side notes

Note: Subway trains and broken staircases - most often, staircases under construction - are frequent images in my dreams.

The university / multilevel shopping mall with a Starbucks is also a frequently recurring dream theme.

I'm with Karin, my best friend from elementary school, a Swedish blonde who was very popular with the boys in later years while I was her ugly friend. Two boys from our class are there. We're all adults and we're talking about going for lunch. I'm having trouble with something (perhaps parking my car?) so I lag behind as they start for a lunch place. Karin waves at me as she goes toward the university because she has a class in an hour. I decide I'd rather go to Starbucks in the university than tag behind Robbie and David to go to some fast-food place full of stuff I can't eat. So I veer off and go into the mall / university looking for the Starbucks, hoping to find it in the hour I have before class.

Unfortunately, I enter the complex and find myself in a stuffy furniture store section that appears to have no way out to the rest of the mall. I do see a staircase that seems to be under construction. I see that some steps are there. I ignore it and keep looking. I find a set of concrete steps leading down into another hallway, but as I approach the crevice I find that the steps are against the wall and I'm standing next to a vertical drop. I'll have to jump to reach the stairs. I decide to put my handbag down and try it. A passer-by is urging me on. I throw myself against the wall and land on a step. The passer-by cheers me and then makes as if to throw my handbag to me, but he considers this a moment and then runs off with my handbag. I have no way to get back up there to chase him. For a moment I wonder whether I can make him come back and throw me my handbag, but then I dismiss that as unrealistic.

I go down the steps and I'm on a subway platform. I don't know whether the train is going to take me south or north. If north, I'll end up in the Starbucks section of the mall. If south, I'm out of luck. A train comes and nearly knocks me over. I don't get on it. I leave through a doorway...

...and find myself under a very low ceiling about to crawl out through a small opening that looks like a bird's tail. In a moment I realize I'm under a plane!! I panic and scramble to get out. A worker is there and tells me I shouldn't even be anywhere near the runway. I ask the worker how to get to Starbucks and he tells me to just go through that door behind him. I head toward it. That's when I wake up.

My dad, my sister Bren, and I are in a department store. I've just completely defied the family by refusing to go to an all-day Mennonite church service and opting to hang out with the backsliders in the Mennonite Social Club instead. I'm refusing to say I'm sorry, and I'm telling my father he can't boss me around. I'm trying to get them to follow me to the Mennonite Social Club to show them that it isn't sinful. My father starts chasing me and hitting me with his fists. There's nothing in the Bible that specifically says he can't do that. I cower and try to protect myself. I yell at passers-by, "Help! Please call the police!" but no one helps, they just stare. I finally get away and he orders me, "Get in the car!" I say no. I keep refusing and I leave. Then my father starts to get flirty and cajoling. He calls me his little girl. I don't like the way he looks at me. He goes off to look at the rest of the store, and then he shows up again with a sly smile, saying, "I tricked you. You thought I'd left you. But here I am." I run away. I find a clothing store manager and tell her everything that's going on. She says we'll have to find store security and they will report it to the police. I'm just trying to GET it to the police, and no one seems willing to help me so far. The store manager finds one of her bosses and I tell her the story. They all say, "You poor child," and try to console me, but I can see they're also too freaked out to want to get involved. I go back to the part of the store where Bren and my dad were waiting. I see a note from Bren about where dinner is, etc. and they've gone home. I look around and there are a bunch of presents to unwrap! It's also a living room display, so it looks like it's my own apartment. I learn from security that I'll be allowed to stay in the store overnight and to help myself to any products I may need, such as toothpaste or shampoo. I'm happy. I discover that Bren has left a stick of chocolate licorice to make up for anything my father did. I still want to report my father, but I'm enjoying the comforts of this home display and considering just letting things be and accepting the gifts of material comforts and security. Someone shows up with "sexual intent vision" glasses to spot any illicit intentions on the part of my dad during his next appearance. I wear them too when my father shows up the next day, but I worry because I'm not good at pointing the camera while hiding that I'm wearing them. I'd also be punished severely for that unthinkable level of defiance toward my parents. That's when I wake up with an intense vascular headache and feeling sick to my stomach.

Real-life note: My father hit me, but never sexually abused me. He would be horrified and devastated if he ever knew that at 14, I was generally terrified that he might cross that line. I suffer from PTSD related to treatment by my parents and bullying in school. Also, I needed extra Clonazepam (extra-dosed under medical advice) to get to sleep last night because I'd run out of Mirapex.

It's the early 80s and I'm in my late teens/early 20s. I have an assignment I'm working on for university and I need more paper for the typewriter. I go all around the house, hoping to find some paper that Dad has left beside a typewriter somewhere or stowed away in one of his heavy wooden work desks. I can find none, so I sigh because I'm going to have to go upstairs and ask for some from my parents and I know things are tense up there. I go and ask for some paper. My mother asks me to apologize first for my tone of voice earlier. I now remember that we'd been sitting on camping chairs in the forest and she'd started to slap me around, but then we'd come into the present (me 47 years old and in good physical condition; her in her mid 70s and weakened) and I'd fought back, bringing her to the ground. She'd felt humiliated and hadn't spoken to me since. She and Dad were afraid I'd gone bad and would end up a street kid. So I ask for some paper, I'm asked to apologize, and Dad and my sisters just mouth to me, "Just do it." So I frame an apology under a tight smile. I'm given some paper. I go out the front door to the street where I grew up, and I let out a scream. It's heard inside, and then my mom herds my two sisters, both under 15, out the door and into the station wagon. They're about to leave the family and leave me with Dad and she and Dad are even talking about how to divide up the dogs. I look at the dogs and know they're crying inside because they know they're about to be separated forever and it's my fault. I can't believe my sister Bren is in the car and not saying anything. I yell at her that I thought she was my best friend and that she's a traitor - and it seems someone I can't identify is beside me feeding the word "traitor" to me, coaching me along. Then I yell at my sister Joanne, who is now a tall blonde woman with a two-year-old son. I see a Sunday School schedule where my sisters and I attend a shul while my nephew attends a Sunday School class on Jesus. (We're not Jewish in real life - at least not in practice, only in partial background.)

