memorable

In this segment of the dream, I've just managed to pry a bat off my shoulderblade. (Note: I have chronic pain in my shoulderblade and last night, for the first time, I tried an Icy Hot patch on the area. It seemed to be making my bed cold and wet whenever I woke up during the night, so I was worried about it.) I've also seen a mini-bat, a sort of cross between a black bat and a dragonfly, slip under the door to try to get to me. Then I feel sharp pains in my left shoulder. (Note: The Icy Hot Patch is on my right.) It feels like something is biting me. When I turn around, I see that there is a snake looking up at me from the floor. She's a pale-orangey kind of colour, the colour of a cake baked with orange zest. (Note: I'd baked madeleines the other day and part of the recipe called for orange zest, and I'd been unsure whether that meant all of the orange peel or just the inner flesh under the peel, so that had worried me.) The snake is looking intently at me as if she's on a mission. I try to shoo her away. I try to run away. She keeps getting to me and rhythmically striking at me - in the same spot. She finally says to me, "Look, I'm trying to help you. I need to give you the scars for the electrolysis." I think about it for a moment, but I don't know what she means. I'm not even planning to get electrolysis done. So I continue to run away. She always catches up with me. When I get out of the house - which looks a lot like my grandmother's house from when I was a kid - I'm finally rid of her. I go around to the back to get into the kitchen, which I do from an upper window. The people in the cast of my film are there, cooking on the stove, and Aunt Janet from the Road to Avonlea series is there baking. Aunt Janet starts to scream bloody murder when she sees me come in. The ceiling corners above me are dirty and covered with strands of cobwebs.

I'm at a revival-meeting-type gathering and it's unclear whether they're Christians, Wiccans, or a melange of both. It's about to be my turn to get up onstage to be "read". I get a choice of lotto-game-type cards to choose from and I choose the purple one. The woman holding the meeting looks at it and says, "Forget it. You're lost. You're headed for destruction and there's no way to save you." I assume she's about to heal me from this horrible destiny, so I get up onto the podium, and then she trips and falls. She looks back and blames me as if I've made it happen. She orders me off the stage. There is also someone calling out that I use cards, which they call by some kind of T-word like "trock" (can't remember), and I say, "You mean tarot?" Everybody in the congregation gasps and looks at me as though I were the devil himself. They start to stare at me with hate in their eyes that forces me off the stage.

It's clear that I'm going to get no healing here, so I wander around the audience looking for someone who might help me. I run into an old psychology colleague who used to be a baseball coach and who is a no-nonsense wise man. He tells me this is all b------t and that they're using me to try to sell psychic readings. They know I'll see through their tactics, so they're marginalizing me to their public to try to make an example of me. I run across an acolyte, a heavy and sweet-faced woman in her 30s or 40s, with a braid of long hair down to her waist. She smiles at me and says she'll help me, but then when she walks past, her hair is jerked back as if I'd pulled it, and she falls. She blames me and everybody sees it.

I leave, convinced I'm doomed, and I come across a table full of lotto-type tickets where you pull a paper out of a paper sleeve, like in a children's book where you pull a tab and the horse's tail wags. I pick purple again as my favourite colour, and it says, "You may as well forget it. You're lost. You know how a condemned man's last meal is whatever he wants? Go do whatever you want. Have a blast for your last couple months of life on Earth." It goes on to say that some of the signs of the end days are that fruit will turn to dust. Every fruit I find turns to dust in my hands. Frantically, I start picking other colours. Pink says I may have some hope, but if I've picked purple already I'm hopelessly lost. Green finally says I have some hope - it's a deep forest green. I know bystanders are looking at me as if I'm nuts.

I wake up with a headache. It takes me a few minutes to convince myself it was only a dream.

But was it?

I had asked God and my guardian angel, and any other angels who wanted to help me, to be with me in my dreams. Is this their message to me??

If anyone has a possible alternative answer and cares to comment on this, please do. I will say that I've been going through a Major Depressive Episode (partly related to Cymbalta withdrawal) after a very difficult Christmas with my family, and I posted last night on another forum about how angry I was over past abusive treatment. I've always felt terrified of being angry with my parents or sisters, and last night I wrote out how angry I was and faced the possibility of being cut off from them in my mind. I actually did write in the post that I "might not even go to hell for this". Briefly, I got physically roughed up on Christmas Day by one of my sisters while I was in the middle of a near-catatonic depressive episode, and a lot of past abuse issues have been coming up for me. It's always felt very dangerous to let it make me angry, because I'd lose my family, be cut off, and possibly go to hell for disobeying the honour-thy-parents commandment. I'd certainly be cut off in life, suddenly without a family - even a sometimes abusive family being a safer feeling than none at all. Hate your famliy, and you're alone in an uncaring world.

