A leap not of faith - deeply affecting me

10/30/2007 - Last night's dream

Someone tells me that a former coworker of mine, who I thought had quit or gotten fired, had actually committed suicide. At first I think it is "Eric," a former coworker at my current workplace (who looks like an actual former coworker at my current workplace, who I didn't know very well), but it turns out to be someone called Billy Graham, Jr., at my previous job. (I didn't recognize him as an actual coworker from there in the waking world. Also he is apparently no relation to the famous Billy Graham, despite the name).

Apparently, over a year ago when everyone thought he was fired or let go, he actually had jumped off one of the 400-towers at my previous workplace, to his death. I am completely shocked to learn this. I'm also shocked that nobody told me this at the time and I didn't know, since it happened while I was there. In my recollection, he was a tall, somewhat gangly fellow, probably in his 20's, with light brown hair. He also taught classes on doing things in the outdoors (perhaps survival classes) at local colleges. I knew of him at work but didn't work with him directly, but now am quite caved in by the news.

A bit later, same dream, I am at a house, which I think is mine. It's not like any house I've actually lived in, and I don't think it's supposed to be. In the dream it is located near where I actually live now, although the terrain is more like SW W-. It is an old house, painted gray. A few people including my sister are with me, and we are hanging up wet clothes to dry in the house. It seems like we were out walking and got caught in a rainstorm and soaked. It's still drizzly out now and throughout the dream. There are so many wet clothes, I am afraid that they are going to steam up the inside of the house and not dry. As I am carrying clothes inside from the van which is parked out front, I realize that you can see through the large front window all the way through the house and out the back window, because I can see my sister in the backyard bringing clothes in. The windows each have a plain, white or light colored curtain completely covering them, which I thought prevented people outside from seeing in very clearly. Now I realize that they can see my quite easily when I am inside, which I don't like.

A short time later, I am riding in my mother's van with my mother and my cousin. My mother is driving, and my cousin sits in the back with me. They have come together to visit me, meeting at that house earlier in the dream, and we are now driving somewhere nearby, a wooded area. I talk to my cousin, mostly to have something to talk about as we haven't always gotten along in the past. She mentions that they had some trouble finding my house, and I agree that it's hard to find. If you don't turn at the correct spot, which is easy to miss, you have to keep going because you run into a bunch of one-way streets, and eventually 3 or 4 streets later you have to turn right and you end up at a small graveyard, where you can turn around.

Casting around for another topic, I ask her who used to teach the outdoors classes that she took a while back. I know already that it was Billy Graham, Jr., and it's not so much that I care to inform my cousin about what happened, as that I desperately need to tell SOMEone the news. She says it was Billy Graham, Jr., and mentions a few details about the classes. I am bursting to reveal the news, not in an excited way, but in the way it is when you have learned something bad or creepy and you have to tell someone so you aren't the only bearer of this information. I let some pauses go by and then say, Guess what? and tell her about the suicide. She is shocked along with me. It's just unimaginable thinking of how he killed himself jumping off the tower, and I was even THERE, and thought he had just quit or been fired, and everyone went along with it without much question when he wasn't there, and NOBODY TOLD me. It was like they were trying to keep it quiet, to keep the bad feeling away.

My mother then mentions offhand that my husband and I have such a wonderful marriage, the best one that she knows of among all the people she knows even herself. She is so happy for us. I feel extremely guilty knowing that it's not so great as it appears, but I can't tell her and don't even want to tell her and make her feel sad.

We stop the car and are preparing to go hiking in the woods, and we will visit someone on the other end. We take backpacks and my mother asks me to bring some dried fruit from the car, to give to the person that we will meet at the end of the hike. It's a man, but not someone I know. I get the dried fruit from the car, it is prunes and dried apricots in a coffee can. I take some new, freshly dried ones and place them on top to fill up the can. The new ones are enormous, one dried half being almost as large as the diameter of the coffee can. I think about how new fruit just keeps being added to the top, and likely when the guy we are giving this to digs down to the bottom, there are going to be some old moldy pieces of dry fruit, which will disgust him. However, I don't dig down to get them out, just add the pieces on top and bring it up to my mother to put in her pack.

