A Hurt, Scared, Little Boy

I had a dream a couple of nights ago that has bothered me since.  In my dream, I am in an auditorium with all my high school classmates from some twenty-odd years ago.  The setting seemed to be one where we were discussing our good memories of high school, and a woman was facilitating this discussion.

At one point, one of my classmates stood and spoke about how his high school days were filled with good times and a sense of inclusiveness with almost all of his classmates.  He finished and the woman facilitating was about to move on to another subject when I stood up and asked to speak.  Groans came from around the room.  Everyone was dreading to hear what I had to say.  I spoke about how that sense of inclusiveness the previous speaker recounted was probably very true, but some were excluded.

In the dream I was hurt, angry and, if I might say, quite eloquent.

But that dream has bothered me because, like many dreams that enter my consciousness, it revealed a part of me that I thought had long since been destroyed.  Deep inside of me is that lonely, scared, hurt, bitter adolescent. 

I guess that part of me still is not dead.  Part of me is stuck in the ’80s.  How can I live in the here and now, if part of me still harbors feelings from events that happened 20 to 25 years ago?  That scared little boy in me must die, but how to destroy that part of me is the big question. 

I love dreams.  They reveal so much about me to me.  But this dream is so very scary to me, because I though I had outgrown the resentments I had as a sullen, brooding teenager.