Jan
27
2010
If we shadows have offended…
Author: Boompoet
I have been having odd dreams since I’ve been back on the road. Honestly, I don’t usually remember my dreams, but recently I have had quite a few, two of which were decidedly disturbing. One included a former love trying to get me to hang a painting for her. She was always a much better artist than I (portraiture is her specialty) and though she wounded me deeply, she’s one of the few women who’ve done so that I don’t really hold a horrible grudge against. During the course of the dream, she and I were decorating her apartment and she was directing me as I perched on a step ladder that seemed a mile high trying to hang a delicate painting above a couch. I don’t know why this was so disconcerting aside from the fact that it was her (though I hold no animosity towards her) and I was up so high. I remember very clearly that once I was on the floor safely I felt I still loved her and she burst into tears professing her undying devotion. I woke up with a start and sat on the edge of the bed feeling drained and tired. Weird right?
The second dream was last night and featured an enemy I had not thought about in years prior to a few months ago when he ran into a friend of mine. I remember a dread from the dream that forced me into a mental corner. He was trying to apologize for past wrongs, though any time in the he’d ever tried to make reparations was a ploy to twist the knife so I figured he was trying to do the same thing in the dream. Once I felt he was sufficiently frightened off, I sat in the floor of my dream living room and thought about 
where I’d have to move to in order to avoid further contact with this person. He’s obsessive and a little unstable and I would be worried about my pets and the security of my home so obviously I’d have to move on after over a decade in the same home. There was another knock on the door and it was him again, “returning” a Rainbow vacuum cleaner I’d apparently loaned him back when we were in college which in real life, I’ve only known one Rainbow vacuum belonging to my mother and I would not loan it to anyone… especially this person. That’s when I woke up.
I know the mundane nature of the events of these dreams are not really what one would call “bizarre” but I found them deeply disturbing. My ex is now happily married and she has a child. She’s happy, though I have very little contact with her and only get facebook updates. My enemy, as far as I know, is still the same mooching miscreant looser he once was and is safely not in my life. The detail of these dreams and the feelings I had upon waking are what effected me most of all. She made me feel horribly alone and unwanted despite her comments, though I’m not alone and I have a great life with a close handful of people who love and care a great deal about me. He made me feel like a caged animal ready to kill which is not something I’d felt for quite some time and hoped not to feel again.
A friend told me the other day something about one of her ex-boyfriends and the finality of her comment struck me as uncharacteristic of her. She said “Exes are exes for a reason.” A truism if I’d ever heard one indeed. Ex-friends and ex-romantic relations are indeed out of your life for a reason, sometimes for the simple reason that you feel a certain way when around them and sometimes because you don’t feel secure with who you are at the time. My enemy brought out the worst possible aspects of who I was back when we were friends. My ex brought out both love and joy as well as fear and self loathing at the time and now she brings nothing substantial to the surface. What role would these people play in my life now? What does their presence in my dreams represent?
Time to bust out the dream dictionary.
