More Than Ever

Date: 9/5/2018

Memories of this dream are a bit jumbled now, but there are some things I clearly remember. The recurring main character was a skinny, awkward, college-age boy. Apparently, his name was Morgan. He loved his girlfriend so much, he was planning to marry her. He told his family he was going to propose. Then he came back to them and told them it was all over: she’d dumped him. They tried to console him, even his kid niblings who didn’t really understand what was going on. He appreciated it, but still went away on a journey to forget about his now ex-girlfriend. I think he met some shady magic peddler on a mountain? Something happened, and he got kinda... cursed? His hair got longer and messier, his clothes became more emo/goth than sweater-vest-nerd-chic, and shadows formed under his eyes. Really, he just looked like someone who wasn’t getting enough sleep cause he had some kind of deadline to meet at school. Still, he definitely had an intense feeling about him. He wasn’t fully himself. It felt like the shadows under his eyes weren’t the only ones in him, in a way. There was also a part where he (or someone else who looked like him?) teamed up with a random halfling rogue to do something. It seemed like whatever they were doing, it was something underhanded and criminal — but for the sake of saving the world or some similarly grand goal. They were sneaking around and doing horrible things and generally having a bad time, while a pair of heroic hobbits did all the heroic parts of the job and got rewarded for it. The heroic hobbits had flowing had with fancy ornaments in it and fancy clothes with fine detailing and weapons that were actually made for heroic stuff. Even so, they were clearly still having a horrible time in their own right... but Morgan was pretty bitter about it. He couldn’t get caught by them, so he had to hide whenever their paths crossed, and when that happened he’d glare at them from just out of sight. They didn’t know how good they had it — how much dirty work actually went into saving literally anything. He hated them, though he knew their work was just as necessary as his. He hated the system that split the work this way, more than anything. There was also a part with some villains who were bipedal rhino people? They acted a bit like Team Rocket, and tried to thwart the main character? This part is... really unclear in my memories. I think they were in a cave? But they got forced off a cliff at the cave entrance somehow? Unclear if they died? After an unspecified amount of time, rhinos or no rhinos, Morgan went back home. He met a girl on the way back. She had half-shaved pink hair in a wave on the top of her head. She had a laugh that was pretty, but kind of dorky. She suited him well. They went to his hometown together. They started dating. Morgan’s ex, however, was still close to his family somehow. Either she still babysat the kids, or she was now dating one of the main character’s siblings, or his parents just liked her and kept inviting her to things. Something along those lines. Whatever the reason, he ended up seeing her as often as he did before they broke up. At his own family home. At stores and restaurants. On family outings. It was... awkward. They both volunteered to help distribute flyers of some kind at a ski resort near town, at his parents’ insistence. They were also chaperoning the kids (Morgan’s niblings and kid cousins) on a ski trip, taking turns between watching them and manning the flyer table. Their turns overlapped for both duties sometimes, and they acted as normal as they could during said overlaps. It wasn’t too long before they started talking like his ex had always been part of the family this way — like they had only ever been friends, and never dated or wanted to date at all. The main character didn’t really notice the shift — or else he did, and just really didn’t want to admit that he could be normal around her so easily. I think some part of him must have wanted a confrontation. A dramatic argument. Closure. Under such amiable circumstances, however, he mostly just felt internally awkward the whole time. His ex got more confident, of course, relieved that this whole ordeal wasn’t one of those “we broke up so now we do spiteful things to each other” situations. She didn’t need any closure beyond repairing her friendship with Morgan. She talked more, and with less stressed body language. Morgan hated it. A photographer set up shop near them just before they planned to go home for the day. He asked if the pair was dating. Refuting the accusation was awkward, but mainly because Morgan made it that way. They asked if the two of them wanted photos, anyway. The kids did, so their chaperones relented. Morgan ended up in a snowman outfit somehow — wearing an actual costume, standing behind a cardboard cutout, or maybe just a photo filter? He smiles so naturally. It really looked like he was sincerely having a good time with his family. He laughed and said something along the lines of “just having fun, taking pictures cause we’re friends” in a song-song voice, and put a snowman hand across his ex’s shoulder in the most platonic way he knew how. Internally, however, he was repeatedly screaming “this is so awkward I wanna run away how the hell did this even happen how are we acting like friends” to himself and longing desperately to go home. He eventually got to leave. He got back to the hotel where he was staying with his current, pink-haired girlfriend. Their paths home came together on the elevator. They started talking. He talked about how awkward things had been, and how his ex didn’t even know what had happened to him after their breakup. She asked him what had happened that traumatized him so much. He explained that he’d gone crazy on a mountain, and believed he was cursed. He’d done some terrible stuff, as far as he could remember, like committing crimes to get to what he wanted and physically fighting other people just for tiny offenses against him. He’d lived with some mad scientist type person, the way he told the story. His whole life had been chaotic and reckless and he, himself, had felt a gnawing darkness in him the whole time. He’d worn goth makeup, like he was actually into the aesthetic or something! He blamed his ex for all of it. They got to their room and pink hair sat down in her gaming chair and scooted up to her computer. She opened it, while the main character found a cigarette in their nightstand by the bed in their cramped little hotel room. She made a joke about him clearly not being fully recovered, something about him liking her hair and not wanting her to get extensions, I think. He responded with a joke in kind, lighting his cigarette while sarcastically delivering a line about wanting to hide her pretty face with her hair. She smiled at him. He smiled, too, but he was clearly still thinking about their original conversation. He went back to it, complaining that it was so weird that he had to see his ex at family dinners and she didn’t even know how much she’d messed him up. Pink hair laughed. “As crazy and messed up as you were then,” she assured him, “you have a great best friend now. You two are great together, and you get along way better than when you were dating. You have me, too. Your life’s pretty good, Captain Mor-gan-ever!” The name was clearly meant to reference that the main character had more good relationships with friends and family than ever — he had more-than-ever in terms of good things in his life — and was the only time in the dream I actually heard his name directly. His cigarette almost fell out of his mouth as he considered what she’d said. His hands fell to his sides. She smiled, and Morgan wondered if he should maybe just accept this weird friendship with his ex. His current girlfriend wasn’t threatened by or opposed to it, after all. He ended up bringing her to a family dinner, and pink hair immediately made friends with his ex. I saw them all passing drinks around the table after the kids had gone to bed, parents and kids and significant others. Morgan’s ex was so happy, swinging around bottles of alcohol and feeling like part of the family. She belonged somewhere. Finally. Then I woke up.