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strawburygrl feels
I know it's a bit of a ramble, but this has been an amazing entry for me to write. Not because I wrote brilliantly or said anything that would necessarily profound for you. But because I have finally found a way to express completely something so intrinsic in my belief system, in my sense of self, that I've never been able to truly explain into words until now. So it's quite profound for me. I hope you read it all.
***
Last night's dream was a doozey. OMG, is that a word? How do you spell it???
The part I remember most is the hit man.
I was sitting in a chair at home, when a man just walked into my house. He walked past me and shot my cat and a small child who was either a sibling or my offspring, I'm not sure which. It happened with a silencer, behind me, so I knew it had happened, but I refused to believe it. I thought maybe there was a chance they were still alive. And I was going to do whatever I could to stay alive.
I was terrified. He never said a word. In fact, he ignored me for a while. He used some device to scan the room with lasers, like he was taking pictures of it or something. Somehow, I knew he was there because I had been investigating something that he was there to prevent me from finding out. Finally, he turned to me and I began to beg as he took me outside. "Please don't kill me. Please. I'll do anything. Just please don't kill me." I was sobbing and terrified. I kept begging over and over. Finally he took me back inside and sat me on a couch. He gave me a pill.
I was so relieved. He wanted me to take the pill and poison myself, rather than shoot me. Anything rather than watching him shoot me. For a moment, I thought he meant to choke me, because the pill was so big. It looked like a small 8-ball, but blue and white instead of black and white. He shoved it in my mouth. I panicked. I didn't want to choke to death. But he let me go. I immediately felt clumsy and tired, even though I couldn't swallow it and it was just dissolving slowly in my mouth. He smiled and left.
I was so relieved. When he gave me that pill, I had been ready to die. Thankful to die peacefully. But as soon as he was gone, I looked for the phone. I couldn't find it, thankfully, because I realized that he wanted me dead. So obviously he would be monitoring the phone line and would come back and shoot me if I used the phone. I scrounged up my cell phone. Horrible experience with the cell phone and not punching in the buttons right. Must have spent 5 minutes of my damn dream punching and repunching numbers into my cell phone. First to unlock the keys, then to try that difficult combo of "9-1-1". Sooo difficult!!! Eh, stupid dreams!!!
Finally, I dialed it correctly and walked out on the back porch as it was ringing. I realized I was at the house that I spent a summer living at the year between my 1st and 2nd years of college. I told the operator that I had been poisoned and someone had tried to kill me. I couldn't remember the address, but I remembered the road. I told them that I was SF, the woman who owned the house, even though I wasn't sure if I was her or me at the time I said it. Dreams are weird that way.
It took a little convincing to get the woman @ 911 to send help, but eventually she agreed and I hung up. Soon afterwards, I met up with my husband and things started getting better. I don't remember alot after that. Something about Sweetie's family showing up on a horse-drawn trolley as they were site-seeing, and I had to convince them that I had been poisoned. Later, there was something about us all going back to the house to look for the bad guy and lay a trap for him. I seem to remember it involved women & children hiding in a cellar while the men played topside with explosions. Odd that I can remember the middle part of my dreaming so clearly, and not the end.
I was really fucking terrified when that guy was going to shoot me though. There was a point where he leveled the gun at my forehead and I'm surprised I didn't pee my pants (and the bed). I think when that happened, some part of me said, "I've never died in a dream before, this can't happen..." And that's why he decided to take me outside instead and let me plead for my life. Weird that he didn't say a word the whole time.
Oh, there was some bit about going to some chemical facility and weird alien tentacles were growing everywhere and there were explosives to blow the place up. But I don't remember if we were trying to blow it up or save it.
Damn, but dreams are weird...
But once again I've realized a way to tell my dreams from reality, just not how to do it while I'm actually dreaming. Stupid, I should have thought of this before. That whole, I'm a character in a dream, now I'm omnipotent, now I'm another character. That whole thing. Tends not to happen in real life. Except, y'know, I do have that pesky little problem dealing with reality. Bah!!! Maybe this is all just a dream? Argh.
