(no subject)
Mar. 25th, 2004 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fabrisseI had a Tarot reading this weekend. And I've been talking to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
siderea again -- well, actually, that was nearly two weeks ago. Anyway, both of them asked me about my dreams. To be specific: I don't mean "those things that show like movies in your psyche when you're asleep," I mean the "What do you want to be?" kind.
The Tarot reading pointed me at a future filled with love contentment and fulfillment if I followed my dreams. If I continued on my present course, the card that I got was called "the Wasteland." Having had the conversation withsiderea, I was a little more prepared than I might have been. You see, I haven't even acknowledged to myself that I have dreams any more.
Unemployment and depression, physical fear for my fragile bones, and the slowing wearing down of life all combined to make me say things like, "The only thing I want out of life is health insurance."
It's not true. Health insurance is a lovely by product of having enough -- money, fulfillment, work. Happy, fulfilled people seem to need it less often, too -- that is if I'm reading all these experiments correctly.
I willed myself to stop dreaming in the REM literal sense when I was 10. I couldn't handle the nightmares any more (Digression: I never saw Jaws and thanks to summer camp I missed most of the publicity blitz. However, the autumn after it made everyone afraid to go into the water, I spent somewhere between a fortnight and a month having a dream where I was being devoured from the feet up. There were a couple of variations on it. I either got to watch my family eaten first or they were too far away to help me. There was a boat filled with people who weren't my family. I knew most of them. A few were trying to pull me into the boat, but all they could really do was watch me dismembered by this thing pulling me down into the deep.). I succeeded so well, that the only dreams that make it through anymore are the nightmares and night terrors. They're rare, but, seriously, I think some of my tendency to drive myself to exhaustion is a way of keeping myself from the horrors.
My sister inherited my father's dream of being beheaded. I did too. I can't watch it in a film or even see the word without feeling the whisper of the blade on the back of my neck, knowing that I won't even have time to scream. I also got my mother's execution dream -- the one that she first had while pregnant with me -- of watching some anonymous group of military men force each member of the family to his or her knees and shooting him or her in the back of the head. By the time it's my turn, I'm fighting to live and I can feel the hand in my hair and the despair that there was nothing I could do to save them.
The important part of all of that, by the way, is the "fighting to live." I very badly wanted to kill myself in 1988. I'm alive only because I promised someone that I'd speak to her the next day. Ten months later, I had appendicitis. There were complications, but my subconscious made it very clear that I wanted to live. Sometimes I forget that I fought tooth and nail to hang on to life.
But still, dreams in the second sense...
I've become what my mother accused me of being seven years ago: a fat, middle-aged failure. The up side to that is two of those can be turned around and middle-aged is much better than the alternative.
At the play on Saturday, someone from the local community went out of her way to say that I had a resonant voice and a good stage presence. Considering that I had a sum total of twenty lines, five of which eluded me, that's quite a compliment.
The person who did my tarot reading kept telling me to pay attention to my night-time dreams because I might find hints as to the right path for me to have the fulfillment the rest of the reading promised me.
I'm going to have to find another way to communicate with my subconscious. I know that I don't want to stay in Boston. I know that I want to find the parts of my younger self that I've missed.
As silly as it sounds, I'm taking pride in the fact that I haven't left the house in the past three weeks without wearing earrings and lipstick as a sign that I'm beginning to reconnect with my better self. Six months ago, I found my old glasses. I put them on and sighed with relief because I didn't have to move my head to see all around me. I'm not eating sugar (well, not deliberately, I'm still getting hidden sugar. That's the next thing for me to work on.).
I'd forgotten what hope feels like. Worse, I've forgotten who I'm meant to be. I think I can find it.
