitched back on while i was awake after a car accident that rendered me near dead - there was a local nerve block but the plastic surgeons would occasionally go beyond that block's perimeter. Also comes to mind is cotton fever. look it up. dope sickness. being stabbed. withdrawal from heroin, alcohol, and benzos - never made it that far with amphetamines or barbiturates, but i imagine barbs are similar to benzos withdrawal. It is psychological hell, where opiate withdrawal is physical (sans some hallucinations), and alcohol is kind of both. the worst psychological pain was finding my life partner deceased, though I can cite many other traumatic events, including my nightmares that are a result of trauma and pile on more. i've died in my dreams, panicked even worse than i have in waking life, although some of my panic attacks have been hellrides, lasting for days sometimes, and at their peaks, horrifying experiences of evil, utter doom.

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Instead though I'll begin with a pleasant dream. It was on the evening of October 11th, 2020, five years and several months from the time of this writing. i had found my lover, engaged to marry life partner of 17 years, deceased that morning. the circumstances were tragic. i will not go into details for the story of her death is for another log, as this is about dreams. I will say, however, that we were at a hotel, and because of her mental illnesses and both of our housing circumstances at the time, we often stayed in motels and hotels, however this time it was to treat ourselves to a nicer experience at a nicer, 3 star hotel with a pool and a detached casino with restaurants and other ammenities as she had just received her inheritance from her father who lived in Albany New York and had just passed recently. She was still grieving his death, though this was sort of a reprieve of sorts, an escape, and to be the start of a new life that the money would help make a reality. It was only about 20 thousand, but for us that was like a million, and it would get (and I) out of my friend's tiny closet sized 2nd bedroom and me out of the housing projects, no more bed bugs and cockroaches. back to an existence we once enjoyed together. she could and probably would have paid a whole year in rent ahead of time. she never had the chance. some sick fate robbed her of that, robbed me of her and experiencing that with her again, and took much much more from me as well - my second family, my entire life. all the money got us was a couple of nice nights together there. we were not married (although I could have claimed common law) so the money went to her mother who blamed me for her death and never spoke to me again - the woman, the only woman, i ever called "mom" besides my own. 
her death was not my fault. there was no investigation, no charges made by the state or her family, but they blamed me nonetheless, except for her cousin who she considered a sibling, who also eventually ceased contact with me. i have come to a better place now, however my grief , my displaced guilt, sadness depression and self destruction still go on. 

i found her that morning after waking and realizing she was not there in bed with me in the smoking area where no one obviously had visited all night. At first i thought perhaps something had happened while i was sleeping (it did) and so i phoned the hospitals and the jails. after no luck, i took the elevator down to the first floor around seven a.m. I had been very tired that night so i actually slept through - i realized she was not with me around midnight but had eaten her dinner, and assumed she had simply gone to the casino or for a cigarette. She had gone for a cigarette - when i finally thought to look in that very sectioned off nook of an area, she was slumped in a chair, her back facing me, and i rushed out the door - i believe i said something like "sweetie!" as my throat dropped deep into my stomach because it did not appear that she was just sleeping, though i could not be sure - I turned and immediately I knew, she was gone. I could tell it was not long, but long enough. i remember everything sounded out (a woman who saw me at some point must have been saying something to me, but in hindsight that is what made it obvious to me that I was completely oblivious to the world because when i noticed her all i picked up on was what seemed like the tail end of her trying to talk to me, she said something like "I'll just go and get help then" in a very concerned tone with worried eyes) I picked her up and I remember looking up into the sky - I don't really know why people including me do that - and said "not this way" as I sobbed and sobbed. I finally thought to give her cpr as a crowd of people surrounded. I knew she was gone, and someone muttered something like "yeah, she's gone." I didn't try very hard. From all the near deaths I had seen and people's lives I had saved, I suppose i knew, and I also just somehow knew in a spiritual sense that she was not in her body. It all seemed to happen so fast. I had no thought behind a lot of the things I did from that moment for the next several months. I should have kept more of her things. I should have stayed with her body longer for more closure before the coroner came.
My mother and father arrived there. I don't remember if i called them or if someone at the hotel did for me. someone called the police and someone called her mother. it was only after her very budgeted memorial and her cremation (her mother received her ashes, I only have the dried flowers from her memorial and a few belongings) that autopsy results came back and the family disowned me because it was my medicine that she took that caused her to have a drug interaction that lead to her death. I knew that was it the moment I found her, though not inever would I have guessed that would have occurred as she always had a strong tolerance to medicines.  i never even thought to monitor her, though i knew she took it due to her extreme hip pain that evening. I'm glad that she dozed off and that her departing was painless.

I've detailed more than I planned, although there is much more to tell. 

when i arrived at my parent's home, i waxed and waned from numb and blank to completely devastated and pained sobbing. I went to bed that night on the couch rather than in a room that I had there still with some of my childhood things in it and my old twin bed. i wanted to be closer to my parents that night, whose room was closer to the living room and the couch i slept on than "my" room.

That night I dreamed.

1. Sarah 1: I was in what seemed like a long, somewhat narrow hotel room, with many beds, all of them facing the same way, the way beds normally face in a hotel room, with their "head" and the foot facing the direction of narrower part of the room - provided it isn't a suite of some kind that would render it much bigger. The room was big, though, huge in fact, longways. It was night time or felt as if it was and the room was dark blue, and I believe the beds were dark blue as well. It was very comfortable there, all I really noticed were the row of many beds and I think a window at the long end letting in midnight blue light. Sarah came to me beside the bed I was in and simply said "I'm okay"

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I wonder if it took a sacrifice to visit me. I didn't ask for a sign, but it was her, and I don't believe my mind was capable of dreaming such a thing to comfort itself. That is not how my mind works. It was beautiful.

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2. Sarah 2: The very next night while I was sleeping on the same couch, Sarah came and visited me. This, I believe, was the last time I ever saw her and that we were together.