Wow, I just woke up from a complex dream that I'm glad was just a dream... but so realistic. In it, my girlfriend and I were hanging out, we were at my parents' house. But we weren't together anymore, we were just friends. Everything was more or less the same, except there was nothing romantic between us. There was still love, but it was just close friendship. This seemed normal but somewhat sad to me at first. I kept finding myself wanting to hold her hand, or kiss her, and then remembering and having a twinge of sadness. I don't remember all the stuff that was going on but there was some sort of mission happening the whole time. I remember the last parts though, we woke up in the morning (were still sharing my parents' guest room) and we were brushing our teeth and shit, and there was this really poor-quality toilet paper, and I offered to go to the store for some that wasn't abrasive and terrible. So I drove my mom's car to the store. The town I grew up in/where my parents live was different, in the same way it usually is in my dreams. I find it interesting that it's always different in the same way, it's like two different versions of the town exist, but one only exists in my head. When I got back, my girl was talking to her ex-boyfriend on the phone, and she put him on speaker so we both talked to him (this actually happens, he's a good friend, basically they ended up the same way she and I were in my dream, they're good friends, their romance just died over time but they still cared about each other, he's a friend of mine too and we'll have 3-person conversations on the phone). He was asking why on Earth we broke up, and she wasn't telling him why, and then I realized I didn't know why either, and I started to get really sad and kinda scared, because why couldn't I remember? What happened? Oh my god, what did I do? I started to feel this emptiness when I thought about kissing her and being sweet with her and making love with her and it felt a little like panic.
Anyway, we hung up the phone and finished getting ready, and then it was time to go to my parents' church to see this composer guy that my girlfriend knew in the dream, he had a pianist and some strings rehearsing. When we got there, we were trying to be quiet and respectful, but this composer guy was talking loudly and not paying attention. We said hi and he had his son there who was a little boy and he was really cute. My girlfriend introduced me as her friend, which, again, made me feel weird and bad. I started watching the musicians, and the pianist was excellent, but the string players were ridiculous... they were playing super quietly, the only reason I could hear them was because I was right next to them. One of them was playing on her phone with one hand and sort of just aimlessly tapping the strings with the other; one of them was holding the neck of a cello and lightly tapping the string side of it against the edge of a table and talking to the person next to him. It was weird, I was thinking like, what the hell guys, why don't you try being serious? This pianist is incredible!
After a short time we went outside and explored the grounds, and I had a memory of being involved in setting up the facilities. My friend-girlfriend needed to look the weather up because we were going to go camping, but instead of using her phone, I told her we should use this search engine I installed outside. We walked over to it; it was one of those big black panels that you might see hanging over a highway that the crude orange lettering shows up on, where it might say Amber Alert, or Seatbelts Save Lives, or something. Although I already knew what it looked like and "how it worked" since I had made it, I showed her, and at this point the dream was a little meta and I think I had some slight inkling that I was dreaming and I also wanted to show myself because half of me was confused as to how such a highway sign could be a search engine. We walked around back and I had installed some little box on there (I also noticed a security camera hanging down and facing out towards the road that was behind it). In the front, so that you'd be facing the lettering, there was a control panel. Somehow, you could search the Internet with it, even though it would only be able to show you simple, giant orange letters. In any case, she found out that the weather was supposed to be nice, so we went back to my parents' house to gather our things.
Once we got back there, my dad wanted to come camping with us. In my dream he was healthy and whole (in reality he has ALS and is paralyzed and absolutely miserable and it's the worst thing I have ever had to deal with at this point and usually in my dreams by now he's like he is in real life, so in retrospect it's both sad and wonderful to have experienced him healthy again), and after we gathered our things, we got into the car and he was driving. We were heading over to my uncle Ken's house to get something else, and then we were going to head to an unspecified place to camp. Somehow my girlfriend's cat was in the car as we were driving. I noticed when we were still in the neighborhood, she was meowing at the door, she wanted to get out. I told my dad and girlfriend that we should stop for a second and let her out before we weren't in the neighborhood anymore, because she shouldn't go camping with us, and anyway she didn't want to go with us. They seemed unconcerned, but for some reason it was giving me anxiety and I was getting annoyed at them. They told me that "if she was still there" (how could she not be if we don't let her out??) when we got to uncle Ken's, we could just drop her back off. I thought that was dumb because, like, just stop for a second and I'll open the door and she can get out. For some reason this situation was really annoying to me.
Then I looked at my girlfriend. She smiled at me, and I suddenly just really wanted to kiss her. I went to kiss her and she pulled back and looked at me funny. All of a sudden I got really sad again, and panicky. I couldn't remember why she broke up with me, but I remembered the event, she told me she thought we shouldn't see each other anymore but she wants to still be friends. I did want to still be friends, I value her greatly as a friend, but I didn't want to break up. I sat there in silence, too afraid to say anything, but all I could think was, I'm still in love with you, baby! Don't you still love me? What happened to us? This isn't right! All I wanted to do was kiss her and snuggle up to her. I was thinking about it and getting closer and closer to tears. I wanted to tell her what I was feeling so bad but I didn't want to make her uncomfortable or feel bad. Because in truth, I didn't feel like she had done anything wrong, I had the impression, even though I couldn't remember, that I had done something to result in the breakup. We were still close, too, like it felt almost the same but I missed the romantic connection so much. Finally I felt the tears about to come, and then I woke up. I had tears in my eyes and it took me a minute to realize that it was just a dream because the whole thing felt so real.
But yeah, glad that was a dream... it was one of those dreams where I woke up to my alarm, and then fell back to sleep for an hour. Those are always the most vivid ones.