It's a dull grey day here today. I looked out the window and thought I saw snow out of the corner of my eye. When I turned my head, I laughed. I realized that one tree had put out one branch of delicate white blossoms. Spring is coming. I think I might be able to run and meet it.
siderea again -- well, actually, that was nearly two weeks ago. Anyway, both of them asked me about my dreams. To be specific: I don't mean "those things that show like movies in your psyche when you're asleep," I mean the "What do you want to be?" kind.The Tarot reading pointed me at a future filled with love contentment and fulfillment if I followed my dreams. If I continued on my present course, the card that I got was called "the Wasteland." Having had the conversation with
siderea, I was a little more prepared than I might have been. You see, I haven't even acknowledged to myself that I have dreams any more.Unemployment and depression, physical fear for my fragile bones, and the slowing wearing down of life all combined to make me say things like, "The only thing I want out of life is health insurance."
It's not true. Health insurance is a lovely by product of having enough -- money, fulfillment, work. Happy, fulfilled people seem to need it less often, too -- that is if I'm reading all these experiments correctly.
I willed myself to stop dreaming in the REM literal sense when I was 10. I couldn't handle the nightmares any more (Digression: I never saw Jaws and thanks to summer camp I missed most of the publicity blitz. However, the autumn after it made everyone afraid to go into the water, I spent somewhere between a fortnight and a month having a dream where I was being devoured from the feet up. There were a couple of variations on it. I either got to watch my family eaten first or they were too far away to help me. There was a boat filled with people who weren't my family. I knew most of them. A few were trying to pull me into the boat, but all they could really do was watch me dismembered by this thing pulling me down into the deep.). I succeeded so well, that the only dreams that make it through anymore are the nightmares and night terrors. They're rare, but, seriously, I think some of my tendency to drive myself to exhaustion is a way of keeping myself from the horrors.
My sister inherited my father's dream of being beheaded. I did too. I can't watch it in a film or even see the word without feeling the whisper of the blade on the back of my neck, knowing that I won't even have time to scream. I also got my mother's execution dream -- the one that she first had while pregnant with me -- of watching some anonymous group of military men force each member of the family to his or her knees and shooting him or her in the back of the head. By the time it's my turn, I'm fighting to live and I can feel the hand in my hair and the despair that there was nothing I could do to save them.
The important part of all of that, by the way, is the "fighting to live." I very badly wanted to kill myself in 1988. I'm alive only because I promised someone that I'd speak to her the next day. Ten months later, I had appendicitis. There were complications, but my subconscious made it very clear that I wanted to live. Sometimes I forget that I fought tooth and nail to hang on to life.
But still, dreams in the second sense...
I've become what my mother accused me of being seven years ago: a fat, middle-aged failure. The up side to that is two of those can be turned around and middle-aged is much better than the alternative.
At the play on Saturday, someone from the local community went out of her way to say that I had a resonant voice and a good stage presence. Considering that I had a sum total of twenty lines, five of which eluded me, that's quite a compliment.
The person who did my tarot reading kept telling me to pay attention to my night-time dreams because I might find hints as to the right path for me to have the fulfillment the rest of the reading promised me.
I'm going to have to find another way to communicate with my subconscious. I know that I don't want to stay in Boston. I know that I want to find the parts of my younger self that I've missed.
As silly as it sounds, I'm taking pride in the fact that I haven't left the house in the past three weeks without wearing earrings and lipstick as a sign that I'm beginning to reconnect with my better self. Six months ago, I found my old glasses. I put them on and sighed with relief because I didn't have to move my head to see all around me. I'm not eating sugar (well, not deliberately, I'm still getting hidden sugar. That's the next thing for me to work on.).
I'd forgotten what hope feels like. Worse, I've forgotten who I'm meant to be. I think I can find it.
It's a dull grey day here today. I looked out the window and thought I saw snow out of the corner of my eye. When I turned my head, I laughed. I realized that one tree had put out one branch of delicate white blossoms. Spring is coming. I think I might be able to run and meet it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-03-25 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-25 05:39 pm (UTC)Hugs right back at you.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-25 05:48 pm (UTC)Maybe you can come up to NYC for a visit? You can bunk here if you like, I'll whip out the blow-up mattress (which is much more comfortable than it sounds), and you can even have my office as your room.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-25 07:55 pm (UTC)