dreams, landfill. landfill, dreams.

I've cried in the bathroom of my parents' house over a toothbrush once, and then over boxed drinks. Both times over things that could be replaced, both times badly wanting to die jumping off the ninth floor. If someone else reacted the same over something trivial on the surface, I wouldn't understand. 

But look deeper and it becomes something else. A missing toothbrush becomes all the times your mother threw your tubs of ice-cream and your water bottle, justifying her claims why you didn't need them anymore. The boxed drinks become your parents defending your older brother to death, convincing yourself they still would if he ever brought you to yours.

This time my turmoil revolves around dusty dreamcatchers that I haven't had the chance to collect since moving out. They become the way my brother's room is left untouched more than two years since he moved out. They become a Friends episode where the younger sister's childhood things are destroyed by a father's choice, a father's subconscious biasness. 

Why didn't I pluck them off the wall when I was packing my things before I left? Why didn't I text the same thing to my father when I told my younger brother I'm picking them up the next time I come over? Why didn't I know that my father would start spring-cleaning out of nowhere on hospital leave, recovering from his surgery? 

I was clutching my chest so hard, feeling it tighten when I saw the bare wall above my old bed. My husband had just prayed in the room, my son was sleeping on the floor in the living room, my parents were treating me nicer. Four reasons why those dreamcatchers shouldn't mean a thing to me anymore.

What else do I do, over something so meaningful? Something nobody else ever did for me or had the thought, despite bad dreams being a big part of my personality for as long as I can remember. Painstakingly handmade, unprompted, by someone I can't talk to anymore, someone not on social media, someone whose pictures I never took?

So many people to blame, so many components to be mad about. As I write this I shed the first tears for my lost everything, for my dreamcatchers, for all the dreams that are on the way to the landfill. What exactly do I cry for now? My whole life. The freedom-loneliness that only comes after a bad breakup, a friend that will never see me the same way again, a husband who doesn't do things for me unprompted, a changed childhood bedroom and lost fatherly love.