I am at my 20 year class reunion. One of the students who was with us up to junior high, then moved, comes into the reunion with a gun and begins shooting everyone. He doesn't kill anyone, but he does injure people and he does some damage.
One classmate who is a lifelong friend of mine and my brother's is also a former marine and a war veteran. He tackles the shooter and takes him down. I help to restrain him so that he doesn't get injured too badly. I do this out of concern that somehow if he gets injured while being stopped, he might get away with what he was just doing.
The shooter begins talking, saying things he would never say. It is apparent that he is possessed or something. He is speaking about our classmates, telling us personal secrets which, in the context of how we knew them in high school, are shocking to us and embarrassing to them. People are becoming very upset.
My buddy is afraid the shooter/demon is going to tell everyone about his combat experience, and they'll all think differently about him because he'd had to kill while he was there. I point out that I don't think differently of him, and neither would anyone else. Several of our classmates are the kids of Vietnam Veterans. They know better than to forget his personality just because he was in combat... but I (and everyone) would totally understand that he wouldn't want to spend time thinking about those experiences, and that he probably didn't want us thinking about them, either.
The demon inside the shooter turns to me and calls me crazy, then says I am misdiagnosed, that I don't have the mild mood disorder for which I've been treated during the last 20 years. I think he is going to tell everyone I have a more severe mental illness with symptoms that may be scary to other people, and I brace myself for the response I hate so much - people giving me wary looks and moving away from me. It's something I've experienced before after verbally defending myself, and that response is always hurtful. It makes me feel like a monster. Even knowing that I haven't done anything wrong, those looks always make me feel horribly guilty as though I've been unjustly mean.
I didn't want the demon to tell my secret, whatever it was. I put my hand over its mouth, and it bit me.
The pain from that woke me, but it made me think of a dream I had a few years ago. I had it two nights in a row, though it was incomplete the first night. The second night, there were more details, and I woke compelled to write an account of it. I still have the old dream journal entry about it, which I'm going to post here. Sorry that it's kind of long, but this was an oddly detailed, complex, and very symbolic dream.
The horse is black . There is no saddle, no reigns. It is a stallion with an unusually long mane.
The path is a dirt road with ditches on either side. There is grass on both sides, a meadow to my right. To my left, 20 yards into the meadow is a woods - mixed (pine and deciduous), no debris/ruts in the path.
I am headed for a perfect - picture-perfect - stone masonry cottage further along this clear path. I desperately want to be there. The place looks like a Thomas Kinkade painting - flowers, tall grass, gables on the house, and a river - the house is nestled into the side of a hill.
The horse changes pace from a walk to (a trot?) a more bouncy, faster step, and holding on takes a lot of effort. He moves off of the path, to the left - into the woods. I don't want to go in there. It isn't the path of my choice. In fact, there is no path here. As the horse carries me unwillingly into the brush, I am slapped and grabbed at by low-hanging branches. My clothes protect my legs, but the branches sting my face, neck, hands, and arms. There is a white buck ahead, and the horse follows him. In the first dream, I tried to make the horse go back - I pulled his mane and nudged him with my knees - because I didn't want to go this way. I didn't want to see the buck .
This time, I follow him to the clearing. He says the same as last time - that I am running from what I need not fear, adding this time that I cannot escape, either. I tell him again that the horse brought me - ( am not running - and he says, "what horse?" By now, he is a man with leather hunting clothes (or just winter clothes), a rifle (old) and a horn (older). I look, and the horse is gone.
He tells me again that after all this running, that from which I've fled is right behind me. (Last time when I looked, there was nothing but the woods.) This time I can feel it, and when I turn to look, there is a crowd of people, all with my face. They are all different - different ages, hairstyles, clothes, stances (attitudes?), but I recognize all of them in me. I am nervous, but not scared enough to run.
I turn and he is still there. "What is this about?" I ask, "This doesn't scare me. What am I running from? Surely not them."
He says, "look again." and I feel ice growing up my spine - this time I am afraid to turn.
