<strong>By Tanya Hazelwood</strong> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Dreams</strong></p> I have to tell you. My dreams are very vivid. Not my goals in life, my dreams I dream while I am asleep. Sometimes to the point of when I wake it takes me a while to determine it didn’t really happen. It’s 2:35 a.m. and I just woke up from one of those dreams. I had to get this one down on paper before I lost it. <p align="JUSTIFY">In this dream in had been out. My husband was working late and I was out somewhere, I wanna say socially, maybe even a bar. Something had taken hold of me and I decided I was gonna drink and not tell anyone. Just one and no one would know. Apparently that one drink had gotten me extremely drunk, a very real and familiar feeling. Now, I was sitting in the driver’s side of my car in my grandmother’s driveway and in the passenger side was my Uncle Jeff. I had bought Burger King to eat and try to sober up. My uncle just sat quietly while I ate and then I passed out. When I woke he was still there and I thanked him for having dinner with me and he got out like his obligation had been met, he got out and walked away. I looked down and all of his belongs were in my floorboard and I called after him and told him. He just told me not to worry about it and went on. At this point in my dream I had sobered up and the guilt of what I had done was overwhelming. I couldn’t believe I had drank. I let myself down. Everyone down. Even if I told no one and nobody knew I knew and it was killing me.</p> <p align="JUSTIFY">So now I’m awake.</p> <p align="JUSTIFY">I have to tell you this. My uncle Jeff is deceased. I have rarely dreamed of him since his death. I have one very fond memory of him and he and I sat in my grandmother’s driveway and drank together and made a video of us singing a song shortly before his untimely death. That night ended up being one of the worse nights I’ve ever had while drinking but I still have that video. My uncle also drank. It was no secret and I feel like years and years of drinking probably played a role in him dying in his early 50s.</p> 2:48 a.m. and I am wide awake and frankly a little freaked out. I have been thinking a lot about drinking lately. Fighting the demon in my head telling me, just one would be ok, no one would know. I don’t know if this was my uncle’s way of keeping me in check. Shaking me up a bit, setting me on the right track. Maybe I was getting real close to caving. I don’t know, all I do know is this dream was very real. Too real. I still have a long road ahead and by no means am I cured. I am still an alcoholic. I just am a sober one.
