Last night, to ring in the New Year, I had an old dream.
For the record, there are two recurring dreams that I have. One is that I am just super casually pooping in public and realize too late that such behavior is social suicide. In these dreams, I am without fail approached enthusiastically by someone I have long wished to impress. Awkward and distracted conversation ensues as I desperately cling to the possibility that my pooping in the azaleas with my skirt hiked around my waist will go somehow go unnoticed. And surprisingly, it always does. Turns out that most people I want to impress are total fuckwits, in the end.
Nonetheless, those dreams are never fun, and I invariably wake up grossed out. I have no idea what it means, so don’t ask.
Seriously. Let’s just move on.
My second recurring dream is equally horrific, though totally different. In it I have been transported back to the personal prison of my childhood. And by “personal prison of my childhood”, I mean life under my mother’s roof. In these dreams, I am an adult, so theoretically I could just get up and walk out of the house and go live somewhere else and no one would stop me.
But the globbity gook of dream rationality is such that instead I just try to hide from her in various rooms and complain emphatically to my friends and teachers. (Yes, I am also a 40-year-old high school student in these dreams, and there is a certain degraded frustration about this, like, “What the fuck? How have I not even finished high school yet?” Despite this, I am still mildly popular, probably in part because I abstain completely from public defecation).
At the real pit of these dreams is the horrible reminder that when I was young I really didn’t know if I was crazy, or if my situation was crazy. Mom would prowl around the house and I never knew when I accidentally stumbled upon her if she was going to offer me a sandwich or clock me over the head with a broom handle. Well, no, that’s not true. I did know. It was pretty much always going to be the fucking handle. But I never knew where or when, and the primitive survival tactics required kept me from even wondering about the why.
That life sucked. And that dream sucks. But the nice thing about it is that when I wake up, I am always so happy that I eventually got away and figured it all out. Turns out that yes, I am crazy. But not the dangerous, wildly unpredictable, tackle-your-daughter-in-the-front-yard kind of crazy. More the confused, moderately paranoid, occasionally-join-cult-religions kind. And I’m okay with that. Mostly. I mean, I have to be. So whatever.
Anyway, it is the recurring dream of the second variety from which I woke this morning. The trapped-with-a-psychopath-that-also-happens-to-be-your-next-of-kin one. But this time, there was a variation. In this dream I couldn’t hide anywhere, for any amount of time, because I was being held in a near-suffocating embrace, and I trudged around my dreamscape with my blonde, 110-pound baby koala mom gripped tightly to me. I know for some mothers and daughters this might seem sweet. I even wondered, “Is this sweet?” But my desire to slam hard into a fence post or roll around in a smoldering fire pit was so great that I could tell it wasn’t. It felt like I was wearing a straightjacket. A straightjacket made out of a violent, crazy person.
I didn’t remember this dream until about halfway through the day, right around the time I was letting my dog out. It must have been the shock of strong sunlight that triggered it. It struck me hard, like a broom handle to the skull, and I was forced to sit on the couch for a while afterwards and let my slow mind attempt to sort it out. I can’t say I’m entirely sure about all of it, but the main gist seems to be that I need to be careful about who I let in. I mean, really. Because some people, it seems, just want to to be worn like a human straightjacket. And I’m pretty open, in many ways, but I sure as shit don’t want that. I know that for sure.
It’s a blessing, in a way. That dream. Because look. It’s an hour yet until the new year, and no resolution has ever been more obvious.
So, you know. Happy New Year. May what is needed in your life present itself just as easily.
my delusions 
Hahaha …… I love the way you describe your dream. I get dreams too where I am peeing in public 😛 and the frustrated 40 year old high school student was hilarious and something on similar lines happens in my dreams too!!!
On a more serious note, didn’t that dream kind of indicate that even if you think you are hiding from your mom, or away from her now, her influence on your life is going to stick around wherever you go?
I really hope you got rid of that jacket!
oh my gosh! you are going so far back! i’m almost embarrassed.
i do think you are right that it’s an indication that she will be with me in one form or another. i didn’t see that. very insightful.
oddly (and i don’t want to speak to soon), neither of these dreams have happened again since i wrote them here.
I don’t know where I got it from but I believe that dreams are our subconscious coming out clear to us. It like the subconscious is giving us a message for caution so we know what is the thought that really eats at us from the back of our minds. Like giving us the root cause of all our problems. So may be your subconscious knew you got the message and had decided to act upon it, so it no longer needed to alert you 🙂 Just my theory 😛
i like that! my son recently went on a camping trip with his school and i freaked out because i woke from a dream that he had drowned. then my neighbor told me that water in dreams represent change (his drowning being more that he is growing up, his childhood is dying?). alongside of that, another friend told me it never rains in dreams. now i’m just rambling, but it’s interesting, no?
Yes, very interesting. I kinda like to remember and try to interpret my dreams. But I don’t know about no rains in dreams. Can’t remember ever seeing rain in my dream, but don’t know if its true. Did your neighbor tell you why it is so? About you son’s dream I would have just interpreted that as you being afraid for your son’s safety because he was on his own? But may be your neighbor is right too!
you are the first person i am going to with my next dream confusion/anxiety. you are good at this! i wonder if you should start a dream blog…
Gee thank you 🙂 I would be glad to help you interpret. I have many such dreams to narrate, may be I CAN write about them! Thanks for the idea!!! 🙂