"Do you want me to turn you?" he asks. The thought of his touch is more intimidating than whatever is behind me, and I take a step away. He speaks again. "You refused to see last time. I will not allow that."
I feel really guilty at this point, as if I have taken something for myself - something wanted but not needed - and hurt him in the process.
I can hear movement behind me and my mind floods with ungly images - what is behind me? A zombie? a psycho killer? are the multitude of myselves going to eat me? are they dying? am I?
I am afraid to look, and I am afraid to not look .
I feel a disturbance behind me - something dark and heavy. My mind adds sinister to that, but a breeze blows the thought away.
"Look... now."
My body turns without my consent. My heart is pounding and daggers of electric sensation are shooting through my stomach and chest, and down my arms into my hands. My mouth is dry and I can't close my eyes - can't even blink .
The crowd of myselves is sort of milling around - it is a pretty large crowd - and one of them from the back is coming forward. This one is a little taller - I can see a "crown" of brown hair, almost black, moving among the others toward the front. This one scares me - I want to run, no specific direction - just somewhere that is NOT HERE. If not for the fact that my feet seem firmly rooted ( I can't move my legs) to the ground, I would flee wildly into the forest - anything to get away from the aproaching figure. I don't want to see this - I don't want to know. I am crying, but there are no tears. That makes me feel weak - like a wuss. I make myself stop before the figure emerges.
HE is defiant in his attitude, daring me to deny that he is there. He wears my face, but it does not look feminine. He is wearing a black shirt, black pants, a long, black coat, black shoes - his fair skin (my skin) stands out against all that as if it doesn't belong in it. He just stares at me.
My insides turn to a mass of worms and water - I think I am going to puke... or lose control of my bowels. I am terrified of him - he can't be part of this group. I don't want him to be real - or I just don't want him to BE. I am angry at him for doing this to me. I want to kill him.
I can't run away, but I can move toward him, so I attack - I rush him and begin pounding on him, but he just keeps looking at me without defending himself at all. His eyes are dark and full of something undefined (to me) that I'm afraid to understand. I draw back and punch him in the eye (right handed - left eye) as hard as I can. I am so scared and angry - I just want him to go away.
The punch knocks him down, and a bruise forms instantly around the eye, and my hand hurts. A little girl-me; small, skinny, with round eyes, bangs, and short pigtails, rushes over to him, puts herself between us and yells "STOP!" She looks afraid. "Can't you see you're hurting us?"
My attention is drawn to the damage I've done to him - bloody nose, fat lip, black eye, scratches on his neck... the other ones all have the same injuries... and their hands are all bruised where mine are.
I touch my lip, where the nosebleed is flowing, and I feel wet, sticky warmth. I can see blood on my fingertips.
Behind me the Hunter says, "You see."
I look, but he is gone, and in his place are more "versions" of me.
There are so many...
- a naked woman with green hair... another with butterfly wings. Two more men, one with dark blond hair, one with red. The blond is dressed like a logger, and the redhead like a hunter, but with some kind of canvas pants.
There is a little boy carrying a slingshot and a book of matches. In his shirt pocket is a small book entitled "1000 really offensive dirty jokes." He is lighting the matches and letting them burn until the flame gets too close to his fingers. He grins at me and I see he has no upper front teeth.
The wounds are healing as I look through the crowd and see a clown, a catlike hybrid, a female me dressed in my dad's sunday best, carrying a briefcase and a dry-erase marker; there is a circle of myselves dancing - some are naked, some in different clothes, ranging from stuff I wore in the 80s to hippie/rennie stuff to pornworthy lingerie.
A hand grasps my shoulder and sends ice up and fire down my spine. I turn - more jerking away than turning - so that I face the dark-clothed male me. He is standing close. He asks why I am afraid of him. He says others in the group are much more worthy of my fear. Behind him, I see a brown-skinned me guarding a pale albino-like me who is wearing a straight jacket and a muzzle. She is struggling and kicking. Her eyes are red and she looks angry and hateful. I don't want her to see me.
The brown me says, "It's ok - I've got her under control." I realize he actually does. He has her on a leash.
