As Old As Cain and Abel

"Just plain old jealousy".

One of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies. Remember the titans.

Ever since I've dealt with relationships with the opposite sex, I've always been jealous.

Sure, it's gotten a lot better as I've grown older - and hopefully wiser - but I will still admit it's there.

Maybe it's because I tend to date out of my league. Always going for women I feel are better than I am - maybe it's their looks. Maybe it's how they are as a person. Maybe overall they are just a better person than I am.

And I realize that - and become insecure. Realize that the woman I am with probably deserves better than me, and how I fooled her in to staying with me is kind of beyond me. In my opinion there is always going to be some guy out there that is better for her. Better in all aspects than me.

So I can't help it. I always think that that guy is going to come waltzing in to her life and sweep her off her feet making her realize what a bum I actually am.

This doesn't happen very often with the wife. I would say it definitely happened more often in college than it does now. In college I dated girls that I always thought would find better than me. Because it was college, and there are plenty of fish in the sea. It's easier to meet people in college because of all the social activities.

So I've been alright - and still am right now. But I wanted to write about something that really blew my mind. I think I've only written about my dreams once or twice before on this blog, but what really amazed me was that one of the dreams that I had last night actually taught me something.

Which, if you stop and think about it, is really odd. It is my subconscious trying to tell me something. And I woke up this morning at 3:30 AM right after I finished that dream and had a hard time getting back to sleep because I had a hard time accepting the fact that one of my dreams made me change my mind on something.

A little backstory first: The wife has been having some issues working out lately and not being able to drop the weight like she would like to. This being the case she met on Monday with - what I'm guessing - is an old friend of hers from high school who is now a personal trainer.

Not to be gay or anything, but the guy looks good. I can admit it. After all, his profession is in personal training and he didn't start out with bad looks to begin with. So knowing the stigma around personal trainers and understanding that there are vulnerable women out there who like to see results and love the support from an attractive male - it's not hard to see where my insecurities might be coming from.

Regardless, here's the best I can do from recalling my dream last night:

It started out with me walking in to what felt like a gym. The weird thing was, they had those blue pads down on the floor - you know the ones they use for gymnastics in junior high or put up behind basketball hoops to soften the blow. The weird part about it was the gym was split in half with a giant wall down the middle. On one side of the gym they had their weights and the other side they had the cardio equipment.

I walked down what was a sloping gym (another weird thing about it) and picked up a curl bar and starting working my biceps. As I was lifting I looked through one of the windows to the other side of the gym and there I saw my wife riding a bike and working hard...with who else next to her but the personal trainer I had mentioned earlier.

Ok - I was fine with it, but I was a little irked at the time because she hadn't mentioned anything to me (I was thinking this in the dream) that she was going to be working out with him that afternoon.

I remember sinking my feet in to the floor padding as I was curling the bar. And I was curling, there she was, now leaving the gym - soaked through her workout clothes because she had worked hard. I thought to myself that I was in the clear because all she had done was worked out with him, and now she was leaving. Unfortunately I was wrong. As she was walking out the door - she didn't even see me there lifting - she turned around to give the personal trainer a hug. And it wasn't just any sort of friendly hug - the ones that are short lived and maybe include a pat on the back and a quick pull away. It was a hug that lasted an eternity in my dream. One where she arched her back and leaned back a little and he leaned in to her.

Watching it broke me. In my dream I leave the gym hurt and feeling that pang of jealousy. Suddenly we are walking together down a asphalt trail through a large grass park. It is her and me and 3 younger people, one of which was interested in renting our condo we have in Northgate. For some odd reason in my dream we are walking to the condo now.

When we get there we open up the front door to the entrance of the condo and we find that since there were so many retired tenants living there (this is actually true) that the homeowner's association decided to hire full time live in nurses and turn the complex in to a retirement home. Seeing all the nurses walking around brought back terrible flashbacks to the girl who had happily agreed to come check out the condo and possibly rent it and she bust out in to tears. Unstoppable and an agonizingly loud sob - and there was nothing we could do about it.

I apologized to the girl checking out the property as she walked away, completely disturbed by what we had shown her. We decided to leave after another failed attempt at trying to rent out our 2nd property. For some reason, the wife and I arrived separately so I decided to go for a run first in that area before heading home. In my dream I thought I hadn't run around that area since going to college so I should get in my work out to help me avoid traffic on the way home along with checking out all the changes that the area had gone through since I was in college.

In the next part of my dream I am running under what looks like the aurora bridge. Except it is curling upwards, almost like a multiple on and off-ramp of one of our major freeways. During my run I am running with high knees (for no reason really other than a harder workout) and I am jogging through an almost empty parking lot. I run past a few of the cars in the lot when I see that one of the cars is running. From a distance I can see that there are 2 people sitting in what is an older light blue Saturn.

I run past the car and see one of my aunts sitting in the driver's seat and my neighbor decked out in suit and tie in the passenger seat. They are talking to each other but both are in a very somber mood and my neighbor looks like he is going to cry. I find this very odd - not that they are talking and are in the same car together (because they've never met) but because they are both very sad about something.

I run past the car trying my best to avoid eye contact. One of those times where you recognize someone but hope they don't recognize you. I run to a winding set of concrete stairs which supposedly leads to one of the freeway on ramps. As I am running up the stairs I hear the voice of my neighbor yell out for me to stop.

I stop a few steps up and look down to him. I can see that he is visibly crying and has been for some time because of his swollen eyes and red running nose. In his hand he holds a small brown ceramic pot which looks to be filled with ashes.

I ask him, "What's going on? Why are you so sad?"

"Do you know who's ashes are in this pot?"

My mind starts to race. I can't believe it. Someone in my family has died and now I have to guess at who it was. In my mind I am thinking it is someone in my Aunt's family because she was in the car next to my neighbor but didn't come out to talk to me herself.

So I guess at who's ashes they are starting with her family.

"Is it Tony's ashes?"

"No."

"Kyle?"

"No."

"Oh my gosh. It can't be Ally is it?"

And that's when I realized it. At that moment in my dream I figured out that my neighbor for some reason couldn't be that sad unless it was my wife he had the ashes of. And I stood there in a state of shock. In my mind I kept thinking it can't be her...please don't let it be her. Anyone but her.

And my neighbor took the pot in his hand, and dumped the ashes over the railing we were both standing over on the staircase.

"Actually Seth, what was in the pot was just sand." He said as he emptied the contents in the slight breeze that was blowing under the freeway. "But what's amazing to me is that you were willing to give up other's lives - those in your family who were much younger than you just to make sure these ashes weren't your wives. You were actually hoping this was their remains instead of hers."

And as soon as I had that realization I woke up. It may be a bit confusing after reading through all this, but in the end this dream helped me realize how important my wife was to me - and how I'll have to try my best from here on out to get past all the petty jealousy that has ruined my past relationships, and even destroyed lives like in the story of Cain and Abel.

It was a moral story within my own dreams. And while I was sleeping I've become a better person. I've never had a dream like that, one where I woke up with a bit of an epiphany. But I am thankful for it and impressed by the power of my own mind.

Now it's back off to dreamland.