Disturbing Dream + Chocolate Cake

In the dream, they were laughing at me. Jeering, really. They were giddy with excitement over my distress. It was my nuclear family, plus one woman from work who has recently been inexplicably hostile to me. She was linked romantically to one of my brothers. I was trying to tell them the truth about her, but they defended her and shunned me. Eventually I became so agitated that, like a petulant pre-adolescent, I gathered up my courage and declared that I would leave, since they obviously didn't want me. Not only did this not disturb them, they encouraged me to leave, as they sat around the big dining room table with loosened belts and satisfied grins. Knowing there was no solace, no single person within that house who would defend me, I hung my head and began to trudge away.

I got as far as the fenceline near the road when a woman came running toward me from the house. She had a large chocolate cake on a platter. She called out to me, and my heart leapt, as I thought that they had finally come to their senses and weren't going to send me away after all. I even thought the cake might be an apology. I stood, breathless, while the woman caught up to me. I am sure she relished the look of foolish hope on my face as I waited for her to tell me this was all a terrible mistake. Instead, once she got close enough, she said, "I have a message from your family." She launched the cake up into my shocked face, beginning to laugh grotesquely as she finished with a "Good riddance!" and turned back to the house.

I looked toward the house, where I could see them through the dining room window, laughing and clapping and not giving me a second thought except for their entertainment.

Bereft, I turned away again and began the long walk to an unknown destination.

(Mixed in with this dream before and after the main events detailed above, at one point my family was feeling kinder toward me and was going to send me to Morocco, which set me dreaming within the dream. I remember looking at a book that had a chapter on Morocco, and the theme was something like "cold dark corners in hot sunny climates", which I thought sounded just perfect for a girl like me. I was also involved in some locker room shenanigans at a large school, which I'm pretty sure has been in a couple of other recent dreams but I can't access the fragments in my waking memory. I also tried to flee to Australia at the very end of the dream, but didn't have enough $$ to get there.)

Elusive Refuge of Sleep

It's 4am. Why am I not sleeping? It's a mystery. For weeks, this bed was my refuge. Sleep was my gift, my weapon against the painfulness of being awake. Even when I wasn't sleeping, my bed was a comfort, the only place I felt safe and comfortable. I watched countless episodes of now-unmemorable television; I read through piles of books here in this bed. Meditation? Not so much. My mind was too weary to do anything that might have been good for it.

Now, this bed feels more... difficult. Like a person with whom I am trying to negotiate a new type of friendship. We are forging the new details of our troubled alliance. Sleep comes in fits and starts, but never for long. Where before I snuggled deep into its soft folds, now I toss and turn, hunting for that elusive comfort. All my old tricks to fall back asleep have abandoned me.

Tonight I forced myself past thick walls of my own resistance and fear -- though I pictured myself running off the stage, fleeing to the safety of my car and pretending I was never there in the first place -- and sang on stage at a little talent contest. I joked with the other contestants about nerves, all the while swallowing my true fears and masking them with small talk and encouraging morsels of small talk. I got up on that stage and sang, and tried to pour myself into the song like I feel that I usually do. I didn't sing the ubiquitous Carrie Underwood song, but perhaps that is the type of song the judges wanted to hear.

I can't keep on like this, trying to bargain with sleep, borrowing energy against the coming day. Coffee can only lift me so much, once the day has begun. For now, I will turn this off, settle back into the pillows, and listen to the ramblings of the BBC while I do my best imitation of deep relaxation breathing. Only 2 more hours until it will feel "normal" to get up -- and I can pretty well guess that it won't be nearly so easy to be awake, then. Suddenly this elusive sleep will be upon me and I'll once again be the bargainer, begging for just a little more time in this bed.

In Some Ways...

Last night, my therapist asked me to read this poem aloud to her and to Seth. She said that when she read it, it reminded her of me. I must confess to tearing up while reading it, and today I have found myself thinking of it several times.

I think it is by Leo Ralston - I've found it all over the internet, credited to various people but usually to him.


