GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #785: NOSTALGIA FOR AN AGE THAT NEVER EXISTED

 Even though the song isn't really about the topic tonight, the title is apropos, so you might as well read this while listening to this.

As some of you might know, back in January 2020, I went to the ER suffering from another bout of pancreatitis, and they decided to hold onto me. While I was there I went into severe alcohol withdrawal, so they wound up keeping me for a couple of weeks while it ran its course through my system. I can't remember if I went into my hallucinations here before. When I went back to look I didn't find anything. Unless I wrote about it later.

Regardless, not too long ago I started feeling nostalgia for one of those hallucinations. I didn't know that was possible, but a few people told me that they were familiar with the sensation. It was the one in which I went to the middle of a wide open field, to a burger stand made entirely of plastic on the outside, including a bench where a plastic milkman sat. I got the feeling that I sat on that bench all the time when I was a kid. In the hallucination, I sat there again, and then I went inside, where it looked kind of like a neighborhood bar.

It was the last of my hallucinations before I came back to myself in my hospital room. When I came out of it, that hallucination made me feel like I'd rediscovered a forgotten piece of my childhood. It had been so vivid that I asked my grandmother about it when I got home. Because I could swear that me, her, Gramps and my cousin, Erik, used to walk there from the house we lived in back then. She was still a few months away from dementia, so her memory was still good. She had no recollection of this place.

It bothered me for a while because the memory of going there as a child was so real. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that maybe it really was just a hallucination. Because this open field never existed. I reasoned that if it was within walking distance of that house, I'd remember where it was because I live maybe two blocks from there today. And there is nowhere that place could have been.

So I let it go until a few months ago when I remembered the hallucination, in particular the plastic milkman on the bench, and I felt nostalgia for it. Having nostalgia for something that never existed is a very weird feeling for me. I'm not given to nostalgia often these days, but to feel it for something I made up during alcohol withdrawal is just too fucking weird for me.

And then, last week, I dreamed of that place again. AND I FINALLY KNOW WHY I FELT LIKE THIS PLACE ACTUALLY EXISTED.

I may have talked about my dream world before. It's a close approximation of my neighborhood, but depending on the dream I'm having it can be very different. I went to that dream world where I found this burger stand again. I sat on the bench with the plastic milkman. I went inside and ordered food that I didn't get to eat because I woke up too soon.

And when I woke up I remembered where I'd known this place before. I'd dreamed about it when I was a child. The wide open field was on the opposite side of the train tracks. There's a neighborhood back there, but in my dream world there's just that field. And that burger stand. And I used to dream about it all the time back then. Weird that my mom never went with us, though. Or Erik's mom, for that matter. But we went there a lot, and then I grew up and forgot about this recurring dream until the alcohol withdrawal brought me back.

It took me almost four years to figure that out. I'm usually a lot quicker on the uptake, but the human brain is a strange place. I had a few other hallucinations, one of which I know for a fact came from my childhood. It makes me wonder about the others and where they might have come from.

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OK, as I'm sure you suspected, this is the last GF column of the year. I usually take my writing vacation starting with Thanksgiving week, during which time I lay off writing so much. I have a few things to work on, but I'm not going to bust my ass over it. It's mostly editing stuff, anyway. I have one more newsletter for Sunday, and that'll be it from me for the rest of 2023. Unless I have news to share, and I might. If you follow the newsletter, you'll know why.

All right. I still have plenty of GF ideas for when I return, and I'm sure I'll have even more by then. I think I got to everything time sensitive. For now, at least. Anyway, I'll be back in January unless the universe pulls a Donnie Darko on me while I'm in bed. Until then, please remember to . . .

And party on, dudes!