A New Ending to My Marriage: Dreaming Up a Better Story

My nephew T said to his mom, “Wouldn’t it be so sad if a couple had a baby and then right after they had to get divorced?”

“People don’t get divorced on accident, T,” my sister told him. “It’s a decision.”

He was legitimately confused. “Then what happened to Bekah and Uncle?”

Lucid dreaming, Chris Pratt, and new endings

I’ve always been a vivid dreamer and occasionally a lucid one. When I’ve been able to manifest my personal fantasies in a dream-state, I’m typically flying Maleficent-style over Pandora landscapes or coaxing my libido and imagination toward a wet-dream.

My lucid dreams generally don’t follow a plot; the idea is to drive the dream myself and make of it what I want to experience without limits or repercussion. But sometimes my dream-role and the plotline are predetermined. I’m a passenger, but the resulting dream is still informed by the deepest wishes of my subconscious. Other times what starts out lucid gets away from me, my subconscious taking over.

For example, I once got busy with Chris Pratt but then he murdered me mid-thrust to bring about a prophecy for his dark god and unleash his lord’s power upon the earth. I got booted to the passenger seat on that one, but my subconscious produced something actually pretty cool, something better, if not what I’d set out to experience.

In last night’s dream, there was no lucidity, only a sort of narrative gift that I will henceforth recognize as the true story behind my divorce.

A new ending to my 7-year marriage: what I’d do differently

If T ever wants to know the full story of how an uncle by marriage became an uncle by choice, this is what I’ll tell him.

I’ll say, “T, if I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t get divorced in 2014.” What a shitty year that was for the world. It’d happen in the year 3000 instead, but according to dream logic—we’re all physically as we were in 2014 but spaceships are the transport of choice now and “OK Google” is actually useful, as in “Ok Google, take us to sector 3 in the Andromeda galaxy.” Done. No repeating yourself, no yelling at your phone until Google finally listens. You’re just on your way to sector 3.

Life is finally what it should be, but Uncle has gotten involved in something shifty and I’ve just received his distress signal. He’s been implicated as a subject in a morally flawed experiment at a militaristic university and he’s bleeding internally. He’s running out of time and the researchers aren’t intervening. They’re letting his injuries run their course for reasons unknown and Uncle needs my help—and I desperately need Oprah’s.

I hope T won’t have too many questions at the end or I’ll feel compelled to acknowledge the cracks in my story, the missing and mundane pieces.

Oprah is the owner of an extremely advanced private spaceship and I don’t have time to fuck with commercial intergalactic flight-schedules. “OK Google, call Oprah.”

She’s on the line in a second: “HellOOOoooo!”

Oprah’s got my back before I even finish briefing her on the deets of my predicament. She’s on her way and she’s bringing Dr. Phil, but Dr. Phil according to dream logic—he’s an actual medical doctor. Best in the galaxy. If anyone can save Uncle, it’s him.

We’re soon on our way toward the distress signal at light-speed and I’ve brought siblings for backup: Sister 1 and Sister 2. We’re armed with blasters and better-than-stormtrooper aim and Google’s directed us straight to the university. We opt to deploy aerially, blasting through the ceiling of Uncle’s containment center after jumping from Oprah’s ship.

Our lasers never miss, researchers and guards dropping in heaps of lab-coat and battle-gear, charred holes through their vitals, but we can’t kill them all and they’re firing on Oprah’s ship now. Uncle is fading fast as we’re beamed back up, but Dr. Phil has all the answers for once and gets to work. Still, our ship takes damage before we can leave the atmosphere. We have to land.

Oprah pilots us expertly and last-minute to the university courtyard and yells for us to make a run for it on foot, she’s staying with her ship. Uncle has recuperated enough to run, but he’s acting strangely, having lapsed into a sort of fugue state.

As students scatter in alarm, oblivious to the secret experiments being conducted on campus by members of the faculty, we find somewhere to hide so Dr. Phil can finish treating Uncle. It’s only a matter of time before the faculty guards track us down. Me and Sisters shed our mission gear to blend in with the other students and keep a lookout.

Pause for questions

At this point, T might have some questions. For example, is Oprah more of a Han Solo or Titanic-type captain?

“Han Solo,” I’ll say.

He might ask if Uncle and I had been fighting much at home before the ill-fated science experiment, and I’ll be honest: “Not really, but enough.”

He might ask if we were happy.

“See above,” I’ll say. Then, “That’s enough questions. There’s an ending to this. Let’s get to it.”

The results of morally flawed experiments

It’s not long before we hear screams sounding from the direction we landed, and the source is getting closer. Students are running, fleeing from something that Sisters and I know is coming for us. Then, all at once, down the hall there it is. My subconscious has produced a Hulk for us to battle, another test subject we’ve released from the containment center.

We fire at it when it appears, aiming carefully to avoid student casualties, but it’s clear our lasers do little when it charges for us, bellowing. At the last second, of course, Uncle is revived enough to showcase his own illicitly gained abilities, but he’s different than the rip-off Hulk sleep-Bekah has conjured. He’s smaller, but stronger and faster, less lumbering and more cunning. He brings the other test subject down with ease.

We’re saved and Uncle has been remade, but we all soon learn that the casualty of his superhuman powers is his memory. He doesn’t know who we are anymore, who I am. And I can barely recognize him. But I’m happy he’s alive and he remembers that I saved him, and at the end of our journey home on Oprah’s repaired ship, we part as friends.

***

I hope T won’t have too many questions at the end or I’ll feel compelled to acknowledge the cracks in my story, the missing and mundane pieces.

“Just trust me,” I’ll say. “Uncle is happier. We both are now.”

There’s a reason I dreamt a better story five years later: I was a shit wife and We were better as friends or I married too young are reasons and excuses all in one, and less fun than invention. And the ending of one thing has spelled the beginning of many others, which is nothing to grieve about. Because love isn’t static or finite and sometimes dreams end the way they should.