Bad Situation Gets Worse

Another dream from last night, which I just remembered

I am talking to my friend H- about the issues leading to the breakup of my marriage, much as in real life the night before, except we discover through talking to each other that he had been having an affair with her! She didn't know it was him having never actually met him (the fact that she is also married and cheating in this scenario didn't seem to present a problem in the dream). But in talking to each other about what he had done to me we eventually put two and two together. We are both outraged. I am not upset at her, just mad at him because as it turns out he was cheating too, and she is also outraged at him for having done this to me (and discovering what kind of person he is). There are lots of further details in the dream, I don't remember most of them.. it involves trapping him in his lies to us and confronting him when he goes to a place like the F- house expecting to meet her as usual. He is unpleasant and angry in the dream, but we are united in our anger and outrage against him. Lots of emotional upset, unpleasantness, and enhanced feeling of betrayal. It took a moment upon awakening to separate it back from reality (which was bad enough).

A Former Coworker Gets Creepy

3/10/2008
Sunday night/Monday morning's dream:

The only part of this I remember, I was in an office of some kind. It looked kind of like the FH. A guy who looked like a younger version of R-, someone who used to work at a company where I used to work years ago (but I never had much contact with -- he was known for getting angry about things and worked in a different dept), came out of the back room. In the dream we both worked at the place we were in, and knew each other slightly. It was after hours and we were the only people still there. We started talking. I found myself thinking he looked rather handsome. Then he kissed me. Suddenly he didn't look so handsome anymore, he looked like he was aging 20 or 30 years, looking old and haggard. He was interested in me but I was trying to think of a way to discourage this and escape.

He made some comment about how he didn't think I should pay so much attention to "that guy I talk to online," sounding jealous. I protested, realizing he was talking about my husband. I said he was going to come home back soon, in fact then I remembered, he is already back, and I told R- so. I was feeling bad about what had happened. He made more negative comments about my husband and how he didn't deserve me, etc, which made me even more turned off of him, and I was defending my husband. R- thought I should be with him instead, but I was now rather grossed out by him and wanted to leave. I didn't know how I had thought he was handsome earlier. He took off his clothes to show me these strange scars on his body, they were like yellowish brown splash marks all over his skin, and he was also horribly mutilated (looking like things had been "cut off" and healed in a nasty, ragged, way). It appeared he'd been through some kind of torture and been splashed with acid or something. I was truly repulsed, both by his appearance and his manner, although I tried to be sympathetic about the unnamed past ordeal, and I wondered how he could possibly think I would be interested in him over my husband, or for that matter, anybody else in the world.

Nobody grocery shops but me!

Saturday, 3/8/2008

1st dream (1 of 3)

I was living at home again, or actually at my mother's office, and I had decided that my job was to do all the grocery shopping. I had a special list. I went out and did this, and came back (it took a long time), but when I got home I saw that my sister and brother had also returned with some groceries. I was mad and told them that the grocery shopping was my job, and I had it all worked out to buy exactly what was needed, and if they wanted additional items they should add them to a supplementary list on the refrigerator. My mother came home and was happy that everybody had gone to the store, and couldn't figure out why I was annoyed. I don't remember a lot of details but this dream was pretty long and involved. I think there was a part with movies and pizza (sleeping at my mother's office) after that.

A Return To Inexplicable Teenage Angst

Sunday Night/Monday Morning (2/18/2008)

I am living at home again. My bedroom is just as it used to be, except there is a huge flatscreen TV under the window, which might double as a computer. There's something I'm not supposed to be watching on it and my father has gotten really mad at me about it. I am now in there by myself, and have smuggled in some movies that I absolutely have to finish (unclear why, I think it's not the specific movies that are bad but the fact that I'm watching anything). I quickly switch the screen when he bursts in at one point mad about something, he doesn't realize I'm watching them. I finish them up somehow.

My friend H- has come to visit. We both seem younger. She spills a bunch of small objects on the floor and I help her clean them up. She tells me something surprising about her that I never knew, but now I don't remember what it was.