Then I realize I'm also holding a leash. The me I'm facing - the guy in all black - has a choker collar on, and the leash is attached.
He looks really sad now, and is not so intimidating.
I feel bad about how mean I am to him, and he sees the change in my face. He begs me "please turn me loose."
I am afraid to take off the collar - I feel a need to keep him under my control. He keeps looking at me. He says the collar is suffocating him, and that he's going to die. He grabs my jacket and I get scared and yank the leash when I step back . That pulls him down. He repeats his statement and looks desperately at me, and I feel as though the collar is on my own neck. I reach up to my neck and my fingers find the collar. I have the leash, but the collar is getting tighter. I look at him and see that his lips are turning blue.
I try to tear the collar off my throat, but I can't. It pulls me down, and I feel my knees hit the ground. He grabs my hands and pulls them from my throat to his. I realize I have to take off his collar to get rid of mine, so I unclasp the buckle and remove it, and give it to the boy with the matches. In my hand are 2 collars - mine and his(mine) - and the boy, who now has a lighter instead of matches, burns them.
I feel really relieved about the collar. I look at the dark-clothed male me and say, "I still don't trust you."
He smiles and tells me, "That's ok... you shouldn't."
I wake.
I can still smell the forest.
My heart is pounding, and my legs hurt.
There is a lot of symbolism in this dream. The horse is that aspect of life that represents things you cannot control; time keeps moving, other people do what they're going to do no matter how it affects your life, and reality is what it is regardless of what you want. In a way, it's beautiful because it takes you to positive experiences you would have been too scared to seek out, but sometimes getting there is a rough trip.
The cottage is my "ideal" life; everything perfect, pretty, and cozy with needs met and nothing scary. It's pretty, peaceful, and quiet. In other words, the impossible. The horse is never going down that path.
The deer and the horned God showing up are my relationship with deity. I more often find myself identifying with pagan traditions, and though I do have Christian principles, I've learned along the way that those same principles exist in pagan practices as well. I've found that for me, self-examination through spiritual practice is more effective when following pagan traditions, and the deity form which "visits" me most during spiritual meditation is the Hunter.
Though it took time, I've figured out some of the "selves" from the dream.
The albino is my temper and my "wild" side. It's that bad, and I make a point to keep a tight restraint on myself because when I don't, I do damage to people's lives.
The brown me with the leash was a connection to my Kanienkehaka (Mohawk) ancestors. I did not learn until I began attending Pow-wows during the last year that some of my techniques for moderating my baser instincts, and in particular my volatile temper, are characteristic of the spiritual traditions of my ancestors. Because of my "civilized" life experience, I saw that moderation as a straight jacket, a muzzle, and a leash, but I've seen those two "selves" since in other dreams, and that's not how it is. The temper "me" is managed more through verbal and nonverbal cues, touch, and eye contact, and is kept very subdued without ever having to be bound like an animal.
The guy I didn't want to see is kind of my animus, but he also represented the aspects of myself trapped by inhibitions I've subconsciously assigned myself in order to make myself fit the profile I though I should fit. I was so intent on being who and what everyone wanted of me that I had forgotten not just to be myself, but how myself was defined. I'm really a very independent person, and I have kind of an attitude. I push back rather than giving in. I don't give a rat's ass about other people's taste in aesthetics and am prone to choosing odd things that I like over what is in style or even considered acceptable. (Because of that, I was kind of a goth in high school.) I guess you could call him my inner rebel, but I wouldn't use that strong of a term; I'm just independent, not rebellious.
Anyway, I had also been deliberately but subconsciously interpreting a same-sex attraction as a serious interest in fashion that I do not really have, and I think that was the one of the biggest reasons why he was there.
When I had this dream, I had been trying to be a conventional person, when I'm really, really NOT.
The reason I was so scared of and angry about him is that I didn't want to confront what I had been hiding from myself; that the carefully constructed fake self I was presenting to the world was unsustainable, and trying to maintain it was killing me. I was exhausting myself trying to be that person. My beating on him was my last ditch effort to avoid admitting the dishonesty of that construct.