In some way, however small and secret, 
each of us is a little mad.
Everyone is lonely at the bottom and cries to be understood. 
But we can never entirely understand someone else. 
Each of us remains part stranger, even to those who love us.
It is the weak who are cruel; gentleness is expected only from the strong. 
Those who do not know fear are not really brave, for courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined. 
You can understand people better if you look at them -- no matter how old or impressive they may be, as if they are children. 
For most of us never mature; we simply grow taller.
Happiness comes only when we push our brains and hearts to the farthest reaches of which we are capable. 
The purpose of life is to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have it make some difference that we have lived at all!


Beautiful sentiments, no?

dream: bombs in bananas, italian villas

On a trip to Italy with some friends. At the airport, all my companions go through security with no problem but suddenly I am setting off all sorts of alarms. I had packed very hurriedly, but was still stumped as to how I could be setting off the alarms. They check all my possessions and clear them – then make me do this humiliating search… I have to do a sort of “duck walk” involving squatting near the floor and extending one leg at a time. But I’m wearing a skirt and no panties underneath, and am desperately embarrassed at the thought of being exposed by airport security in such a way. Somehow I am just barely able to avoid being discovered, and they eventually wave me through, convinced I am not concealing any weapons after all. (Later in the dream, I realize that someone back home had planted a bomb inside a banana I had in my backpack. No joke. There was also a cucumber in my pack. I refuse to consider the phallic implications here.)

Fast forward to a café – I think in the Italian airport. My companions have already ordered while I have been searched. I take a really long time to order, and eventually settle on something…really wish I could remember the name but it had something to do with Moon Cheese Milk Pie, and was some sort of crazy sweet/savory coffee drink that sounded amazing when the woman described it to me.

…and then we are in a villa or house or something – and I think there are 3 or 4 couples of us. One of the couples is S’s sister and her husband; though in reality they have only been married a few months and have no children, in the dream they have this beautiful daughter with this mystical-magical aura. She is otherworldly. Everyone is in varying degrees of awe of her.

Everything is going along great until the conversation shifts to our relationships. S and I had been avoiding talking about our relationship, but at some point one of us just begins talking. Soon everyone is uncomfortable; I feel an overwhelming sense of being judged…I feel oppressed and blamed and just…. Forever on the outside. I storm off, embarrassed and angry and confused. I look for our bedroom. The bedrooms in this place are crazy – I walk up this spiral stairway and find 3 separate bedroom doors; one on each level. Each door is covered with fabric and there appears to be only a very small circular opening, like a doggy door, toward the bottom of each door. The lowest bedroom has the smallest circular door, and I immediately know that even the biggest opening will not be big enough for me. This adds to my feelings of self-hatred and overall miserableness, and I continue to feel sorrier and sorrier for myself, and angrier by the moment. Eventually I realize that if I reach under the fabric covering the doors, 

I can still open the full doors themselves, thus bypassing the little circle openings.

I choose the middle bedroom. I drop my gear and begin wandering. The room is decadent, and goes on and on, a maze of room after room. There is this kitchen with live seafood and all sorts of fancy stuff. Bunches of fresh grapes and lovely cheese. I continue wandering, and apparently strip naked as I do so. As I finally reach the end of the maze of rooms, I hear that one of the other couples has come into the 

apartment. I grab a towel but it is nowhere near large enough to adequately cover me.

It’s S’s sister and her husband, and their daughter. Rather than feel the reverence for the daughter I’d earlier felt, I am overwhelmed with resentment and anger and … not hatred exactly, but just… anger and self-hatred. I storm at them, trying to stake out my territory. They are entirely unsympathetic, which makes me angrier and sadder.

The next thing I remember, I am shopping for clothes (something I hate in reality). I remember this shopping trip in eerie detail but am not going to bother with all of those – writing about shopping bores me even more than shopping itself.

