Thread: I dreamt of a dying basking shark.

Hi Everyone. I'm new here, I joined today because I had a dream last night that I just can't shake. If someone could help shed some light on it that would be great. I'll post the dream, and then some background information after. Thanks so much in advance.

I don't remember the dream having a specific beginning, only that I found myself swimming in opaque blue green water. There was no shore in sight just miles and miles of water. I remember feeling very very sad. Some sort of intense sorrow, the pit of your stomach, makes you want to laugh so you don't cry kind of sorrow but it didn't seem to effect me. I just kept swimming, not a specific stroke, more like a mermaid, without the need to come up to the surface to breathe. There were no birds in the air, and nothing in the sea but myself. No plants, no fish, no life. Just me and this sorrow. Then I realized I could see the sand beneath me. I came up to the surface and there was an island of black rock out in the distance. I started to swim toward it, then beneath me there was a big black shadow. I swam down toward it and realized it was a basking shark. It was huge, maybe 40 feet long, and slow and graceful. It had big flowery gills, they were yellow and lacy, and he had the saddest eyes. Then I realized it wasn't swimming right. I looked back and could see that all of it's ribs were broken and that you could see the fragments beneath his skin. I felt intensifying sadness and a kind of panic, like I needed to save him, somehow fix all of this. We swam together to shallower water and a woman that I've never seen before, with long dark hair showed up beside me and started trying to help me. We didn't speak, the entire dream was silent, but we worked together somehow. We swam up to the edge of a cliff, which seemed to appear out of nowhere. We peered over the edge, and it was a long long fall down into what looked like a garbage dump. We looked back at the dying shark, and then started pushing it over the edge of the cliff. When the shark finally fell, the water began to flow off the edge too. We slid down the waterfall with the shark, and landed in a giant clear bowl or cup of some sort. it had a flat bottom and straight sides without an angle. It actually kind of looked like a giant beaker without any markings. The garbage was all gone and we spent the rest of the dream trying to help this giant shark, but the glass was too small or the shark was too big, there wasn't enough room for it to swim around. we tried to reposition its ribs but we couldn't fix it. It was going to die, and there was nothing to be done. The last thing I remember before waking up was floating face down on the surface of the water, looking down on this giant shark that was going to die, regardless of what I did. And a feeling of overwhelming sadness and failure swallowing me.

That feeling has haunted me all day, and I keep seeing this shark in this giant beaker, that is not nearly large enough, knowing that it was dying.

About me, I'm 25, I'm happily married, my dad and I are very close, my mother is mentally ill and has hated me my whole life. I very happily cut her out of my life when I turned 18 and have no regrets about it. My sister and I are reasonably close, but not super close, just like typical sisters. I'm an artist, and I'm working on duel degrees in Molecular Biology/Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering.

I've worked at the same hospital for 3 years and my work life has become miserable. I hate my boss as much as I hate my mother only I can't bring myself to leave. He works at our sister facility and I don't have to see him much, but he makes life terrible. My immediate supervisor who is the only person I work with daily is my best friend, really I like to think of her as the mother I've never had. We worked really hard for a long time to get the hospital running perfectly and then my boss came and destroyed everything we've worked for. Now I'm working 12+ hours a day, plus school. I broke my foot (sesamoid bones) from spending too much time on my feet. Then dislocated the bones in the arch of my foot from spending too much time trying not to put weight on the broken parts. Long story short after months and months of this I asked for help which ended as badly as possible. With my boss hurling personal insults at me, accusing me of breaking my foot on purpose because I dislike him, which I do, but not nearly enough to break my own foot, and a multitude of other incredibly cruel/evil things. It ended with me finally calling him out on a lot of stuff, followed by me taking two weeks off work, getting stuck in an actual cast instead of a walking boot, and spending several hours on the phone with the suicide help line. Not good. Anywho, I just completed my first week back at work, I'm hoping to transfer to the OR, or to another hospital soon, as the thought of work makes me physically ill, and I feel that the dream has something to do with this mess.

I just can't figure out what or who the shark is. Why did I feel I needed to save it? Why didn't I want it to die? Why was everything so sad and silent? I'm not usually the kind of person who remembers their dreams, or who puts any stock in them, but I just can't shake off this one. Any thoughts?