Which reminds me. I think it was a TV show, but I can't remember. Maybe it's just a common tv-show element, that everything's a dream and then someone wakes up. Anybody remember Dallas? Or was that Dynasty...? Anyway, it is a recurring fear that when I realize how close something bad was to happening, like a car accident, I am afraid that I died and the things I'm experiencing now are just a dream. Just my mind's way of denying that I'm dead. "Heaven" if you will. I think many years ago, after I stopped believing in god, but when I was still upset about not knowing what happens when you die, I came up with something comforting.
I know, it was from Star Trek. The episode where the bad guy from Sherlock Holmes, Moriarti?, takes over the holodeck, then the Enterprise. They trick him into thinking he's escaped the holodeck and he's free to live his life in the real world, only he's been stored on a little microchip in a little cube that will program out the rest of his life to his wishes. I thought that might be a nice way to go. If when you die, heaven is merely your life living itself out as you think it should from that point on. Or maybe that, at the moment when you die, whatever you currently believe heaven to be, that's what your mind will create for you. Hence, the people who "see the light".
Anyway, I'd forgotten about that. But it's still affecting me, because too often I stop what I'm doing and wonder, am I dead now? Or maybe, when Sweetie calls me from work and says he's on his way home and that irrational part of me that always screams, "No! Not without me! You'll die in a car crash if I'm not there!" (because it's ok if we die together, just not if he dies and leaves me here). When he arrives home, I often wonder, did he die, and I had a break from reality, and this is just my brain creating a delightful little scenario that I want to live in for the rest of my life.
Did it just last night. It's a terrifying thought. And how could you ever find out? TV shows & movies like to give you the impression that once you realize you're dreaming or living in a fantasy, you'll wake up to the real world. And I used to think so. Because I had never dreamed about dreaming before. Until I realized that fact. And I began dreaming about dreaming. So, if I'm really locked up in an asylum in a vegetative state because my husband's dead, how will I ever realize it and wake up? I don't know. But would I want to?
And now that I think back, I think I've always had problems with reality, and questioning reality. It's a stage that kids go through, thinking that the world revolved around them. Hence peek-a-boo can be so fun, and small children tend to hide by covering their heads only. Because they think that if they can't see you, you can't see them. Later, it's a tendency in older children to change to the world revolved around me thing. They think they can't die. They think they're invincible. They wonder about their place in the world. Friends in high school all admitted to feeling a little bit like this sometimes, a kind of "god" complex.
When I was really young, I saw a Twilight Zone episode that showed a man with a fly head, and what he saw. A million visions of the same thing, because of his eyes. I was terrified that this was real for some people. This got me to thinking. What if *everyone* around me saw like that, except me? What if *everyone* around me was psychic, excpet me? What if everyone saw what I called red as blue, but they still called it red? How would I know? How on earth could I know? Very big concepts for someone in kindergarten.
Around the same time was when I watched a 700 Club episode that freaked me out. My mom demanded that I never watch it again, because I couldn't stop crying. She never understood. They didn't talk about hell or anything. They talked about heaven. And how wonderful it was. Because you would live forever at God's side, basking in his love. And the idea of "Forever" finally clicked in my head. And I freaked out. Completely. What if you get BORED standing next to God FOREVER??? I have never been comfortable with the idea of Forever since. My idea of heaven would be to gain instant knowledge, know how humanity turns out in the end, then to just go to sleep, fade out, and never wake up again. Peace and Quiet after a satisfying conclusion.
And a few years later, there was the Twilight Zone episode about everyone being in one man's dream. Because every morning he woke up, he would have the same experience over and over, with the same group of people, except they all played different characters every day.
Yah, that one freaked me out too.
Maybe I shouldn't have watched so much TV as a child. Maybe. But the damage is done. I question reality. Alot. But shouldn't you?
