Dreams have always fascinated me, there are so many theories behind them, it’s amazing that we’re still so unsure about something so common. It’s also a little scary to think that! Dreams are normally difficult to recall and are more frequently recalled when the dreamer is awakened whilst dreaming. I must be awakened whilst dreaming most of the time because I recall my dreams quite frequently, how reliable these dream recalls of mine are is another story.
My dreams have always been pretty bizarre, but when put into the theory by Ferenczi that my dreams may be trying to communicate something that isn’t being actually said, they seem pretty logical. I’ve had the most common dreams; the chase dream (although there’s something about being chased by a sausage dog that turns into a dwarf when it get closer that masks the interpretation of anxiety and turns it into plain comedy! I’m not sure what the sausage dog/dwarf symbolises but they are meant to represent things in my life that I’m trying to escape from), the teeth dream (dreaming of being bitten apparently represents the biter having power over me – I should be more assertive)!
So the reason I’m writing this blog at 6:40am is that 40 minutes ago I was awakened by the shock of a dream. Normally I can fall back to sleep easily after being awoken from a dream but this dream really startled me and I’m finding it difficult to find a reliable interpretation to set my mind at rest. All I have managed to depict so far is that there is an aspect of trust. I also felt that there were characters in this dream set out from the start, I felt as if it was some sort of tv show and I actually saw characters (which never usually happens, normally the characters faces are never very clear) and they reappeared.
In my dream I was trying to walk home from somewhere, nowhere that I particularly recognised, it just seemed to be a route that a normal person might take whilst walking home from work or school. I saw a path that looked like a shortcut, it didn’t particularly look like a shifty place, however I avoided it and opted to walk along the path at the side of the road. The route then guided me downwards to cross a sort of carpark that was just under the ground, I crossed it and walked up the steps to a lighter part of the, now apparently multi-story, carpark. I passed a man on the phone who appeared to work there, he pulled the phone away from his ear and made a face as if the person on the other side was his nagging wife or child. I smiled politely and carried on trying to figure my way out of the building that I’d gotten into. I passed a man and a woman who also appeared to work there, the woman had short red (dyed) hair and they were both wearing navy blue jumpers. I approached them and asked them the way out and the man pointed me in the right direction. I headed off the way he pointed out and eventually got to the barriers that the cars would go through and the man and woman were both there taking tickets off the drivers – I asked the man if this was the way to go as I’d never gone out the same way as a car before and he said that I just needed to go up the steps to my right and I’d be out. I went up the steps but found myself in a room with a chest freezer that was about half the average size, I was just about to leave when I heard a noise so I ducked down. When I looked back up the man was sat on the freezer with a grin on his face and after a few moments he opened it and pulled out a large, weighty (I could actually sense the weight) plastic bag. In that bag all I could see was navy blue and dyed red… he’d frozen his co-worker and apparently I was next (although I never actually saw it as I awoke from shock).
What a disturbing dream! As I was writing about it something actually came to my mind and I may have found my dream interpretation. If I had taken the shortcut I had seen at the start of the dream would I have been safer than I was following my safer instincts and trusting other people to tell me the right way, rather than my initial impulse of the shortcut? Maybe my dream is trying to tell me that I should stop worrying about things (the shortcut being potentially dangerous) and not rely on others to tell give me direction in my life and me the truth all the time. It sounds like a plausible interpretation, right?
After my traumatic dream I cannot get back to sleep simply for the reason that I’ve never had a dream before that had set characters, people that I didn’t know yet whose faces I could see almost fully. This is why dreams are so fascinating. I have no idea what that could mean, maybe it’s a premonition and I will see that face in real life trying to make me trust them and I just shouldn’t. Maybe it’s a face I’ve already seen but forgotten. Either way, I’m worried if I close my eyes the final scene of my dream will haunt me, as I can still see it in the back of my thoughts.
It’s 7am, the church bells have just chimed for the first time today, maybe I will sleep now, knowing that it’s now daytime and people are rousing from their sleep and it’s not quiet, isolated night time anymore.
Carcassonne 2009 