In the morning, my mother prepares to leave for work. I ask if I have to come along. It seems that I still have this job, but perhaps not for long. I was under the impression that I was going to have to work for her at least part time, being back at home. She says no, I don't have to, unless I want to, and then she didn't know if she could find something for me to do. I stay home. I am at odds with both parents about something, and I'm in a bad mood and sulky about it. I grumpily decide that I will walk to my job, although I have a car. It's a very long walk but apparently I've done it before when I have to. I know my father will be mad at me for walking instead of driving. It's drizzly too, and the hardship and long walk makes me feel physically pained to match my mental anguish, which is somehow comforting.

Surprisingly, the dream doesn't leave me with a bad mood at all, although I'm fighting and angsty towards my parents in much of it. The part with my friend was longer, and was good, but I don't remember most of it.

A Photographic Tragedy in Five Parts

Friday night/Saturday morning 2/16/2008

I'm tempted to record these separately because they were in distinct parts or chapters, but at the same time I didn't get the sense that they were different dreams, just a continuation. Some of the same threads continued throughout.

Part 1.

I am somewhat younger, a little kid but not too little. I am going up the old logging road, several others are as well including members of my family. It's some kind of race, plus people are after. If I get to the end in time, I can elude them. There is a large mechanical device at the beginning where the gate would be, like some kind of huge tractor or earth moving equipment. I think it might prevent people from getting through or catch them. I get passed it and run quickly to the end. At the end of the logging road there is an abrupt hill, very steep, down to the house. Some people are going down before me, I can see them at the bottom. I have to be quick. There is a walled garden covered with roses at the bottom. If I can get down there, it will be too late for my would-be captors to catch me. I scramble down the hill and into that garden courtyard. I am safe. I go out through the metal gate where the other people are. I think my grandma (my mother's mother, now deceased) is there, among many others.

Part 2.

It's the present day and age again. I am on a trip and I stop to stay at my Aunt K-'s house. That night there is a lunar eclipse (in the waking world, there will be one in a few days). The moon rises in eclipse, huge and orange on the horizon, many times larger than normal. There are dark markings on the moon, like lines in a ring around the middle, reminiscent of the pattern in an eye. I quickly retrieve my camera. I set it on "bar" which is like panorama but not as wide, and take many pictures. The dark pattern on the moon changes two or three times as it continues to rise, and I take more pictures.

Part 3.

We continue on (the same?) trip, out into the desert. We meet up with our guide, it is my husband (but he's not my husband yet in the dream), but he is bigger than my husband is in real life. After driving for some long distance, we come to our destination, which is a cluster of huge rocky mountains in the middle of the desert. An old guy we run into at the entrance takes my my right arm and looks at it. He says that I will soon lose it or hurt it (I don't remember what he says exactly, but it's in that wise mysterious prophet of doom kind of way).

We continue into the mountains. They aren't really big enough to be mountains, it's more like just a big rocky area with very tall rocks. We wind in between them, driving. Our guide warns us about the little blue and yellow snakes that live here. If they bite you, you will die immediately, they're very deadly. He stops the car and the others in my family get out with the guide and walk up a rocky slope to go look at something.

I see something else. There are several enormous black shiny snakes, bigger around than my arm, wrapped up in a pile on a rock shelf, very close by. They are rare to see, and I have to get a picture. They are so black they are blue, and they regard me impassively, unafraid, but also not moving from their ledge. I will go get a picture while the others are off looking at whatever they went after. When I walk towards the black snakes, I realize that there are tiny blue and yellow snakes all over the ground in between where I was and the ledge. They are only a few inches long and are spaced only a few inches apart on the ground, and are almost cartoonish in their garish appearance and eyes. They move in an upright manner.

I step between them to get close enough to get a good picture, and snap several pictures of the black snakes. But then the yellow and blue ones start biting me. I am bit three times on my left leg, on the top of the foot, somewhere else on the foot, and up my calf on the outside, right below the knee. They cling after biting. It hurts a lot and I yell and run up to the high ground again, knocking them off. Our guide returns and looks them over, then announces we have to get to the nearest doctor as soon as possible. I realize that he must have exaggerated how poisonous the snakes really were, since I'm not dropping dead, but am still somewhat worried. He asks me what limb the old man had warned about, but I tell him it was the right arm and not the left leg.