I wake up with "The only boy who could ever reach me, was the son of a preacher man" stuck in my head, despite the apparent lack of connection to Billy Graham, and find myself wondering what the suicidal guy is supposed to teach me... that the answer is jumping off a tall building? It seems like there are too many metaphors here for me to possibly sort through. The whole dream was laced with tenseness, guilt, hidden things being revealed, and a sad feeling. The dead guy in my dream doesn't seem to be a real person in the waking world, but I did learn about 2 months ago that someone I used to know recently committed suicide, and it had a big effect on me. His ghost showed up in another dream, shortly thereafter, which I didn't log here due to other disturbing content.

Late for Group Pic, Meeting My Mother-In-Law

10/29/2007 - Last night's dream

For the last couple of days, I've been dreaming, but I lose the dream almost immediately upon awakening. The last one, I remember a few minor bits and pieces, but that is all.

I arrive at work not late, but too late for a group-picture that was taken this morning. The people who were in it are just drifting away back to their places; only a few remain. I realize that I have an alarm set on my cell phone, which has only just come up, that I was supposed to arrive early today for the group picture. I am secretly relieved since I didn't want to be in it anyway. The date on my cell phone indicates that today is Oct 30th. I think that I didn't arrive earlier because I was going around flooded roads, it is stormy and rainy (this part is vague and happened earlier)-- that and not getting the reminder on the phone and forgetting about the group picture.

Later in the dream, I meet my mother-in-law for the first time. She is happy and friendly to me, and I think she even pats me on the head. She is somewhat shorter than me, round, wearing a long dress which is many-colored, including pink and green (but casual). She has medium-long brown hair. She expresses happiness in meeting me, then a few minutes later, she pulls me down conspiratorially and stage-whispers that both of us (her and me) will have to be careful to make sure we don't eat cookies and candy, especially back home (her home country, which I'm not sure if I'm actually in in the dream or not) to keep the weight off. I find this to be a somewhat negative comment indicating that she thinks, and is planning to enforce, that I need to lose weight. I especially feel that it's negative because she is considerably fatter than me. I'm not sure how to react so I don't really react to it at all. She acts very friendly despite the comment, and is all smiles.

In real life, I haven't met her yet :S. Nerves? I actually did arrive late to work, later than in the dream, but there's no group picture, nor is there tomorrow (on the actual 30th).

7-Layer Soup, and Unclassy Phone Calls

10/26/2007 - Last night's dream (really early this morning and later this morning)

In the first dream, I was with my Aunt K-. She asked me to try some soup she had made, evaluating it for something. It was called Seven-Layer Soup, and it actually had layers of liquid, that you could see were distinct from each other. There were vegetables and beans and such in it as well. I tried it, taking a spoonful from each layer. You could dip your spoon down to a certain layer and lift it up through the other layers, and it kept whatever layer you had dipped to. The soup was good, although not exceptional. The most impressive feature was the layering. There was more to the dream, but this is the only fragment I can remember.

In the second dream, much later in the night, I was talking to my husband. As it turned out, he had been cutting class a LOT. He would call his teacher in the morning at the time class was starting (they had a phone in the classroom). If the teacher didn't answer, he considered this a valid excuse not to come to class, because he'd called and they hadn't been there. If they did answer, he would say he was calling in sick or something (not that they ever answered). I was rather upset and frustrated and tried to explain to him that this was not a valid reason not to go to class, nor should he expect his teachers to answer their phones. My teachers almost never answered the phone when class had started, I said. He should just go to class and stop calling in, and furthermore if he did reach the teacher, it would be too late for him to get to the class anyway (of course, this was the point of the whole exercise, to skip class).

I woke up when his alarm went off and was temporarily soothed by this, signaling that it has all been a dream and he really wouldn't do anything so ridiculous because here was his alarm getting him up for class. But then it became evident that he wasn't going to class after all, making me illogically REALLY upset due to the combination with the dream (and extreme lack of sleep).

Escape As Angry Teenager and How to Respond to a Violent Death

Sunday, 10/21/2007 - Last night's dream

In the first part, I am at the beaver dam with my cousins and possibly siblings, at a younger age. We are escaping or hiding from some people, possibly our parents, but we are hiding separately from each other. I spend a lot of time crawling through several-foot-tall grass, sneaking away quietly from those approaching on the road. At one point, someone passing by sees me, but as it turns out does not capture me but points out that my hiding place is visible and I should move. I drop to ground level and belly crawl through the grass to a safer vantage point. I crawl out onto a bank from where I have a view of the road but can duck down into the grass again. My younger cousin is being taken past on the road by an adult. I wave at her somewhat smugly indicating that I have not yet been captured, the adult does not see me. She looks unhappy but doesn't give me away.