I wake up with people vaguely whirling about me, blaming me for breaking up my family. I'm still drugged up with Clonazepam and therefore half in dreamland, so I know I have to go back to sleep and kill myself in the dream to show everybody I'm a valid person. I know it's safe to kill myself in the dream, because I'll just wake up here. So I go back into the dream and then I'm watching news accounts of myself taking Clonazepam two at a time and delaying each dosage so I don't throw up, so that the overdose'll take and I'll get to leave. But instead I see myself as a blonde teen prostitute with tatoos all over her body. The tatoos are in the form of black vines crawling over every inch of my skin. There's a documentary narration voice stating I woke up here, my name was Margaret as a kid but it's now Megit, and I'm serving fries - which men are only too happy to take from me. The way I'm serving fries is, well, pornographic, and one by one. Apparently Margaret had woken up drugged up and surrounded by a prostitution ring. The documentary goes on to say that the rest of the family - who are now African-American brothers - has reunited and the sons have their own sons, who uncomfortably remind them of themselves.

Very important note here: I'm not suicidal in real life, not in the least. I used to be. But I'm too old and too well medicated for that crap now. I had forgotten to take my antidepressant yesterday morning, but had realized and taken it at night.

Another note: Yes, my mom used to slap me around a bit. She'd get in strange moods where you could almost see a thundercloud over her head. I remember once I saw her like that and stiffened up as I had to walk by her, and then she whaled on me with four or five slaps and told me it was because I was walking with my "nose in the air" looking like I had a "stick up [my] ass". I was scared of her and my dad, who got his slaps and kicks in as well when he went through his depression, to the point that at the age of 14 I almost left home. This is just another PTSD-type nightmare. I read a story about a street kid yesterday, so that was probably what triggered the element of fear of what could have happened to me.

Bits of this morning's dream (last vestiges of a Clonazepam sleep):

I'm making popcorn in my wok. Clearly I haven't thought this through, because I don't have a cover big enough for it. The popcorn and the oil start flying all over the kitchen, and I'm afraid my mom's about to come in and start yelling at me again for making a mess, or slapping me as she used to do whenever she was "tired". (I've actually been living on my own for 21 years and I could certainly take down my 70-year-old mother in a physical fight. I only recently started making my own popcorn and I frequently burn it.)

As I'm trying to cover it up, we shift to an establishing shot of the building I'm in - a gas station/diner - and then to a computer screen where I'm getting an email from a guy who in real life has just asked me out for the 17th time. I'm not interested in him, and I've told him repeatedly that I'm busy, and this last time he asked me out I finally told him I had a boyfriend. (I don't, but often a persistent man will finally leave you alone if he thinks he'll have to deal with another male instead of just trying to wear YOU down.) He had responded nastily - "Okay what a weird response, I wasn't asking you out, I was just asking you for coffee!!!!!" (Creepy.) In this dream, the same email exchange occurs, but in addition to this nastygram from him, he includes a series of symbol characters (as in smileys or winkies and stuff like that) that, when looked at sideways, look like Mr. Knox from Fox In Sox with an erection.

Ew. But I do wish I could remember the sequence of characters....

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 in an open-air theatre play and I know there are bullies in the audience from when I went to public school. I have to be dressed as an antebellum Southern belle and skip in, climbing up a hill near a pier, and then somehow blithely run down the rickety steps onto the pier where a handsome gentleman is waiting, without getting my shoes caught in the boards. We haven't had a dress rehearsal (think of this as the classic Exam Nightmare for actors). It's the Fringe, and the whole cast keeps saying that as one might say, "Meh - it's only a rental car." I have: the dress, my hat, my hair to keep done up, an umbrella, and a Bo-Peep cane to keep track of while skipping down those stairs!

The audience is filling up with rampantly patriotic Americans and I'm not even confident I know all the words to their national anthem! I'm in the dressing room trying to get my hat and hair on straight, let alone prepare for the scene, when a bell rings and someone cues me to just go. I do, grasping my hat, umbrella and cane, and I discover I have to jump over a bunch of nets to get to the performance space. A bunch of animated Disney characters pop up in my path, so I improvise: "Oh, hello, little piggy! Isn't it a fine day?" and such, in a comically exaggerated Southern drawl.

I come to a net attached to a rope at the end of which is the American flag. I try to cross it, and get my shoe caught in it. The audience is getting restless and I have to go now! I rip the shoe out. A tough-looking female Homeland Security officer follows me and gives me a hard time: But this is broken, ma'am, we can't fix it, it's the flag, ma'am, someone's going to have to pay for that, etc., as long as I don't move out of her sight.

I have to go. I just run. I get to the pier, and there's my leading man, but the lights are blinding me and I can't see him to playfully poke him with my cane and then act all nonchalant as the opening gag. The music for "My Old Kentucky Home" is playing and I'm supposed to sing along. I don't know the second line, so it comes out, "...and the caissons go rolling along." Then it turns into that song about the flag, not America the Beautiful but the other one that they sang very frequently after 9/11, the one the heavy lady is famous for - Kate Somebody. I don't know it!

I wake up trying to remember it. It's been 25 minutes with this iPad beside my pillow and I still can't.

I know one trigger is that I saw the musical "The Parade" the other day - the one about Leo Frank. I thought I might play Lucille in the future. My coloring often gets me cast as Jewish, Italian, Greek or Middle Eastern women.

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.