The Itch of Broken Dreams (part 2)

Notes: In part one, I gave an example which some took to be autobiographical. This is not the case. These examples came from observing the world around me.

Losing the person, that one believes to be their soul mate is a grand broken dream. It could be said that it is a momentary loss of the great American Dream, which is a fleeting and inconsistent concept at best. Then there are the small broken dreams. These are the broken dreams that seem insignificant, yet eat away at us. These are the “could haves” or “might haves” that haunt us. Essentially, these broken dreams would have changed the shape of our development, thus changing who we are today.

These small broken dreams could have been an event one was denied to go to, lessons that were never given, warm words never spoken and such forth. Every so often something might spark the memory or the desire to try to revive the broken dream.

I have had several opportunities to retrieve a broken dream from my lost youth. I never had a real birthday party that I can remember with cake and friends. It was something my parents always promised me. Well, my 24th birthday was the most special birthday I ever had. I took myself up to NY, so I would not be obligated to spend the time with my family, which is a whole different post on why I would want to avoid that, especially on my birthday. My friends put together a lovely birthday party. There was a spaghetti dinner and cake, yummy chocolate cake. {Thank you, Izzy, the great jacket hug giving shomer teddy bear!!) It was a classic, classy birthday and one I will never forget. It may not have been able to make up for years of broken promises and half-baked intention or the sorrow of a broken dream, but it did breath life into something that I let die, something that I believed I was not worth enough to have or did not deserve. It gave me something greater than that. It gave me hope that I might indeed be able to revive lost broken dreams and that I deserved to have my dreams come true.

There are many itches. These itches can also be considered drives or a passion. I wanted so much to learn to play the harp or fiddle. I fell in love with the music as a child. I tried my hand at the clarinet, but was not thrilled with the instrument. It really wasn’t me. It wasn’t my passion. My sister took violin lessons at school a couple years after I gave up on the clarinet. I had not had the opportunity to try the instrument before choosing a more compact conventional band instrument. My mother would not let me try the violin. I was not allowed to touch. My sister gave up her lessons, but because my parents deemed that the instrument to be special only for her, I was not allowed to learn. Well, the itch to learn stayed with me. Currently sitting on my bed as I write is my violin. I saved up birthday money for it and here it sits. I am slowly teaching myself to play and I have to say I am not bad. My playing so far does not make me or anyone else for that matter cringe. Therefore, I am not that bad. Let’s see what happen when I finally learn actual songs.

Another little dream, that I made true. The Itch of Broken Dreams can be very powerful. However that power is neither good nor bad. It is neutral. We have the power to shape that itch into achieving what we desire or letting is eat away at us until we are bitter. There is so much we cannot change in this world. There are many dreams we will not be able to revive or bring to light, but there are many that we have given up on, that with a tiny bit of motivation can achieve.

We can take the lessons for things we never got to do growing up. We can go back to college and get that degree we wanted to have our dream job. We can have social events that bring meaning and friendship back into our lives. We can pick ourselves up from those big broken dreams. We can still have our “Happily Ever After” so long as we are open minded that it may be in a different city, within a different time frame and possibly with a different person or people.

I know what I am going to do with the itch, what are you going to do about yours?

Fallen Angel