I have incredibly vivid dreams. I haven’t normally written them down or talked about them much. I’ll occasionally mention something that I just can’t get out of my head to Sam, or share something particularly funny with him and Katie, but that’s it.
My intuition definitely talks to me that way, though. I’ve had dreams that told me that a diamond was loose in its setting on my ring, and had to be fixed before it was lost (and it was true), as other mundane things. It’s how my subconscious tosses up things that I haven’t noticed consciously, but on which I need to act. Other than things like that, I don’t usually think a lot about my dreams. As they get more and more insistent, I’m feeling that I should change that. I have no experience, nor have I done any research into, “dream interpretation” or symbology.
This is what I remember from the dream I had this morning, with notes. Lots of navel-gazing here, so I’ll cut-tag it.
shadowkatt, you might not want to read this stuff. You can if you like because some of it concerns you. I figured I’d give you the choice, though.
Katie and I were living with my parents. Living with my parents is a recurring theme in my dreams, and seems to be about being trapped/not being in control of my life. I’m wondering if one reason it is coming up frequently is the upcoming move in with curiousmay9. I haven’t had great experiences living with any adult other than Sam. The move does offer many advantages, but of course, sharing a home also means giving up some degree of control, as well.
I was both on some sort of trip that involved both pseudo-camping and a college campus, and at “home.” I felt like it might be a church youth group event. We were adults, though. I was about 18 again. My parents forced me to go to absolutely every church youth group activity of any sort, and their church’s group was hideously cliquish and nasty. I didn’t drink and wasn’t interested in fucking any of the members, I was too smart and fool enough to speak my mind despite being female, so I never had a prayer of being “in” had I wanted to be. As soon as I got my license, I left their church for another one nearby, where I met and married husband v.1.
I’m reasonably sure that Sam was there, somehow—in spirit, at least.
I’m losing parts of the dream now, but I clearly remember cuddling Katie at about 3-4 years old, comforting her after Mom was yelling at her teen self about something involved with chatting on the PC. Somehow I knew that teen Katie had just left the room via a door at my back, and I felt that she’d come back in but I wouldn’t turn around. Katie had been using a PC in the hall, then the PC was in her bedroom. Mother went nuts because she closed the door at some point. And even when I was in there with her, mother came and opened the door and fussed. My mother absolutely cannot stand closed doors. She just wouldn’t allow them, as she was SURE that the only reason for them was to hide evildoing. They were barely okay while in the bathroom or dressing, but not if you locked said door—and that was for a VERY limited time period. Katie is at an age where she wants a lot of privacy. Her closed door leads me to feel very cut off from her at times, but I know that I wanted that separation from the family at her age.
Mom said something at some point about Katie leaving me when she was looking at me looking at sleeping toddler Katie. At one point I remember thinking that the toddler was the eternal embodied in my baby. I told her that I understood if she must go, but I wanted her to stay, as well. I could see the little girl struggling at the same time the eternal already knew the answer. I’m mourning the loss of my baby as she becomes an adult. I still feel a lot of grief and guilt over not sharing every day of Katie’s life, because I did leave Wayne. I fear that I’m not acknowledging her current self because I’m still looking for and hanging on to my little baby.
Mom went through a massive mess on the college campus with me, too, trying to get some sort of financial aid thing straightened out. They didn’t want to talk to us, because they were in the midst of registering the incoming freshmen. I had toddler Katie in my arms and wouldn’t let go of her to even sign papers. At times, I regret walking away from college to marry husband v.1, which means that now I’m going through college without any parental support. My frustration with the ongoing stupidity of the financial aid department (which still hasn’t released the balance of my financial aid for the spring semester) is certainly echoed here.