The little girl who protected him is my sense of right and wrong. No matter how much I learn, that part of me still remains childlike and naive. If I were to look at it now, I'd probably see a young adolescent instead of a child, but that's about as far as I've progressed. That makes it hard to deal with situations of injustice; No matter what logic dictates, somewhere inside I always expect fairness, and am always indignant and offended when events don't go the way I think they should.
The naked woman with green hair and the dancers are my inner attitude about how people view me. I try to be sociable, but in reality, I just don't care. I am who I am, and it doesn't really bother me if people don't want to associate with me because of the definition of "me." The only distress I've ever suffered over being socially awkward came from my sense that others view it as inappropriate to not desire acceptance by people in general. In the past, I have sought others' acceptance because I've been led to feel that not doing so is an inappropriate choice. I don't do that any more.
The woman with butterfly wings is an aspect of my artistic side. I don't care if others recognize or even like what I create. I just enjoy the process of creating, and desire the freedom to continue. I'm kind of sporadic and chaotic in my art. In the way that a butterfly's life is fleeting and unpredictable, so are my creative energy, my inspiration, and my level of production.
The lumberjack and the hunter are my work ethic. I'm a git 'er done kind of girl. These are guys with tough, dangerous jobs, who can't just ask someone else to cover their shift if they get sick or injured. They're competent and hard working, common sense oriented, and rough enough around the edges to not be above stepping outside their given roles to address an issue or achieve a task. That is how I approach work. I have a reputation for not calling in sick, even when I should, and for solving problems no one else can. The "me" in my father's clothes with the dry erase marker is my father's influence on my work ethic. I do often feel like I'm trying to "fill his shoes," and I feel under-qualified to do so.
The boy with the matches represents the obnoxious little brat I can sometimes be, and my fascination with fire.
My sense of humor is definitely more gutter than society. I'm terribly lewd when I'm with my friends. Contrary to my expectations, when I'm ornery like that, the people close to me treat me in a similar manner to the affectionate way that I treat those I view as adorable rather than similar to the impatient way I treat those I view as irritating, so I don't feel too bad about the behavior. I guess it is appropriate for my inner "problem child" to cut loose my sexuality and my stubborn defiance. That little brat has no clue what it's like to have to navigate the maze of rules and expectations that makes up the rest of the civilization with which I have to interact every day!
The clown represents my dismayed sense of not being taken seriously when I am being serious, an experience I loath and kind of fear, which happens way too frequently. I'm not going to focus on that one, though, because I find clowns creepy. I'll just point out that I'm pretty sure this happens to everyone, not just me.
There were changes in how I experienced the world after I had that dream. I went from being upset by dreams in which I was male. I began to stand up for myself more in situations that had previously intimidated me. I felt differently about people, and become more comfortable admitting that female friends of mine are attractive, and that if my husband were female, I'd be just as much in love as I am.
Most of all, I realized that with the exception of my temper I keep myself, particularly my emotions, under too tight of a restraint, and that is why I was over thirty years old before I was able to admit to myself that I am bisexual. Under the surface, I was making that a much bigger deal than it actually is.
Since then, I've made a point to not take my restraint beyond what is required to keep from hurting others. I've started standing up for myself more, and being myself more, and things have been a lot better.
Oddly, though none of my classmates know of my epiphany and I don't plan on telling them, in the Bowled Over dream, I had no fear that the demon was going to "out" me to them. It was revealing things that people would be uncomfortable having others know, and I don't feel uncomfortable with that. I was afraid it was going to say I have an anger disorder that makes me dangerous, or something similarly awkward which would cause my classmates to mistrust or fear me. Whereas it would not bother me that some of them would surely disapprove if they knew my sexuality, it would cause me a great deal of distress, embarrassment, and guilt if they were afraid of me. I guess there is an aspect of others' opinions that I value; while I don't need or desire approval, I do care about how I affect the experiences of others.
There is more to write about this, as after I had the dream about the class reunion (which I didn't attend in real life, though I did hang out with a few classmates the night before at a local bar) I had a dream about that male self in all black. That, however, is going to have to be my next entry, as this one is becoming entirely too long.
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