We all pile back into the vehicle and he drives out through the rocks along the road. We pass a small "clearing" in the rocks off to the right, and I look out the window and see a large grizzly bear, defecating in the clearing. For some reason this is very amusing to me, and I consider making a joke to the others about bears doing it somewhere other than "in the woods", but I realize after some consideration that nobody else is going to find this at all amusing (also nobody else saw the bear). A little bit farther one we pass a goat amongst the rocks and maybe some others as well, but this part fades away.

Part 4.

I am still on a trip with my family, but there are more people now, it's a huge extended family of grandparents, aunts, relatives, possibly even my husband. We have stopped to sightsee at some sort of significant place, and so we walk across a big valley of rocks, dotted with huge mounds like a mima mounds with no grass, made out of boulders much higher than people. When we get up to the high ground, I arrange everybody for a group portrait. Out comes the camera again. But I'm having trouble getting to actually take a picture on the "bar" setting. I keep changing the settings. It turns out I am using a laptop, not a camera, but this is okay, because it's the laptop that goes with the camera and that I will transfer the pictures to eventually, and it can also take pictures. The group is restless, and they only hold their pose or position for a few seconds, then they move and talk to each other, assuming I've taken it. I'm getting very frustrated with them and my inability to get it to take the right picture. Then I realize it's not my laptop, it's a red one. I switch out for my proper one. I'm still not able to take it. The group complains and still I haven't gotten any decent pictures. I finally locate my actual camera and possible manage to snap some, although they probably aren't any good becuase I couldn't get the settings to stick and people kept moving. But the group won't stay together any longer.

Looking down the valley of the mounds that we've just cross, I can see their pattern which I wasn't aware of when I was walking through them. I also see a plume of smoke from one and then fire. I realize all of a sudden that they are volcanoes (very tiny ones :P) and one of them is erupting. I exclaim upon this to everyone and they are all excited, and we quickly run down the hill to get a closer look, standing right at the base (this doesn't seem like what you do after realizing there is an erupting volcano nearby, if you are very smart, but it all turned out fine).

Part 5.

We are back at my parents' house. I am cooking a big vat of soup on the stove, possible corn chowder. There is a guy there, I think named Zach. He is tall and somewhat gangly, we're both teenagers or close to it I think. This is our first get together at my parents house, I guess he is interested in me and I've invited him over, but we don't know each other that well (or that is, I don't know him too well, as I will discover). I have constructed an elaborate dinner, including the soup, but I run out of some ingredient. Otherwise practically everything else is ready to eat. I'm under some stress from preparing the meal. He is hanging around the kitchen not doing much. He kisses me, and it feels like he has slime in his mouth. I am disgusted and tell him as much, scooping a wad of slime out of my mouth with my hand and showing it to him. He suggests that we serve the soup using some kind of excavator scoop (like from miniature construction equipment). At first I am not paying attention and what he says doesn't' really register. But when he says it again, I suddenly realize that I actually DID this, with another guy, who I dumped becuase he turned out to be a criminal or something, at any rate he and I didn't last long. I ask Zach, "what did you just suggest? Because I've done that before with somebody else..." I am very suspicious and he sees this and realizes that he has made a mistake. He excuses himself to go get some corn from the garden for the soup. Turning it over in my head, I realize that it's the same guy and he's reinvented himself in a new persona to get back together with me. CREEPY. As it turns out, he does know me better than he pretends.

I go out to take something to the yard. The yard is totally different than in real life. It's a sunny grassy knoll with apple trees and such, and a barn and rolling hills in the distance. It's a beautiful summer day. When I get back in, I realize that my family has started dishing up their food because they are tired of waiting, even though I'm just about done. They have loaded up plates, some with one item of food, some with two others, etc. None are laid out like I was planning, or with all the courses I created, they've just taken stuff buffet style. I pretty much melt down, after all the work I've put into preparing this dinner I am furious that they aren't going to let me set it out my way. Everybody else complains they just want to eat. I'm beside mad. Zach returns and realizes I've figured out who he is, and I'm mad about that too and want nothing to do with him. I sulk lividly in the side of the yard while everyone else picnics on the grass with the meal I've prepared, out of order and not as I wanted to serve it.

All Shook Up

A couple days ago- Monday night's dream

I haven't remembered my dreams since then because I didn't write this down, due to some parts I didn't particularly want to remember. But I remember them anyway, so here goes.