But it does bother me that I made a specific request (and had made that request repeatedly) to God and the angels to be with me during my dreams, and not only are they still nightmares, but I've now had one essentially saying that I'm a lost cause and they're going to throw me into Hell. What?!?!

I thought this was worth noting. I had a dream about Colm last night. We were, at one point, in the midst of the physical act. It was very vivid; I physically felt every sensation. And that was strange, because in real life, the sexual act is usually physically extremely painful to me. Here there was no pain, only love and an indescribable, beautiful connection. The one I felt with him when I was with him in Mexico. He is one of only two people with whom I have felt that kind of connection.

It's nice to be able to see what the big deal about the penetration phase of sexual intercourse is all about, even if it's only a dream. It's also nice to have a break from my nightmares. I suppose my mind needed the respite. I am also at the onset of menopause, and have likely had that in the back of my mind as well.

(Backdating this entry because this is a dream that's been on my mind for several weeks now. Originally posted in my private blog November 13, 2010.)

Okay, this sucker is way too weird not to journal about. And I've just awoken from it, so retention should be pretty good - although it was too detailed and involved to easily forget. I'll follow the usual practice of dream recall and work backwards.

The dream ends with me losing my temper at Aidan right after he finds me hiding in his apartment. I'm yelling at him about everything. In fact, true to Clonazepam's side effects, I'm still yelling at him in my head as I'm getting up from my bed after waking up, or rather hearing him yell that this is all a dream now and I'm awake anyway....

He has just discovered me hiding there in a closet in an empty room that he obviously never uses, sitting on a portable potty he's got in there. (Marker of my dreams: there are lots of these fake potties not connected to any plumbing.) I've managed to evade discovery up to now because Aidan's been in the next room (which has a slightly ajar door connecting to this one) writing/singing a song about how much hate is in him bursting to get free, and a variation on the usual bait line about longing for the right woman, this one about how he'll know her because she will see and discover that hate and know what to do with it.

This is after I've just left some other girl, part of Aidan's circle, sleeping in his spare room - we'd been there because Aidan had given me a key and we were stopping there to get ready to go to the party. I'd left her, found a little alcove with a bed, and found this closet and pulled my laptop into it to blog, with the AC cord plugged in around the corner. I was reading a book that the other girl had written. She said she was from Madison, Wisconsin and four of her five sisters were nurses, while the other was a lawyer and she named the firm (I can't remember, but I think one of the names sounded like Blast). I had read a book that was chronicling what had happened in my life five minutes ago. I was making notes all over it. It was fine when I confronted Aidan and R, a well-known Canadian actor, playwright and activist, together and said, "Obviously I'm well known among your friends. How am I known?" (A waking-life concern for several years now.) Whereupon both of them sort of hem and haw and Aidan finally takes it: "Well, the usual comment is when they see you walk into a place, 'That's your stalker? Wow - I'll take her off your hands, man!'"

(In real life, not to be obnoxious about this, but everyone tells me how beautiful I am and how I don't look my age, and I have to say bluntly that I generally agree. But not once - not once - has it meant my romantic feelings for a specific person have ever been returned in kind. So it's a great compliment, and I always appreciate it because I usually forget it as real-life experience doesn't support it, but I do wish it would lead to better results.)

So I'm reading further into this manuscript - which has an advising professors's name on the front page - and it goes on to describe how other girls at the party say things like, "We've all been taken in by crocodile scrips like Colm." (???) I've finished the book and finished arguing with the girl about how non-roadworthy my car is, and obviously the party's over by this time so she goes to bed. I look for a bathroom to use and notice noises indicating that Aidan's home. It'll look like I'm stalking him if I've stayed there.

Cut to before the apartment: It's 4:00 in the morning, and a wafer-thin African-descent hooker named Lola (word in a crossword puzzle three days ago), with blonded Afro hair and a skin-tight micromini sheath, is following me, saying no one cares about her. The other girl with me from the party is getting exasperated, and she turns into Bree from Desperate Housewives. Cut to a moment before: Lola has been eyeing me as if I'm encroaching on her turf, but then she just says, "You done for the night?" "Yeah." "Good night!" "You're beautiful!" Then she follows me, saying no one ever calls her beautiful. My Bree-like friend looks exasperated. "This is Melissa," I say, "and she already knows she's beautiful!" Melissa gives Lola a strained smile. We get to Aidan's building and I say, "This isn't my apartment, so I can't invite you in - but I'll help you find a homeless shelter for the night." Then the details get lost in how I'm using my iPhone to look up hostels online, but that turns out to be a bad idea because they'll ask for a credit card from Lola.