Dream: Riding in the Outback, Deciphering Happy Meal Toys

Scene: I’m in the cab of a truck in the Australian outback. I am sitting on the left side, Indy is on the right side, and some “old dude” is in the middle driving, where the steering wheel is. I kept wondering why the steering wheel was in the middle, and feeling a bit uncomfortable; there is my best friend, sitting a few feet away finally, and there’s some old dude between us! Occasionally Indy gives some directions to the driver. I feel too large, like I’m taking up too much room. If I close my eyes, I can picture the grittiness and dry heat of the day; my tanned thighs warm on the cracked green leather, short cutoff jean shorts fraying right where my legs are the softest. Trying to shift so that my bare legs are not pressing so much against the driver, and failing.

A little while later, I am in the back seat of another pickup. I think Indy and the old guy are up front. I am squeezed between the right edge of the cab and a young guy. We all have Happy Meals from McDonald’s. I am ravenous and only interested in consuming my french fries, but the guys are all absorbed in trying to solve the mystery contained in the happy meal toy. While all of this is going on, I alternate between eating my fries, inserting suggestions into the conversation, and then mightily farting. Yeah. Apparently I can’t help it. It’s a dream! Every time I fart, I look nervously at the young guy sitting so close to me, embarrassed and ready to pretend someone else did it, but he never pays any attention. On the happy meal toys, there’s some sort of code or riddle; once again, if I close my eyes I can see it almost perfectly. One sheet of paper has symbols on it – then there is the key which deciphers the code – each symbol represents a letter. They decipher enough that they know that RCA is one of the clues. I am excited and want to tell them that there’s a famous “RCA dog” (is this true? Will google to find out), but right about this time, something is pulling me away from the dream, pulling me out of it. I resist, wanting to continue eating my french fries and wanting to know what the code is all about, but then I am waking.

Ah - Google tells me this is Nipper the RCA dog, which I don't recall ever having seen before.

26 January

Feeling confused, helpless, lost. Repeating patterns all the time. Want to go somewhere and be all alone with no one making demands of me. Want to disappear, escape. Afraid of these feelings and what they might mean. Last night after therapy I imagined myself leaving Seth and stopping with therapy with Tracy. Just want everyone to leave me alone. Want to just curl up and watch tv and read books and have a simple life alone.

Afraid of everything falling apart. Still having nightmares about the museum. Dr. Braden still hasn’t called me back. Too many balls in the air – need to call Dr. Shepherd and see about switching off the Zoloft.

Dream: Justin Bieber is my dentist & pedicurist...?

This is a dream from a few nights ago - somewhere around 11 January 2012.

In reality, I have almost no awareness of Justin Bieber. I mean, I'm aware that he exists and is strangely popular, but I have never listened to his music and know almost nothing else about him. When I encounter references to him in pop culture, I try to just filter them out.

...which makes it all the more strange that he featured so prominently in this dream.

The dream begins with me in the very posh waiting room of a dentist. (Apparently I have been grinding my teeth at night, which is highly unusual for me, and clenching my jaws, so it's not terribly surprising that I should have a dream about going to the dentist.)

I can almost picture the waiting room now. It is all very rich & luxurious. I am nervous (as always, when at the dentist) and trying to read, when the dentist walks out to greet me. He looks like a grown-up and more masculine Justin Bieber. I openly express astonishment - "You're Justin Bieber!" - and he sort of blushes, scuffs his toe, and says that most people aren't aware that he's secretly a dentist even though he's only 19. (In reality, he's not nearly that old, is he?)

He kneels down and begins inspecting my toes. (Yeah, I know.) This part of the dream is more hazy, but I think he does something to each of my toes, which makes me rather uncomfortable.

Next I am being led into a large room with two rows of water massage chairs... sort of like the chairs that some salons have for pedicures, but there is also actual deep water sort of surrounding the chairs, and it's like a giant wave pool. I am told to take a seat, but am intensely uncomfortable at the thought of passing so closely to the other people in the chairs. From here the dream becomes more hazy and fragmented. I think there is a struggle - both physical and emotional - and I also see fragments of myself in an exam chair with Justin Bieber prying open my mouth. Not so pleasant...!