In the first part, I am living in an apartment at the coast. It's similar to mine now except for the location, but has my same things in it. It's several stories up, and looking out the window you can see the beach and water immediately below, and look down the tide line in at least one direction. I have two cats, one of them is A-, my orange cat, and the other is black but is not Q-, it looks more like a young C-, a cat I used to have years ago, who died.

At the dream's opening, my sister is visiting me. It has snowed, and when we look out the window at the beach far below, we can see smatterings of snow down there on the sand as well. I don't remember what specifically happens during the visit, we may go down to the beach or something, or just talk.

Later, I am alone. My cat C- is racing around the house in a frantic fashion, as cats sometimes do, I try to get him to calm down. Then the apartment is suddenly hit by an earthquake or huge storm wind or something, at any rate it sways wildly back and forth. Things fall off the walls. The cats panic. The door rattles so violently that the deadbolt lock begins to rotate. I am scared and trying to keep my feet, but I fight my way across the moving apartment to reach the door; it is going to burst open any minute as the lock untwists. In retrospect, I don't know why it's was important to keep the door locked at this time (what was out there?), but it was. I reach it just in time as the door starts to open and slam it shut and lock it again. The movement finally stops shortly afterwards, with no apparent serious damage done although things are in disarray.
The next part is later in the same dream, I am visiting my parents. I am walking with my father in the back yard, talking. Parts of the house are rearranged somewhat so that the bedroom windows aren't facing the same way they do in real life. I see my mother through the window on the bed, with an unknown guy. I walk up and bang on the glass, demanding to know what he is doing there. She tries to calm me down, my father sees what is going on but doesn't say much. My parents are both sad and decide to separate. I am very wrought up and miserable. My father seems sad but quiet, he doesn't seem as angry as I expect, just disappointed and resigned. I don't know who is going to leave there in the end, but I end up walking down the trail with my father, talking. I decide in my mind that he must end up staying there in the end and my mother moving out, because she (and possibly the unknown guy, I don't know) wouldn't be able to run the place without my father. Other details happen but I can't recall them.

Both parts of this dream seemed to relate to fear of something undefined; I don't feel like they signal specific fear of what happened in them, but something else. The first part of the dream was scary, but the second part really bothered and upset me, which is why I didn't particularly want to write it down (there's no relation to anything in the waking world here, nor have I had this type of dream before, so I found it disturbing). But, then I couldn't remember the dream I had the next night, even though I know I had one, or last night's. I have to write them down to remember what comes next, it seems, or the old dream just sticks around blocking the new ones.

Incidentally, C- the cat also reappeared from the dead in this dream.

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Update: A curious thing. The same day I posted this (but a couple days after the actual dream) a small freak tornado struck this area, although not the part of town where I was at.

Reflections

12/12/2007 - Tuesday night/Wednesday morning

My dreams were very fragmented and busy last night, and I can remember barely any details....

In one dream, I was posing and looking at myself in the mirror in the bedroom, and I think a relative took a few pictures of me. When I looked at myself in the mirror, my reflection was of a black woman (also I was fairly attractive and skinny). This did not strike me as odd at the time. I was still myself in the dream, not another character.

Another part involved my aunt N-, I was angry at her for some reason.

I'll add more bits if I remember but it's hard to piece it together, I was tossing and turning.

Don't Rent From Your Aunt

When it started I was with some family members looking at an older house. It was big, bigger than any house I've lived in but not a mansion, and very nice, roomy interesting rooms and well built, but with a number of repair problems. The master bedroom, which was on the ground floor, was a large octagonal or round room. There was a door to the outside which was no longer in use, and which was closed with a chain against it, set into the wall directly behind the headboard.

We explored the house. My aunt N- had bought it or decided to do so at that point, and later on she offered to rent it to me. Warning signs went off in my head, but I really liked it and wanted to live there, so I agreed to rent it. I paid her some of the money then (possibly prorated rent for the month, and after a couple of weeks I sent her a check for the current month's rent. There were some things that needed to be fixed, and when I called her about them, she said to just go ahead and have them repaired, and she would pay me back. This wasn't my preferred method, but I did so.

Later, I went back to visit my parents. There was a building that was like a bookstore there, with a kind of museum exhibit within it. I don't remember what it was exhibiting, but some sort of recent history anthropological artifacts. The inside was sort of like Powell's, but smaller. I milled around there and there were a number of family members there, enjoying some occasion. My aunt was there with her family, and I wanted to ask her about the check, but I didn't want to bring up a money in a group setting. I did pass her the bill info, and she gave me a check, but I didn't look at it at the time.