In the second, much longer part, I am at my parent's house. I am still living at home, and am much younger, a young teenager, and at permanent odds with my parents. I have just arrived to take my evening shower and am next in line. My father is complaining about how I have not been studying SAT paperwork for a big test (I don't think it's the SAT but something else which I'm using those materials to study for). I am mad and don't want to study it. When my younger brother arrives, my father tells him to shower next while I do some studying. I am extremely upset by the unfairness of it all, and decide to leave home in a fit of teenage angst. I stomp off afterwards.

I pack some possessions and take off on foot, setting up camp for the night in the woods by my grandparent's driveway, not far away. I am quite furious with my parents and am fed up with living at home. There is some interim part earlier where I am captured in a woodshed or barn with my cousins and/or siblings, and we escape. At any rate, my cousins and siblings come along and find my camp, and since they are also running away (from the captors, not from their parents), decide to stay with me. They have other supplies, so I grudgingly allow it and we set up a tent. It is going to be extremely close quarters, and I consider moving into a tree instead. My younger cousin cautions that this would not be a good idea, because I am pregnant and if I fall I could injure the baby. This is true, I consider. Apparently I have been pregnant all through the dream (showing quite a bit), this isn't new news.

Then, some friends and relatives of my cousins come down the driveway to our hiding place with my aunt N-, who says they have freshly escaped as well and are going to stay with us. This is the last straw! I do not want to share my hiding place with all these people, but the others want to allow them to stay with us. I announce angrily I am going off to make my own camp. I pack up my few belongings and stalk off. Dusk is falling. I hear coyotes howling and reconsider the tree idea. I pause on a hillside and see a wolf or coyote walking nearby. Someone, possibly my lover/future husband, is with me now and we change to look like mountain lions (or appear so to the coyote), it sees us lying together and passes by without approaching us.

Then I am alone again. I have more possessions than I need to set up sleeping quarters, so I decide to put them in my car, which is parked on the side of the road. I consider taking the car and parking it at the edge of the field and spending the night there, but I can't think of anywhere to park it that my father won't see it in the morning, and I want to be more hidden than that since I have told them I am going to leave home and live on my own. I put some items into a box in the car. While I'm doing so, my mother walks up.

She seems sad and asks me what my plans are. I am grouchy and say I am about to leave. She suggests a place several valleys over that supposedly has some jobs available right now. I am somewhat surprised, and a bit disappointed, since I was sort of thinking she would try to convince me to come home, but I don't want to show this. I grumpily say, "Well, maybe I'll go there then." My mother sits down in the car with me first to talk to me, and shows me a necklace that she got. It is made of many brightly colored strands of string, like a very vibrant hammock, and is very long. It looks like it is a stylized version of long elaborate hair. Halfway down there is a multicolored plastic ball which pulls the strands together, and at the end they all come together in a larger ball, which is like a comet with the strings as its tail. I comment on this similarity, and my mother says that she thought it would make up for her thinning hair as she gets older, and tells me about a shop in an open air market where she bought it recently.

As we are talking there, we see a guy who has just arrived in a small dark blue car. He is maybe 30 with dark hair, and is very agitated. His friend is lying injured by the side of the road just a little distance from my car; the friend has just been hit by a car (another car, apparently). He is freaking out asking us what he should do in terms of first aid. My aunt K- has walked up as well in response to his cries. We gather around. It is immediately evident that there is no hope for his friend. The injured person's head is sliced cleanly in two like a cantaloupe, and bleeding. The live guy is panicking and freaking out. He asks if he anyone knows how to apply a tourniquet. He reasons that cut off limbs can be amputated and people survive, right? My aunt makes gentle, reasoned responses to each of his queries, indicating that she doesn't think it will help in this case, breaking it to him gently that his friend cannot recover. Every time he says something, I want to blurt out the obvious--The guy's head is cut in two! That cannot be fixed or transplanted--but I hold myself back and marvel that she is able to respond without stating the obvious. I can see that stating the obvious would make the already upset guy much more upset, but I myself cannot formulate a response that doesn't include this pretty bluntly. He also asks about calling an ambulance. He says he tried to call M-, but he couldn't get through. "M- who?" says my aunt. I am surprised again (M- is the name of my grandfather, her father, deceased a few years, who would have been living across the street if he was alive. But she doesn't give any indication of this to the distressed person). He says M- was an old friend of his who lived nearby (probably the same person, but again my aunt doesn't say anything about this and I stop myself as well).

