June 03, 2004

Heartbreak Soup

I dreamt I was an organ courier, with a second heart living in my chest beside my own. I was keeping it safe and warm, keeping it alive. I met the family of its recipient, and they thanked me again and again for my trouble; their gratitude was almost unbearable.

I wasn't conscious for the surgery, but all the same I remember being cut open, I remember that other heart being torn out. I remember being curled up in despair afterwards, clutching the sides of my chest closed around too much space, just raw flesh and emptiness. Wrapping myself tightly around a pillow, crying and convulsing and vomiting up a thin trickle of yellow bile.

And then, still in the dream, I woke up, sort of, and I realized that this hadn't happened after all, even as I burned from the hollowness inside, even as I wept and shook. I considered, in the dream, blogging about my nightmare, but I knew that I couldn't because it wasn't mine.

It took me a little while to remember that the whole heart transplant storyline had happened in an episode of Friends, not a nightmare, but a light-hearted romp. Whoever it was had been more of a heart babysitter than a courier, and it was all some gentle misunderstanding, amusingly resolved. If I told people about my dream they'd laugh, knowing that I'd plagiarized it. Knowing that I couldn't be original even in my dreams.

By the time I really woke up, it didn't seem so bad after all. I was no longer gutted -- though I could clearly remember how that felt -- just a bit sheepish about being so easily affected by dumb plots from sappy sitcoms.
Posted by matt at June 3, 2004 08:36 PM

Comments

Aww, that doesn't sound all too thrilling :(

...but if it does make you feel better, just slightly, there is a similar plot line in a far better, more original and rather less banal show -- Firefly! :)

Posted by: Stairs at June 3, 2004 09:47 PM

I'd forgotten that. Come to think of it, there's a vaguely similar thread in Alias as well.

Hearts are so overloaded with symbolism.

Posted by: matt at June 3, 2004 10:07 PM

This makes me think of the poem that made the rounds when I was five or six:

I had a heart
And it was true;
It flew from me
And went to you.
So treat it well,
As I have done,
For you have two
And I have none.

And I actually stole the idea for a sonnet I wrote for an Italian class in college. I'd post that but there was a grammatical error in the Italian, so until I fix it it will not see the light of day.

Posted by: Faustus, M.D. at June 4, 2004 12:36 AM

You mean there really was an episode of Friends with that plot?

Posted by: Max at June 4, 2004 10:13 AM

I don't think so, but you can't take my word for it. If there was I might have to re-evaluate my opinion of the show. Slightly.

[Faustus] Welcome back. Long time no see.

Posted by: matt at June 4, 2004 10:37 AM

Phew. I was thinking the same thing.

Posted by: Max at June 4, 2004 06:53 PM

Without getting all Freudian on your ass...it sounds like you're doing something for someone in your life that you don't necessarily want or need to be doing; then you realize that you're giving too much to this person, and in your dream you have a laugh at your own expense...um...or maybe you just watched a bloody medical movie?

Posted by: mezack at June 5, 2004 06:03 PM

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