Later, when I looked at it, I discovered that it was for $305, when it was supposed to be like $717. I had feared something like this would happen. I went over to her house later and asked about it, treating it at first as if it had been a mistake. She said that no, it was correct, she'd subtracted one of the rent payments which I hadn't sent her. I reminded her that I had sent her both, one in person, and one mailed. In fact, as I pointed out, she had cashed them. She said no, she'd never gotten them. I offered to show her my checkbook, and she asked what kind of proof I had. I had carbon checks. She said that people who used carbon checks always irritated her becuase they would whip them out to "win" and they were easily modified after the fact. I was getting increasingly uncomfortable and she was clearly angry and trying to avoid paying me back. I got out the check carbons and showed her, but I couldn't find one of them, although I found a note she had written at the time about how much I'd paid in that installment. She didn't make any response of giving me more money, so I said, "I can get records from the bank if you want." She said she guessed I'd better do that then. Thoroughly uncomfortable and also pissed off, I left and went back over to my parents house.

I puttered around their house doing normal things, and some hours later I looked out the window and realized it had snowed a couple of inches. I decided to go for a walk. I walked down the hill, taking the dog with me. When I got to the bottom, I realized that there was a car parked in the driveway, a red truck. My aunt N- and uncle were in it, with another dog which was smaller and black, belonging to them. I asked what they were doing there and my aunt got mad, and said they could be there if they wanted to. She also said that nobody knew I was there, right now (implying that if I mysteriously disappeared, nobody would know where I'd gone, in a threatening way).

At that moment, my mother and father and sister appeared walking down the driveway. My aunt told them that I'd told them they couldn't be there, and demanded to know what they were doing there. Also she suggested that I'd been threatening them or their dog with the dog I was walking. I protested that this was not what I'd said, and repeated what had happened. My father was not fooled by their attempts to incriminate me. He said that he'd heard her say that nobody knew I was there, suggesting that he was in on her plot. After general unpleasantness they departed. I was upset. My mother took me up in the field continuing the walk, and trying to make me feel better about the encounter.

She had a tub of ice cream. It was filled with little samples of many different flavors, in small containers the size of those plastic ketchup cups they have at restaurants. This bucket was introducing a new flavor, called Love NZ for the planet Venus or Neptune (I think Venus, but I kept calling it Neptune). We walked along tasting the different flavors. There was a picture on the outside of all the different flavors within, but they weren't labeled, so you had to identify them by the picture. We tasted one which was like ice cream but had many particulates in it, like bits of cheese, which were detrimental to the overall texture. The remaining ice cream flavors we tasted were not like ice cream at all, they were more like jello. The Venus one was bright lime green and tasted like melted jello, but much sweeter. There were several other ones which were bright blue and jelly like, with various-size sparkles in them. None of them were very good. We were trying to tell them apart from the pictures on the tub, but couldn't be sure which were which.

To be in a play or not to be in a play

11/6/2007 - Most recent dream of last night/this morning
I had at least three dreams last night but they are all pretty hazy by now, although I remembered them briefly after each one. This was the one I could remember enough of to describe, and was the last one before I woke up.

I was with a female companion, not sure if friend or relative, and we were walking around downtown P-. We heard there was a contest going on for play writers; they would each come up with original short plays and "play off" against each other for the best one, who would get a prize. We were uninterested in the idea, putting it down.

Then, we run into one of my coworkers, J-. He is very excited and tells us about how he has entered the contest and is putting on a play that day, and needs our help as extras in the cast. Will we do it? It'll be fun! In a switch from my early attitude, I agree. We set off, we are now in my apartment building (which doesn't look much like mine, and is closer to downtown, but it's where I live in the dream.

As we head out, J- asks hesitantly if I want to change before we go. I suddenly realize that I am just wearing jeans and a tee shirt (striped pink). My hair is uncovered and is cut in a bob (which it was last cut like when I was 17, and before that I wore it that way when I was 12-13). I say yes, and hurry back to my apartment, as they wait in the hall.

