(Art by Salvador Dali)I have been busy, busy, busy this month (!), including in my dreams it seems...or rather, nightmares mostly. It occurred to me today after having told a handful of people (friends and coworkers) that dreams of an intense, violent, and/or tragic nature have been the recurring theme. I'm usually one to be pretty good at interpreting and making sense of even the weirdest of dreams I am prone to have, but these are in a world of their own. The only thing I can postulate is perhaps I am feeling scared and vulnerable about something in my waking life that is being revealed in my dreams. What do you think?
Here are a series of nightmares I have had recently:
1. I am in Chicago hanging out with my friend Scott and his female friend. They are talking about a party they would like to attend later and Scott asks if I can go to the building next door and see if his other female friend would like to go with the three of us. I acquiesce. When I enter the apartment, sun is streaming through. It feels radiant and warm. I spot a young woman standing in front of a window. She is wearing a dark colored, long flowing dress. She looks beautiful. We make eye contact, but she says nothing. Her eyes, however, convey a sadness. Before I can speak, she opens the window and I wonder what she's doing. She sticks her head out and then the rest of her body....purposefully! As if in a movie, I see her falling, falling, falling. The building I walked into was only a three or four story building, but suddenly her fall makes it seem like it was 50 floors. I want to help her and I feel powerless. There's no turning back. She is going to die. Before she hits the ground, the scarf around her neck whips back, 'hanging' herself to death before the impact of the ground does it for her. The ambulance arrives and I search for my friend Scott, feeling guilty that I couldn't stop her in time and wondering how the hell I'm going to tell my friend that his friend just committed suicide.
2. I am working in a shoe store and about 15 feet ahead of me, I see my dad and my stepsister on either side of my stepmother. They each have their arm around her, trying to hold her up. Her head is down and she looks unconscious or at least about to faint. I wonder what is going on. Next thing I know, there is a hole in the palm of her hand and all this blood spurts out of it. Before I can make sense of this shocking occurrence, she is on the ground....and her body was split in two, like someone sawed her in half. I could see the inside of the lower half of her body (inside her abdomen). My dad and stepsister started screaming and crying. I'm watching in the distance and I start to shout. I am so freaked out that the sound I made in my dream materialized a bit out loud and I woke myself up from this hellish nightmare.
3. I am in my work building (though it doesn't look like my 'real' work building), about to go up the staircase to the second floor when suddenly an older woman comes barreling around the corner in the opposite direction and rudely, abruptly runs into me. Out of frustration, I tell her to watch where she's going. She is standing in front of me at the bottom of the stairwell and pulls out a gun, pointing it at me. I tell her I will do whatever she asks; I don't want to die. She leads me up the stairwell, gun concealed and still on me nonetheless. I'm trying to think fast. What do I do? How do I keep everyone safe and alive? When I get to the top of the second floor, I notice there are no therapy rooms for our sessions, just one huge room where I see kids jumping around. They don't see us and I'm relieved for that. Unfortunately, neither did my coworker Melanie when I attempted to surreptitiously get her attention as she walked past me. She was intent on getting to her next session, undeterred by any and all distractions. The woman with the gun put her hand on the doorknob to our therapist office and I stopped her, saying it was locked and didn't need to go in there anyway. Next thing I know, however, we are in the office room. I made up my mind in the blink of an eye, fight or flight mode. I chose to fight. I told the woman I didn't care if I got shot in the process; I was not going to let anyone get hurt. I went for the gun she was holding. We struggled for the gun and a gunshot went off, hitting no one. I handcuffed her to the wall. I also remember either her or I making a comment about her mental health history and/or whether she needed a referral to see someone.
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