To Sleep Perchance to Dream

It has almost been one year since my dear dad moved up.  I still have a little problem thinking of him as gone, dead, deceased, no more.  The daily reality of my life has been an exercise in keeping myself steady, healthy, engaged and positive.  I have things to do.  I have my mother to care for.  I have my partner and children and grandchildren to care about. 

But when the night comes and I close my eyes to go to sleep, all bets are off.  My dream world is a world where I'm visited by everyone and anyone who has ever entered my life - from old employers, to former husbands to good friends to children to the most casual of acquaintances.  Most people have dreams, so when I first experienced such graphic and sometimes frightening dreams, I attributed it to medication - always an easy answer to anything.

As time has passed, though, I am more and more fascinated by what my mind shows me each night.  There is one recurring theme.  I am usually being marginalized in some way or criticized in some way.  Does this mean that at the core of my being, I am still not pleased with who I am?  Do I still feel that I deserve to be ignored or punished - for what?

 That's why last night's dream was so different.  In the dream, I was hosting a birthday party (though at times it seemed like a wedding party) for my younger daughter.  All her friends were there.  The house in which we were living was bigger than my house.  In the midst of the chaos of young girls reveling, my friend D. came by with a gift for me.  By the way, my friend D. is a genuinely giving and loving person, so it seemed real that she would bring me a gift.

I was surprised and delighted to receive a gift.  The gift was in many parts.  There were silk flowers, ribbons, small vases - a crafter's dream.  I expressed my delight at the gift but couldn't focus on it because of the cacaphony.  She seemed upset, which is so unlike D.  She seemed to have been drinking.  I asked her what was wrong and she said that my house always seemed so much nicer than her house. 

Somehow we wound up at her house - next door - where all the parents of the kids at my house wound up, as well.   Her house was, indeed, not up to its usual standard of tidiness.  There was dust everywhere and a fountain in the middle of her living room was stagnant and was polluted with all kinds of garbage and litter.

D. continued to drink and all the adults suggested that it might be a good idea to pray with her.  Switch to reality - anyone who knows me knows that I am not a praying person.  I have been known to meditate and focus my positive energy, but the concept of prayer as I was taught as a child is not one that I can easily practice.  So, in the dream, I do suggest prayer to D. and she accepts the idea as a possible antidote to her depression.  We all sit in a circle in the stagnant pool of water, holding hands and praying.  That image, in and of itself, is rich with interpretation.  But being in the middle of the circle, I cannot even begin to understand.  Am I D.?  Am I me? 

The dreams ends with me, D. and her husband walking to the beach.  He is much thinner than I have known him to be and he has long hair and a pony tail.  We are talking about a former acquaintance and I share that I thought he had drug problems. 

If you think that this dream is a dire warning from my psyche that I should be seeking help - or, if you think that I should be changing diet immediately to exclude wasabe peas immediately before bedtime, I am accepting all ideas and suggestions. 

This dream is only one of a nightly excursion to places I never asked to go.  But perhaps I am asking.  As Shakespeare wrote, ""We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."

To Sleep Perchance to Scream

Everyone dreams. What do they mean?  Are you sleeping when you're dreaming, or in that half lit room between waking and sleeping? 

There are many ideas around dreaming.  For example, I've read that you cannot die in your own dreams; that you are all the people in your dreams; that dreams are a view into your psyche.  Dreams are the
 

If any of these are true, my dreams over the past year are a view into a very complicated and disturbed world where friends, relatives, former husbands, former employers and almost anyone who has come into my life will make an appearance.  And usually, these appearances are fraught with emotional and behavioral extremes that might have motivated Freud to write a new chapter.