Nerefa

This is a personal dream that I wouldn’t normally post, but I wanted to share one of these. This is a good example of a therapeutic lucid dream. It shows one of the ways you can benefit from lucid dreaming if you experience grief or other difficult emotions.

Warning: A lot of unpleasantness ahead.

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We went to my grandpa’s house since we happened to be there and I decided to real quick grab some more of my stuff like the office chair. We didn’t leave much there, but the office chair was the one big thing I left.

He wasn’t home. I deliberated skipping it, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to just go in and grab the chair so he wouldn’t have to worry about moving it.

I know how much I personally hate unannounced guests and I would never want someone doing this for me, but I keep thinking of how much he’s expressed difference from me in this way. It makes no sense to me, but he never cared about people just walking into his house. He used to refuse to put doors between rooms in his house, removing them any chance he got, and didn’t like locks—he’d never lock his house. He’d leave doors wide upon and get excited about the happy surprise if anyone like a neighbor just happened to walk in out of the blue. All the time he’d invite people to show up and do things for him when he wasn’t home, as if the very thought of (what I would consider) an intrusion delighted him.

So I went in and got the chair. It was already sitting by the door, affirming his intention to get rid of it.

He then pulled up just as we were leaving. He was pissed, but not because it bothered him that I walked into his house. He wasn’t truly bothered at all, but acted as such merely because it violated the boundaries he knew I had. My boundaries, which he found a way to weaponize in this moment. It was shallow anger laced with the “Gotcha” delight that almost overided it to a point where I couldn’t take it seriously.
“So we’re just walking into people’s houses now.” he said with a sneer, but he could barely take his own pseudo rage seriously and I could hear the laughter below out from behind it.
It was strange, though. Something wasn’t right.
He then turned to me and I saw glimpses of the nice grandpa I used to know as he held his arms out and hugged me. He said he was happy to see me, he loved me, and goodbye.
There was anger and spite still in him, directed at me at the same time.
I asked if he wanted some money to cover any potential bills.
I felt bad that I don’t have much now because we just moved, but I’d give him whatever I could.
He answered with two voices clearly speaking in unison. One said yes, that it would help. The other voice cheered with derision. “Ooh money, hehehe!” it chuckled, as if celebrating plundered goods despite me giving it freely. It made it sound like I was being robbed even though that’s not what this was. I owed him far more than I could give, and I wanted to help him more than anything.
I didn’t like how that voice made me feel gross helping him, so I ignored it. I gave him $100, silently promising I’d have more later, and hugged him again. I told him thank you, that I loved him. I knew it was stupid to cry, but did so anyway.
I hurriedly got back in the car after waving goodbye and could hear the deriding voice cheering and mocking me as it celebrated the money.
His other voice didn’t speak, but it was sad and watched us leave as if it wished it could leave, too.
I felt pulled in two different directions whenever I was around him lately, ever since we moved here.
I never used to feel this way.

As we pulled out of the driveway, I saw something sitting there. It was short and black, and it sat in a massive puddle of itself. Now that I looked at the house from outside, I could see it better. There was black grime everywhere. It was all over the property, having spread itself onto everything, a wet spiderweb of black goop. It was all over my grandpa too. His clothes, hair, and skin had little strings of weblike goop all over. It leaked out from inside his mouth and the corners of his eyes.
I thought about how, in waking life, there was always this strange invisible grime that follows him. It has a physical texture and smell, but I couldn’t see it. The only time I ever saw him without it was for a few years when he was practicing Buddhism. At that time, he was happier than I had ever seen him before.
He still keeps all the statues and pictures from his trip to Burma, but I avoid talking to him about Buddhism as it seems to anger him if it’s brought up.
Anyway in this dream I didn’t see it when I was in the house, but I could see the black grime clearly now from the car.

I looked down at myself, checking our car and things. We were clean. It wasn’t on us. I wasnt worried about it getting on us either, as I knew it didn’t want anything to do with us.

It had already tried over the course of the two years we lived there. That’s why it spited us, and wanted us gone.
I looked out the window at my grandpa, who watched us drive away.

“…I got manipulated, didn’t I?” I then turned and asked my partner.

“Yeah.” she said.

I nodded, not knowing why I asked other than to get her opinion, I guess.

For a moment, we couldn’t decide where to go, but ultimately we decided to go home to the new place.