At some point, I was walking up a remote, gravel road on a mountain. I knew that there was a ritzy neighborhood ahead of me, one of those fly-in communities. It was bitter cold, just after an ice storm. In the only bit of lucent dreaming I could manage, I turned my footwear into good hiking boots and wrapped myself in lightweight but warm clothes that threw off the moisture and let me move freely. The pine trees were creaking alarmingly. I was very heavy with child and knew that it was Katie. I wanted to find a safe place to give birth and had run away to do so. I knew that “they” (my parents? Wayne?) would take her from me while I was weak, so I had to be far away. I knew that I needed help, too. When I came up to the houses, I looked around at the McMansions, trying to decide if I would trust the people in any of them to help without calling paramedics or anyone else. There was an elderly man standing at the end of one driveway. He was smiling at me with his bright capped teeth, slightly stopped with age but otherwise looking strong and healthy. I felt a chill, and knew that I couldn’t trust him—he’d take her and things would be even worse than if the family had her. I turned and walked away into the woods again, wishing that I could fly (I can, in most of my dreams). I didn’t run, because I didn’t want him to know that I feared him. I wanted my dog, and wondered when she would join me—Gypsy, the Oorang Airedale I grew up with, dead three years before Katie was born. I knew she was nearby, somewhere in the woods around me, and I felt safer for that. I wanted Sam, but for some reason, it wasn’t safe to even call on him in my mind, because it would lead to harm to him. I know the old man is someone I happened to see on the street yesterday. He was dressed in expensive tennis togs and hitchhiking in front of Phipps Plaza on Peachtree. He made eye contact with me, then stuck out his thumb, and smiled just that way. I felt like someone had walked over my grave. While I’ve named Sam as guardian for Katie in my will, I do fear that a court would give her to my parents or other blood relatives, instead, if I die before she’s 18. I know they wouldn’t respect her, and that they would try to force her into their tiny “good Southern Baptist girl” box.
In the dream, I knew that I had made a choice at some point, and it felt as if I was given one second chance. I could go back and undo leaving Wayne and have Katie. Or I could lose Wayne and have Sam. But I couldn’t have Katie and Sam. This has been a recurring theme in my dreams recently. Rationally, I know that my leaving Wayne has nothing to do with his eventual death from leukemia. Emotionally, I feel guilty. Wayne absolutely hated being single, and he died that way, just as Sam and I were celebrating our first anniversary. Wayne’s third wife and her daughters were abusive to Katie in ways that I didn’t learn about until they were out of the picture, and I feel guilt over that, too. The stress of that divorce certainly wasn’t a positive thing for him (they’d just separated when he was diagnosed in November 1997)—but neither would the stress of life with that woman and her daughters have been. Rationally, I know that my relationship with Wayne was an abusive one and that we were far better parents separately than together, and therefore our divorce was the best decision for Katie and for me. My mind knows that Wayne probably wouldn’t have made the strides in personal growth that he did make in those last few years if he’d been comfortably ensconced in a marriage. If I had stayed, though, I wouldn’t have missed so much of Katie’s day-to-day life.
We’ve had a lot of conflict with Katie lately about her use of her PC. She is understandably drawn to chatting with her buddies more than doing anything else. That’s a fairly normal teen tendency. Unfortunately, it is interfering with her academic work and just about everything else, and I don’t think it’s particularly healthy. So we’ve decided to put her desk in the office with ours. She doesn’t like it, but we didn’t think it was something that should suddenly happen when we move, either. We still want her to be able to have social time, and we know she wants to be alone for that, so the other option would be to force her to come out of her room to do her academic assignments. It wouldn’t keep her from staying up into the wee hours after she’s supposed to be in bed, though I suppose we could devise a technical way around that one.
I don’t want to be disrespectful of Katie’s choices, her need for privacy, and her friendships. Basically, I don’t want to be like my parents! But I am her mother, and part of parenting is stepping in to insist on balance and provide guidance when a kid is getting off-kilter.
Then I got this in my email, a horoscope for the day: It’s all too easy to hurt the ones you love. Thoughtless remarks are out of place around people in delicate emotional states. Remember what you’ve read or observed before asking for another reminder.
