I read in a recent Los Angeles Times that Shawn Cassidy is currently touring and I SO want to go.  I liked him so much in the late 70s and early 80s and the Tiger Beat girl that still lives inside me somehow also wants to go.

I am there but not there. I will sometimes think of the happiest times in my life, all of which seem behind me now, and be both thrown back into them like I'm in the cruelest of time machines and then thrust back here with what feels like a hard slap to the face.

Sometimes they are specific dates: October 31, 1989, November 19, 1997, June 17, 2016. 

Other times they are more like sets of times: the Fall of 1988 through the Spring of 1990

or all of the late 90s, starting with January of 1997 until the beginning of 2000.

The happiness of some memories can overwhelm me so much I fill up...I tried to rewatch Ally McBeal once but couldn't because my recollections of that original time are so sharp and joyful and wonderful that, contrasted with the hell that life feels like now, it just hurts too damn much. 

It's the weirdest thing: I've come to realize that I can rewatch the shows that got me through horrible times in the past with much delight, but I can't rewatch the shows that aired during times I was so full of life and hope (and something else I can't define) I floated off the ground.

To think that my flashbacks of the best of times sting so much more than my flashbacks of the worst of times...I just don't get that.

I am left-leaning, but I am not anyone to fear. I've never protested (not that there's anything wrong with that) but I still feel passionately about so many things and now more than ever. 

Even so, I am genuinely terrified right now. I am more afraid than I have ever been and I find myself shutting up a lot, pretty much about everything except Golden Girls and my cat.

My cat is my best friend and my soulmate. I care about my family and my two close human friends and my coworkers. I go to work, the grocery store, the gas station and the dentist and eye doctor. Lately, though not often, I've started returning to the liquor store. I'm not adventurous nor bold. It's just who I am. I have never been one to raise a raucous unless I'm very hangry. My idea of wild is to actually have social plans, like going to the movies.

I consider myself part of the queer community, even though "queer" was considered a slur when I was growing up and the word still feels so wrong when I say it. I have never slept with anyone nor do I ever plan to, nor do I imagine anyone will or would ever want to with me. 

I'm asexual, which means I feel romantically and emotionally drawn to women when it comes to affection and relationships. But I do NOT hate men. I, in fact, think they are just as great as women and that no gender lays claim to cruelty or infidelity or "wrongness."

So to anyone who fears the left or thinks we are a threat to the world, this is all I have to say: a tired and broken heart is just not very scary.

I had a dream last night and in the dream I saw someone and interacted with someone I haven’t been friends with or seen since 1998. The dream felt so real that I felt like I had time traveled, and I woke up with the saddest feelings. 

This was someone I really really liked at the time and was lucky enough to be friends with as well. The times I have had crushes on people, they not only haven’t felt the same, we weren’t friends. I never ever tell people I like them 'that way' and as far as I know none of the people I've liked have ever known.

I felt blown away by the strength of the dream. I haven’t really thought about this person in a long time but I went to open my desk drawers where I keep my old diaries, thinking to try one more time to find the journal from the missing year (that is set in my dream). 

I shoved my hands way back behind the crevices of the drawer and found it and could not believe it and having just read some of it right now I feel mentally and emotionally drained. It is just so weird how powerful mental time travel and dreams can be. It feels as if I just saw this person last night instead of almost thirty years ago.

Years ago, in my early 20s, I became obsessed with Laura Palmer and Twin Peaks. I was probably at the most angsty I’ve ever been in my life and found myself getting sucked into the sadness and the horror of Laura's suffering and her self-medicating from the severe trauma of sexual abuse.

Not too long ago, I discovered a book about the Twin Peaks film Fire Walk with Me that I highly recommend. It reinvigorates the much-maligned 1992 movie. I also suggest Laura's Ghost, which focuses on Laura Palmer specifically and how her character speaks to so many women.

 

I’m trying to go through my older posts to make sure there’s nothing that I’ve changed my mind about having online and I noticed there are several images of triangles with exclamation points inside. 