As I'm coming in the door, my cell phone starts ringing, but I don't get to it before it goes to voicemail. I check the display, and it's my husband. I will call him back as soon as I get my clothes on, I hurriedly dress. Just as I finish, though, I hear the key in the lock and he comes in. He has run into the others in the hallway and they told him of the plan, and he is angry about it. He tells me that I am not going to be in the play, and asks why I didn't tell him/call him back, etc., while I attempt to offer excuses about how it's just for fun and how I was just going to call him and tell him when he walked in.

Overall mood:
In the earlier part of the dream I felt disinterested, mocking the play. Then, when I was invited to participate, I was excited, and felt daring, but a little apprehensive of my husband's reaction (although I planned to tell him, I delayed it). I anticipated him to be angry and react the way he did, although I sort of imagined if I'd been able to explain it first, I might have gotten away with it. When he was angry and said I couldn't go, I was also angry and unhappy, although fearful of his reaction as he acted like I'd been hiding something.

Trapped by a stranger's crazy mother

Monday, November 5th 2007 - Last night's dream

I was at a class or meeting of some kind, and some people had made an apple cannon, which they were firing off to great fun and general excitement by all. During the activities, I met someone and got invited to their house for dinner and to spend the night. I accepted. Afterwards I realized that my new friend was a boy about 12, which it occurred to me in the dream was a little odd (I may have been younger in the dream but it still struck me this way, because of the age difference, not because there was any flirting going on, which there was not). At any rate, I had already accepted since I felt more uncomfortable about backing out than the odd choice of friend, so off I went to his house in Ol- or L-, where he had a large, happy, friendly. and welcoming family. There were several other kids and I no longer felt particularly uncomfortable, and engaged in chitchat and games with the family.

We had dinner, and then as the evening wore on his mother sort of became unhinged. She had started out very friendly and bubbly, happy and energetic. Then she started to get angry and crazy, although still with a smile on her face. His mother had dark reddish brown hair, straight to her shoulders, and heavy, shaped matching eyebrows, and I think green or dark eyes. She was young and petite, probably in her 30s. Her face was angular and would have probably been attractive if it wasn't for the crazed expression that developed. She started loudly shooing people around the house, and declared that it was "no doorknobs time" and we had to keep all the doors open, and several other pronouncements that I no longer remember, and started to get scary.

The boy who I'd come with was short, with light brown hair in a bowl cut. I discovered that his hair covered a deformed ear that had been cut or damaged in some way by his mother during one of her crazy sessions. He and the other kids and the father acted as if they'd seen this behavior before, and worked around it. It was clear that they didn't like it and were scared of her when she got like this, but they didn't know what to do.

The hidden side of her either became apparent in the morning or I ended up staying the night anyway because I couldn't escape. In the morning I was in a small room which they'd made up for me to spend the night in, getting dressed. I was hurriedly getting clothes out of my overnight bag and packing everything else. I realized that somehow I was going to have to gather up my various things that were left around the house without the mother noticing that I was trying to leave until I had everything and could make a break for it, there would be or already had been an effort to keep me captured here.

I had the door partly closed, but not shut, and was trying to put on a bra, but none of them would fit. There were two in my bag that were brand new, which I'd bought the night before at the mall nearby. One was black with a black pattern, and the other was light green with a pattern of tiny dark green leaves. The problem was, both of them were too small, which was confounding since they were brand new. I frantically rooted through the overnight bag--I seemed only to have dressy clothes, like a black skirt and black pantyhose, that would take too long to throw on and escape. I was also supposed to have my TaeKwon-Do suit in there, because I was supposed to go to a workout later (which might also have been my excuse for leaving them, I didn't really want to go to it but I did want to get out of here any way possible), but I realized that somehow I had not packed it.

As I struggled to get dressed, the mother burst in with a crazy glint in her eye and said she THOUGHT she had announced that it was no doorknobs time, wasn't that right? I tried to make excuses that the door had not actually been closed, but she started yelling about no doors or locks, and called on one of her young daughters to back her up. The girl was 6 or 7, with light blond hair, and she was too young to realize that her mother was off her rocker, things like no doorknob time were apparently normal to her (the mother although striking fear into my heart still had a "happy" face frozen on). She sent her daughter around removing knobs and doors, ranting maniacally, as I frantically continued dressing, trying to figure out a way to get out of there.

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.