I find myself wondering at the back-and-forth play in this conversation, obviously she (and my mother, who is also responding in the same fashion) want to help and calm the guy, and their responses are working, but I can't figure them out or what I would say to get that effect. I can only tell that my blunt statements that come to mind should definitely not be spoken, and I am able to restrain myself from saying anything since they are doing a much better job.

Kidnappings, and Friendly Foreign Female Strangers

Friday, Oct 19 - morning's and last night's dreams

I am at my parent's house, and we are preparing to go to a play in O-. My husband is also going. At the last minute I don't feel well and tell them that I may not go after all. They leave early and tell me to come along if I change my mind.

I do change my mind and go in by myself, but before I get into where the audience is sitting, I am kidnapped. I am taken backstage where there are several other kidnapped people, mostly children (and I seem to be younger) who are being forced to participate in the production.

The play is like an Anime cartoon, and I play my role and am tied up afterwards. None of us are recognizable to the people watching because we are in costume, and the audience doesn't realize what is really going on backstage.

As the play ends, I manage get myself and some others free and we escape in the pandemonium. I make my way out to the audience chamber. I can see my husband sitting in the audience, apart from my parents. He thinks that I came in late and wasn't able to find a seat near him. Next to him, an Indian woman in her 30's is sitting. She is apparently a friend of my mother's. She is talking to my husband as they get up to leave. I observe the interaction but she doesn't seem to be flirting with him, and I don't feel jealous of her. I step over the seats to cut down to his row, they have flat desks like student's chairs. He turns and sees me, and we are both happy and smiling. I reach out my hand and he takes it, helping me down from the desk, and places it around his shoulders or neck. The Indian woman thinks we are adorable. We make our way out, happy, explaining to each other how we got separated.

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In the second dream, I have been kidnapped again (or maybe it is the same time) and escaped. As it turns out, I helped another woman escape too. She is a political activist who has been accused of communism and other things, and has been locked up for years by some kind of strict regime. She is tall and slim, tan, with graying long dark hair, and is probably in her forties, and very smiley and pleasant, but definitely with an air of someone who does and plans to do daring things. She is extremely grateful that I have orchestrated her escape (she is well known, apparently, but I did not know who she was at the time, just a prisoner like myself who of course I would help escape along with me). She wants to reward me by taking me on a vacation to some place by the ocean, in Mexico, or Spain I think (she speaks Spanish natively, but I am not sure which country she is from originally, she might be South American). I recall that I know some Spanish, but it has faded over the years. Still, I am excited to go, but hesitant. I don't know her at all, and I also am not sure of the financial arrangement. Is she offering to pay for the trip, or just hoping I can go visit her there? I try to figure this out, and she speaks of the trip happening in May. For some reason, I think this will conflict with plans that my husband has, but I tell her I will talk to him about it. I know my parents will be worried at my involvement, and I'm not sure my husband will want me to go, but I'm a bit thrilled at the idea.

A Surprise Visit from an Old Friend!

10/16/2007 - Last night's dream.

I haven't been remembering my dreams enough to even put a cohesive sentence together about them for several weeks, just snips and bits here and there.
Last night, however, I remembered a little more.

My old college roommate and friend, H-, showed up unannounced or on very short notice to visit and see me. She was in the dream still pregnant, I think (last time I talked to her in the waking world she was, although she would have given birth by now). Or maybe I was instead. She was going to stay with me for several days or weeks. She mentioned the traffic driving down here from S-, and we also talked about what route I would take later on to drive into work to avoid traffic problems. I talked to someone on a cell phone several times during this, possibly my husband, checking in about what was going on. The weather was gray and rainy, just like in the waking world at this time. She was very energetic, bouncy, and very casual/friendly with me, despite the fact that it has been years since we have seen each other. It was unclear to me how long she was planning to stay, and I was trying to make arrangements for this without making it too obvious, although I was very happy to see her and glad she had come. I think she was wearing a black and red outfit.


In the waking world, after a sudden initial contact several months ago and over the last couple of months, following a silence of many years, she has stopped responding and I'm no longer able to get in touch with her. This was something that always bothered me greatly in the time between losing touch with her after college and the sudden happy contact at the end of last year and a few times since then, and has again been bothering me that she has dropped out of sight once more.