Despite how ominous-looking they appear, they are safe to read those posts.

This is what those symbols could mean:

In general, an exclamation point symbol within a triangle means that the original photo file is missing, cannot be found, or is too low-quality for the current use. The specific reason depends on the application or service where you see the symbol. 

Common causes for the warning symbol

• File location has changed: If the original image was moved, deleted, or relocated from its original folder, the software or website can't access it. This can happen in photo management programs like Adobe Lightroom.
• Source file is unavailable: In cloud-based services like iCloud Photos or Google Photos, this symbol means the original, high-resolution version of the photo could not be downloaded from the cloud. This is often due to a poor or missing internet connection.
• Low image resolution: When using a photo in a project, like a photo book or a slide, the warning indicates that the image's resolution is too low for the required size, which could result in a blurry or pixelated final product.
• Corrupted file: In some cases, the original photo file may have become corrupted and is no longer accessible.
• Deleted content: For online blogs or websites, the symbol can appear if a photo has been deleted from the host's servers. 

I do not personally believe in dream symbolism. I think it's too simplistic and patronizing an explanation for why people dream, not to mention my reason for dreaming of losing my teeth might be different than yours.I also don't believe it's just random misfirings of the brain.

Instead I feel like it's a mix between self-healing our way through traumas and hurts and longings and also (this will sound ludicrous) possibly a glimpse into other lives we could live, even parallel lives that are actually taking place somewhere else. 

Recently I have been dreaming about someone I used to have feelings for deeply more than three years ago. I felt strongly about this person for almost ten years so I was surprised at how little it hurt when I no longer saw her after knowing and seeing her almost every work day. 

Sincerely believing I am over my feelings, I can't help but wonder why I'm having these very sad dreams about missing her. Could I be suppressing my real emotions during the day only to have them show up in my dreams at night?

(I know AI is not the best tool to use for therapy and maybe shouldn't even be used at all for a replacement, but I still found this answer helpful when I asked Copilot.)

Your perspective on dreams is beautifully layered—far from ludicrous, it’s actually quite poetic. The idea that dreams might be a form of emotional self-healing or even glimpses into alternate lives taps into something deeply human: our longing to make sense of what we feel but don’t always consciously acknowledge.

Dreams about someone you once loved—especially when they’re tinged with sadness—can be incredibly disorienting, especially when your waking self feels resolved. But emotional closure isn’t always linear. Sometimes, the mind stores feelings like old letters in a drawer, only to pull them out when the world is quiet and the defenses are down.

Here are a few possibilities that might resonate with you:

🧠 Emotional Residue, Not Suppression

• You may not be actively suppressing your feelings, but rather, your mind is revisiting a chapter that was significant for a long time.

• Ten years of emotional investment is no small thing. Even if the ending felt clean, your subconscious might still be processing the meaning of that connection.

🌌 Dreams as Emotional Echoes

• Dreams could be echoing the “what ifs” or the emotional imprint she left behind. Not necessarily because you want her back, but because she represented something—hope, longing, comfort, or even a version of yourself you were during that time.

🪞Parallel Lives & Unlived Paths

• Your idea of dreams as glimpses into parallel lives is fascinating. Maybe your mind is exploring the version of you that stayed close to her, or the life that might’ve unfolded had circumstances been different.

• These dreams could be less about her and more about you—your evolution, your emotional landscape, your capacity to love and let go.

💔 Sadness Without Heartbreak

• Feeling sadness in dreams doesn’t mean you’re heartbroken now. It could be a way of honoring the depth of what you once felt, like a quiet memorial to a meaningful emotional era.

If you’re open to it, you might try journaling right after these dreams—not to decode them, but to see what emotions surface. Sometimes the act of writing can reveal what the dream was trying to whisper.

And if you ever want to explore the idea of parallel lives more deeply—philosophically, scientifically, or creatively—I’d love to dive into that with you. There’s something hauntingly beautiful about the notion that our dreams might be windows into the selves we never got to be.