Hey, pals. It’s been a while. Three years and three days, actually. That’s wild.
Allow me to reintroduce myself! My name is Jan. I am 32 years old. I love nerdy things, I work in retail, and I have a pretty cool kid who I get to share my love of said nerdy things with. I also have incredibly random dreams. Sometimes, they’re sexy. Sometimes, they’re apocalyptical. Sometimes, they’re work dreams where I… work.
I debated letting this blog sit here and collect dust for the rest of eternity, but I had a dream last night that was such a vivid, confusing mind fuck, it had to be typed out. So, here it is. The grand revival of my Dream Journal series.
Leaving.
I was leaving work, and sat down on a bench in front of the building to wait for my husband, who comes to pick me up every day. After half an hour of waiting, where I had called and texted him a dozen times with no answer, my coworker came outside and offered to drive me home, since they were headed in that direction.
As we pulled up to my house, it was completely dark. The doors were unlocked, and I walked in to find my eight year old son sitting in front of the computer, watching YouTube. I turned on the lights and asked him where his dad was.
“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “He’s been gone all day.”
I started to panic and tried calling him a few more times. He works overnights, so I knew he hadn’t gotten called into work, and it wasn’t like him to leave our son home alone, or to not answer my calls. After several more failed attempts at reaching him, I went upstairs to my room and called his mom to ask if she had heard anything. She answered the phone and seemed annoyed that I was calling her.
“Janise, I can’t talk to you. Don’t call me,” she said before hanging up on me.
I went back downstairs and got my son ready for bed. After getting him tucked in for the night, I started calling and texting all of my husband’s friends. Most of them ignored my calls and texts. His best friend finally answered, and I frantically began asking him questions. He cut me off and told me my husband was staying at his house. With his new girlfriend.
I was confused. He had just dropped me off at work that morning, and everything was fine. I kept asking questions, but he refused to answer. He eventually handed the phone to my husband.
“Stop bothering my friends, and don’t call my mom again,” he said. “I’m not coming home. I need you to take your name off of our bank account and then I need you guys to move out of the house.”
I told him that wasn’t funny, and that he needed to come home. I told him I was annoyed that he had left our son home alone and hadn’t come to get me from work. He calmly told me he wasn’t coming home. He told me he was done. We were done. He had moved on.
I kept asking him what he was talking about. He had just dropped me off at work that morning, and everything was fine. None of this made any sense. He repeated his request to have me take my name off of our account and move out with our son. I told him that was insane, and that I wasn’t going to do it. I told him to come home so we could work out whatever was going on.
I could hear his bestfriend and another woman laughing in the background, as if he had me on speaker phone.
Then, he hung up.
He texted me the request again shortly after.
I paced around downstairs, sending furious texts to him, his mom, and his friend. No responses. I couldn’t wrap my head around what was happening. None of it made sense. It felt like a sick joke.
Then, I went to bed.
When I woke up and checked my phone. I had a long text chain from his mom, who told me all about how my husband had been having an affair for months, and that everyone knew about it, but no one had wanted to tell me. I cried. Then, I got my son ready for school, put him on the school bus, and tried to reach out to him again. No response. I called off from work, since I no longer had a car to get there, and then I called the police.
An officer showed up, and I explained to him everything that had happened the night before. He seemed unbothered. He told me it sounded like my husband had been having an affair and wanted to leave me. He told me I should listen to him and that we should leave our home. I refused, and told him that none of this made any sense. Then, he left.
I sat on the couch and played Pokémon Violet on the Switch until my son came home from school. He asked where his dad was. I told him he was staying at a friend’s house and would be home soon. Then, we started his homework…
And then, I woke up. I woke up, in real life, at 3:00. I went downstairs and saw that my husband’s car was gone, and felt a wave of panic… until I remembered that he works overnights, and was at work. I went through my texts, and all of the texts from the dream were gone. My heart was racing, but I managed to get back to sleep.
And, thankfully, that dream did not pick back up where it left off. It shook me because it was so… real. Mundane, and real. But also, just a dream. I told him about it today. He’s used to hearing about my insane dreams. So, nothing really shocks him anymore.
Thanks for reading, friends!
J
My Life as Jan 