Cut to: My old parking lot in a suburb of Toronto. The Lada is there that my parents gave me in 1989. That thing was ten years old and never worked properly. It was broken into once just for the radio I'd put into it. It doesn't stop on snow unless you press the brake at least five car lengths ahead of time - the brakes are ground almost to nothing. I'm nearly out of gas. Repeatedly, I impress upon Melissa that perhaps driving this thing to a party in North Hollywood, where I would almost certainly be drinking, wouldn't be the sharpest move. She just goes, "Uh-huh," and does up her seatbelt. I sigh and continue to drive, making a mental note to stop at the store near my parents' house, 1500 miles away, for gas before going on the half-hour drive from Toronto to North Hollywood for this geographical confusion of a party.

Cut to R's (said Canadian famous person) estate in LA. I've met a bunch of girls from various parts of the US that are there for a fan convention. Most of Aidan's crowd has left, but some are straggling around passing around the address where the party will be. I don't have it, so I hook up with a bunch of girls who know the address and have GPS in their cars.

Cut to previously mentioned conversation in which R and Aidan reassure me that I'm okay. But this time it's about stalking R!! We also talk about the fact that I'm usually unaware of sex, but when confronted by R's full-frontal naked body, I feel a strange, oddly familiar, and unbidden full-body sensation of pleasure. It's commented, I think by R himself, that this is natural and biological. It occurs to me that pure, plain sex is something I rarely, if ever, think about these days. (And it's true. If I'm ever turned on - and I don't think I am - I don't know it. I'm not certain, but I think it's a side effect of my antidepressants. Possibly when Jeff claps me on the shoulder the way he usually does. What I think of as a "rush of endorphins" when he hugs me might actually be a rush of reproductive hormones, for all I'm aware. I just know I enjoy it.) R is very nice and logical about it, kind of as if he's trying to explain this to a 12-year-old kid entering puberty. (And I think I noticed him favourably in a movie when I was about 16.) But by the end of this conversation, I somehow just want to be around Aidan some more - as if he's raw masculine sexuality, without the complication of actually liking or having any feelings of friendship for him. It's an intriguing feeling.

Prior to this, R is smiling at me and telling me he's sorry he didn't tell me that the pool was a self-contained pool, not a pond connected to the earth. I in turn tell him I was about to apologize for peeing in his pool. And then I'm inside the main house where everyone is drying off, and I'm looking for a place to get to a bathroom and change. The only place avaliable is off R's bedroom, where I walk in to discover him lying naked - only he looks like a giant burnt squid. I still avert my eyes and stick my hand out to block my vision, and I manage to get past him and get to the stall. Meanwhile he wakes up and discovers me there. There's a definite you-are-a-disgusting-stalker colour to being discovered uninvited in a room where an attractive and sought-out man is lying naked.

Before this, I go down to a pond. It's just after dawn, calm and idyllic. I strip down. I'm in the pond, and I decide to relieve my bladder. Then others arrive - all people from Aidan's crowd. It's a closed-off pool. I'm certain the yellow cloud of social-ostracism flag surrounding me is obvious to everyone.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, R and I are doing a scene from MacBeth in which we have to kiss. I'm trying my best not to be obviously attracted to him. He is attracted to me as his character, but when the scene ends, he's an acting teacher. He's even coldly analyzing my kissing technique.

That's pretty much the bulk of what I remember. A few things are obvious in writing this dream down. 1) I must have had to go to the bathroom pretty badly. 2) It's all about my fear of being considered a stalker if I get too familiar and informal around celebrities. 3) There's a slight possibility that I may be feeling the lack of a current boyfriend who is actually in the same city with me.

And 4) It's probably these drugs I'm on that are making my dreams this detailed, complex, convoluted and weird.

Regardless, I know for sure that I'm not an obsessed fan of R in real life, though I do have a good deal of respect for him as an actor and as an activist and teacher. I'm just not the obsessed-fan/stalker type. Getting into that would be just plain dumb. Perhaps he is an attractive man, but that has no relevance to me in waking life and I simply never think about it. I guess I must have seen him on a rerun recently and thought about the romance between his character, a painfully shy scientist, and one of the main characters on the show, and I must have thought of a painfully shy man to whom I've found myself involuntarily attracted lately. Plus, Aidan is still normally not at all attractive to me or even someone I'd normally hang out with. What are either of these two gentlemen doing in my dreams?