What could this nightmare mean? Please help :)

The dream takes place in Nebraska (I'm from Chicago, Illinois). I'm living at a weird, old cabin with an older lady and a bunch of people who are around my age. (I don't remember at this time why I was living there or who these people were). A group of the teens living there and I go out of the cabin area. We're walking for a while and we are aware that we're in a very dangerous area, but we have to go through here for some purpose. (I knew what we had to do while I was in the dream, but I can't recall it now.) We get to a marshy area with lots of fallen, moldy logs. One of the boys in the group gets hurt extremely badly and we have to take him to a hospital before it's too late. Only four or five of us from the group go, including the injured boy. 2

{The injured boy looks like my friend Mark, who died of a staph. infection while he was in a hospital being treated for bone cancer. It was the hospital's fault that he caught the infection and died. That happened two years ago. But the boy's name isn't Mark, he just reminds me of Mark.}3

We finally get to the hospital, but no one's there. In fact, it doesn't even look like a hospital. It looks run down, it's made of dark wood, the roof is barely there and there's a lot of garbage and wrecked cars. It smells like blood/death and we feel even more in danger. The lights around the 'hospital' aren't working very well and it's hard to see. We realize there's nothing we can do for the boy, and leave him to die. As we are leaving the 'hospital,' we are suddenly being chased by one of the abandoned cars there. We try to run away from it and everything is very confusing and scary for me in the dream. I lose the other people in my group.4

Then the dream changes a little. I'm alone, and I'm still in a lot of danger. I realize that I cannot go back to the cabin with the lady, that if I do I will never be able to leave or they will hurt me or something like that. I decide I have to leave the state (Nebraska) because the lady and others are searching for me. 5

Randomly throughout the rest of the dream, a map of the dream Nebraska (for it doesn't look at all like Nebraska) pops up. It contains surrounding states and a route I'll have to take to get out of the state and into safety. I want to go back to Chicago, but Illinois is too far away (on the left of Nebraska in my dream) and therefore I have to go somewhere else. Instead, I decide I'll have to go to Houston, Texas (wtf?) to get to safety. Houston is to the right of Nebraska. Once again, this map is nothing like the real United States, so I'm describing how it went in the dream. 6

I'm trying to get there as fast as I can, but I'm very tired and can't move fast enough. I meet very few people along the way because I am trying to take a route away from people. Anyone in Nebraska who sees me might recognize me and make me go back to the cabin. I can't see very well and everything is foggy. I'm trying to stay hidden and am ducking in and out of ditches, foresty areas, etc.7

I have to go through a city on my way to Houston, and no one is there. The city is nearly empty. There is a warf with boats and bright blue water, and I'm walking across the dock, when I see a man. He starts to talk to me and I'm very afraid he'll recognize me. I finally get out of there, but I'm stil very scared that the man will follow me. He talked in riddles and had a suspicious look in his eyes.8

I finally make it to Houston after what felt like weeks. I don't remember what happened after that, I think the dream ended then. I woke up and had a headache. Any ideas as to what this could mean? It was a very bad nightmare.

You have identified that your dream is about your friend and his death. Your subconscious is trying to assimilate knowledge and process his death and how it has and is currently affecting you.

In your dream the hospital is a dirty, disgusting, dangerous place=how you feel about the place that you say was responsible for your friend's death.

The cabin=your subconscious. The dangerous people are your fears..... fears about people dying/death/cancer/infections. The dangerous people may also represent the individuals you believe are at fault for your friend’s death.

Please know this. Your friend’s cancer and the medications he was taking made his immune system compromised. This made it impossible to combat his MRSA infection. Anyone could have, unfortunately, transmitted MRSA to your friend including family, friends, and visitors. MRSA is everywhere now and not just in hospitals. The staff probably suffered, cried and grieved also with the loss of this young man. They probably still think of him and blame themselves for his death. They may be in counseling because of feelings of guilt. ( I see many health professionals experiencing grief from patients dying.) As much as hospital employee try to be extraordinarily sterile, sometimes MRSA infections occur especially in the immunocompromised. I am not trying to negate the responsibilities of this hospital/staff. I think your dream was influenced by believing that the staff intentionally or recklessly took your friend from you.

