Last night, I woke up in the middle of the night again like I did the week that Ed left us. I woke up at around 3:15, disturbed because I had some odd dreams. In one dream, I run into Ben, a friend here in New York, and he has told me that his partner, Grant, who I went to high school with, has suddenly died. In the next dream, I am sitting in a large theater, and I am the only person sitting in the audience, right in the center. As I look up to the stage, I see what appears to be a set for a house with multiple rooms. The people who are on stage are Ed and my parents, and they are going about their usual daily routine, unaware that they have an audience (me) watching them. Although they are all busy, none of them speaks to each other at all. It is as though their existences are completely unlinked from the other and that they are unaware of the others’ presences.

Needless to say, it was weird to see my family all on a stage, doing their daily activities and not interacting with each other at all. It made me feel so alienated. That’s probably how Ed felt. He had a family with whom he lived, yet despite that, he felt little to no connection to them because of his profound depression and mental illness. He couldn’t understand them, and they couldn’t even fathom the thought of beginning to understand them. Having this dream makes me feel even more disconnected from him now.