Dealing in the Desert with a Disappearance in the Snow

Last night's dream

My husband had gone on a walk in a mountainous park. It was snowy there. He didn't come back and I and my family and rescue people went out to look for him, but didn't find him. It was a forested area high in the hills, which looked kind of like where I used to live. It snowed again that night and he did not come back. I came to the realization over the next days that people did not think he was coming back, and he might be dead.

My mother, who had been staying there with me, took me back home, and we were going up to my grandma's house to visit when we saw a sign board with a brown poster on it, and my sister started crying and was very upset. At first I thought it was bad news about my husband, but it was actually a notice about a wake for an old friend of hers who had died a few months ago (in the waking world as well). I was surprised to see her so upset, because she'd already known of his death at the time it happened and had seemed sad then but not so upset. Something had happened to her boyfriend around this time as well, he was sick I think in a life-threatening way. It seemed odd that all three of them were in peril around the same time. It was when she got upset over the sign that I realized that everybody else already thought my husband was probably dead by now, since he hadn't been found.

I was sad, and worried, but not inconsolable or as upset as my sister had been about the sign, because it didn't seem real to accept the fact that he was actually dead, so I kept waiting and hoping. I drove back near the mountain area, wanting to stay nearby and not to return home until he was found, also leaving my work indefinitely to wait and find out.

I started walking alone and found myself in a deserty area, very dry and dusty, with some sage brush and desert plants. I ran into a guy about my age, taller and bigger than me, but very friendly, and I followed him back to a small town, where he lived. He was native american, and it was a native american town, but it was in a somewhat old-fashioned architecture style. The buildings were of the type covered with baked clay, with rounded edges, like in the southwest, but modern and comfortable inside. They were sandy colored on the outside and matched the desert around. I felt a little out of place walking through the town, but he and his family who lived there invited me in and I stayed and talked with them. They knew already who I was, it seemed, and that my husband was lost in the snowy mountain area (it had a name, but I don't remember which mountain it was). They were very nice and sympathetic to me. I stayed for a while, and watched TV with them, there were some issues with reception and we kept getting strange channels.

The guy I met offered for me to spend the night there, as I wanted to stay in the area and I had nowhere to go. He was very nice to me and as I got to know him, I realized that he liked me and was interested in me. I told him that I was very grateful of the offer (I was, and I kind of wanted to stay there), but I reminded him that I was married (I don't know if I said married, or engaged to be married). He said that he knew that (in other words, was not trying to get anywhere with me right now), and he looked sympathetic and it occurred to me that none of them thought my husband was coming back, they were just waiting for me to come to that conclusion as well, and provide comfort for me when I did. He wanted me to know that he wanted to be there for me when I understood that, but he wasn't going to pressure me, although he didn't say this, just showed it by his actions.

I realized that if my husband was really not coming back, I would keep hoping for a long time, and how long would it take before I accepted it? I never accept things, just keep hoping whenever something bad happened or I lost someone. This brought to mind the guy I had loved years before I met my husband, who hadn't been interested in me the same way. I had kept hoping he would change his mind, but it hadn't changed, and eventually I'd forced myself to move on. Looking back I knew it wouldn't have worked out but it had taken a long time to realize that. The nice guy who was helping me reminded me of him in some ways, but more gentle and nice to me.

I tried to think about how it would be and what I would do if it turned out I was a widow, but I couldn't get it to sink in. I spent a lot of time wandering around the area and thinking about it, and wondering if my husband would be found, as the nice guy who'd offered me a place to stay while waiting showed me around the town and the garden and such, and tried to make me comfortable.

The overall feelings of the dream were of sadness, thoughtfulness, the unreal feeling caused by shock, and also a sort of comfort, as if everything was going to keep going and be okay. When I awoke I still felt this and then I also felt guilty about it and about not being more distraught.

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.