I am very saddened for your loss. Please find some *helpful* adult, completely uninvolved with the family of the deceased young man, to talk with about his death. Tell them you are dreaming about his death and they will know how much it is bothering your subconscious. Your friend’s family may be in the anger stage of bereavement and may not have *helpful* assistance for you. Sadly, many people never move out of the anger stage of grief. I hope this is different for you and for this friend’s family.

While waiting for the conversation with a *helpful* person, you could read articles about the grieving process on the internet which might help you.

Hi baphomet,

My biggest question approaching this was: Why Nebraska? You might want to think about what Nebraska means to you. I find looking it up that the name means "flat water" and comes from the Sioux. It's major industries are agriculture, food processing, and oil production.

I'm going to go with the "flat water", but if you tell me it means something else to you, I'll think about that later too. Flat water to me is like still water, which runs deep, but also water often symbolizes emotions, and flat emotions tend to come to us when we're depressed or grieving.

I'd say your friend Mark's death had a major impact on you, and at way too early an age, and it's perhaps left you feeling trapped in being sad all the time. I am so sorry that happened, and it didn't just happen to Mark, it happened to everyone who cared about him, including you! I had a younger brother (he was born when I was fifteen), Tom, who died in 1986 from a cocaine overdose, which he took while out at sea on a fishing boat that he'd just returned to for work, just after having been declared in remission from bone cancer two days prior. This happened the day after Thanksgiving that year. He was afraid of the cancer, and his drug problems were serious, and I have come to the conclusion, since I believe in reincarnation, that he had pretty much blown any chance of completing his lessons for this lifetime, and it really was time for him to leave the earth plane. It may be, and I know this might be hard to hear, that the staph infection was an easier and quicker way for Mark to die, and that in fact, it saved him a lot of more severe suffering from the cancer.

But what it also does is leave you stuck in Nebraska, flat waters, feeling emotionally deadened, and that is why you feel so desperate to get out of there! People respond in different ways to the death of a loved one. My mom reacted to Tom's death by spending ten years on prescription tranquillizers washed down with double martinis, and then developed cancer herself and died in 1996. Tom's death took all the light out of her life, and it was really sad to watch, and feel helpless, because I coudn't help her at all! I tried, taking her books by Raymond Moody about "Life After Death", but she just got angry when I did. Nothing could bring her peace. She had before then been a vibrant woman who sold real estate, flew airplanes and was a flight instructor, skiied, did a mulititude of crafts, just full of life! But Tom's death just took it all out of her.

My response to Tom's death was to get hit over the head by my dreams and get a spiritual wake-up call that actually pulled me OUT of a long term clinical depression that I had had since 1976. I had to understand death, and life, and why we're here. It became an adventure, and a salvation. I think it was about those flat waters of emotional deadening of depression turning to the still waters that run deep. I even used the screen name WellWater for a long time! You can take this experience and turn it to gaining a lot of depth of understanding yourself and your life.

You speak here of being alone in the dream, and Texas is often called "The Lone Star State." You need to take hold of what will help you grow and make you feel better, to be the star of your own life for awhile, to examine yourself and your feelings, and treat yourself kindly and well. Do little things for yourself, like taking lovely scented bubble baths, or painting your toe nails a new color, or reading something you've been dying to read but haven't had the time. Whatever it is that makes you feel like you're in the Lone Star State. See? Take care of you!

A dream character who talks in riddles is often an inner guide, actually, and need not be feared. They like to work on our minds, get us to think outside the box, tease us with possibilities we haven't thought of before. He is the source, I think, of using "Nebraska" to refer to "Flat Water." Dreams do a lot of that! Names are often very important to learn the meaning of when they appear in dreams, as the meaning may be the symbol, rather than, or as well as, the actual person or place.

Anyway, I wish you all the best, and I hope you'll try to make yourself the star of your life at least once a day, and let us know what you choose to do for yourself in that regard first! Take care!

If you want to talk more, I'll be checking back!