A weird dream, autism, and the love of a father

(Originally posted in March 13, 2020; it has been slightly updated).

Hello everyone! This is the first post that I have written in a while. Frankly, I felt the need to write it up while the details were still fresh. I need to come clean though; last night I dreamt about something, and I cried this morning when I was telling my wife about it.

Before going into the dream, though, I realize that many of you do not know me well enough, and therefore will need some background to fully understand the dream and its significance, even though its meaning is obvious to me. Anyway, here’s the background.

I have three children. A daughter (31) and two sons (24, and 21), as of Nov, 2022. My 24 year-old, the one with the best mustache in the house (see picture), is autistic. He is sweet, witty, kind, social, talkative, and with a smile that lights up the room. He is also scary smart.

He will also wander into traffic if unsupervised, will unlock and open the front door of our house regardless of who is knocking, and oftentimes forgets whether he took his medications 😔.

I have expressed how I feel about his autism in other posts, but before you yell at me (fair warning: any rude, expletive/rich comment—It’s happened before—will be unapologetically deleted with extreme prejudice and with a couple of expletives of my own) here’s what I think about his autism, in a nutshell:

*I love each of my children just the way they are. And of course, I love my autistic son just the way he is. He is delightful, period, and I would not mind his autism one bit if it were not for the dangerous situations that he can get into because of it or because of what the future may have in store for him.

*If you are a high-functioning autistic and you are safe living on your own, great! I am very happy for you! But, please do not attack me because of this post—Again, it’s happened before. People with autism have misinterpreted my feelings, and well, you know…

*Even though my wife and I are planning ahead for his sake, I live with the angst of what is going to happen to him once my wife and I are gone. How will he be treated by others? He has a kind heart and not a mean bone in his body; will people be rude or worse to him? I am sure his siblings will not leave him alone, but what if they are unable to help him or are gone, even? I can’t bear that thought either…

*One last detail: I love and enjoy science fiction and this fact is relevant to my dream. In fact, I wrote a short science fiction story related to my feelings about the future of my son. I have updated it. You can download it absolutely free. The link is HERE.

Well, here’s the dream. Please keep in mind that for self-evident reasons, this is difficult for me to write; I am writing this post in brief “bursts” as I am able to. Please pardon any stylistic “sins”.

Fair warning: There’s at least one swear word in it, but I want to narrate this dream as faithfully as I remember it. Also, and strangely, this dream had a movie-like quality; what I mean by this is that I was dreaming this as an spectator, if it makes sense.

Here goes:

~~~

I dreamt that I was visiting my son at an assisted-living facility. The dream was clearly about the future, because I was an old man, 80/90-ish, and very frail. I went to visit my son alone, and that was one of the sad parts of my dream; my wife was not there. My son was born when I was 33, so in this dream he would have been about 60 years old.

As we were conversing, an orderly came into the room for something; I’d never seen this man before in the dream (or in real life).

This man was BIG, and pretty soon it was clear that he was not a nice person. He spoke to my son rudely while ignoring my presence in the room (I kind of remember that he was about to give my son a medication), and he even pushed my son very brusquely to sit him down on a chair. Just as I would react in real life, I saw red when that animal pushed my son down.

I stood up as fast as expected from a person my age in the dream, and confronted the man; I do not remember what I said to him. He looked at me menacingly, and began moving towards me with obvious intentions. I knew that I was no match for this man, but I stood my ground.

Then the scene changed.

I saw an entity traveling though space, similar to the way The Silver Surfer travels between the stars, but he was not the Silver Surfer. Also, I could not see his face clearly; in fact, I was just able to make a general humanoid shape, with very little detail. Strangely enough, I seemed to be traveling through space right beside him.

Without even slowing down, he began talking to me in a language that I have never heard in my dream or in real life. I remember that he said two distinct sentences that I did not understand, but somehow I felt that his words were addressed explicitly to me, as in ‘instructions’.

Then the scene changed again.

I was back in the room with the big orderly about to do whatever to me, and I had no intentions of backing up. Right before he got to me though, I ‘Hulked’ up. No, I did not turn green, but I was back in my prime. No, way better than in my prime. You see, in real life I am of average height, and I have never been in a strong man competition, if you know what I mean. But in my dream, I ended up towering over that animal, and if I were pressed to describe it, I acquired the build of ‘The Mountain’, of ‘Game of Thrones‘ fame.

I grabbed the orderly by the shoulders and while effortlessly lifting him up, its body ‘opened up’, revealing that it was merely a kind of android controlled by a tiny entity (like in the first ‘Men in Black’ movie), only this entity was clearly a demon of some sort.

I grabbed the tiny demon with one hand, looked at him in the eye, and I said, matter of factly, calmly, deliberately, without emotion, and carefully enunciating each syllable:

“Listen to me carefully, little shit. If you ever mistreat my son again, in any way whatsoever, make no mistake,

I

WILL

KILL

YOU.”

And then I woke up.

~~~

Sigh.

The funny thing about this dream is that those who know me, know that I am not a violent man. I am no pushover, but I avoid confrontation, and I am very diplomatic. Also, I am not rude; I don’t even like swearing in anger. I suppose that a skilled psych will have a field day with me because of this dream and for more than this reason for that matter, but that is a story for another day.

Thank you for reading this far and for letting me share this experience with you.

Yours truly with my loves.

~~~

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