Overcoming the loss of dreams..

Today's Chronicle has something in one of the help columns in which the advice is to realise that in the breakup of relationships and marriages, one of the things which bring grief is the loss of the dream of what might have been.. that it will never be.
Twenty years ago, I was happy to be in my first year at University, glad to be away from home for a bit and prepared for the great big adventure. The periods of depression had not weighed in as yet, since I thought I could do anything. In my head, I had some sense of morals and values.. to follow the decent middle class coolie boy route of study, marriage, house, car, children, big belly .. but I knew that I was not going to do as my father and uncles did and so many men of their generation, have outside woman/women as part of that prosperity
So you get older and wiser and realise that these things are not for you.. and gradually the things which you had planned and dreamt about.. did not happen and other things took their place - some of which are better than you ever imagined, and some things which hit you in ways which you could never forget.

The first thing to go was the whole marriage and family thing.. self preservation took over, selfishness probably and the stress as a teenager of trying to think I could do things to ensure that my family did not fall apart, remained.. and so I realise that I do not have the patience or the personality to create my own version of the family.. while at the same time having to move into a position of being able to care for parents as they get older.

It is not easy, this thing about getting older and caring for parents.. they never tell us that we will not be prepared to grapple with our parents' anger and fear at their own loss of independence.. and so all of a sudden the roles are switched from being cared for to being caregiver and you are not sure when that happened..  and how to manage it so that you do not disempower while trying to deal with your own issues

The other fantasy which disappears is that you will go through life trying to maintain good relationships.. that all the times you fall in love and that the love will be forever, that it does not happen.. so that dream is lost.. and every now and then you wonder what if things were different, should you have not met, should you have held back.. and the hardest thing is finding yourself in a situation when you avoid eye contact with the people whose eyes you once thought you would never tiring of looking into..

At the same time, the celebration is about those who have remained friends, and those who have become friends.. and celebrating those who you least thought you would still be in contact with twenty years ago..

In losing the dream of owning a small Mediterranean style house with courtyard and fountain and roof garden.. you gain this appreciation of not owning anything and with small closet space and limited space, you realise that you cannot own much because you do not have anywhere to hoard.. apart from the books.



The pes cavus that I took for granted, now comes of age and I am not going to be able to run the distances on the seawall that I had  hoped to run by now.. it was the project I wanted most .. but other exercises have to be found and time to do it as I have to come to grips that I am at war with my own body and that the pre-diabetic condition has to be reversed and I have to fight it.. and I am scared that what the hell if I fight and lose that battle later on.. and also to sort out the feet

Dreams of revenge.. though.. are good to lose, realising that you will never get to take revenge.. and also losing the desire.. learning to forgive .. and as the woman reminded me last week, that forgiving does not mean that people do not have to bear consequences.. so even as I forgave my father for putting a gun to my face and asking if he should kill me.. the consequences are that the relationship changed and ironically, since the emotional detachment has helped to objectively provide care without being emotionally tangled up.. maybe that is what karma is about.. everything has a reason..

The dream of leaving Guyana and living somewhere else.. a friend's immigration appeal to Canada was recently turned down and we talked a bit about how to make life in a difficult place.
In dealing with this loss, is doing the other things which have happened, other experiences, never dreamed of being political or being activist in areas which decent coolie boys were not supposed to venture into. It was great to think that I could have been nominated to the Rights of the Child Commission.. and there was a lot of things which I had hoped to get done there.. so when I made the decision to resign, at the same time I had to get over the loss of the dreams of the things which I could have done .. the skills would be used elsewhere and for other purposes .

Two things at this time about dreaming - is that the dreams are limited by expectations and experiences. .. and the other thing is whether to stop dreaming , and just get on with living every moment as it comes.. and learning from the moments as they pass.