Dreaming of....Myself?

Okay, I just dumped a scoop of coffee grounds into my sugar canister. Ugh! I'd like to blame the grogginess of not having had my coffee yet. It could be partially that, partiall the "pregnancy brain drain" and the rest could be blamed on being deep in thought remembering the dream I just woke up from.

After my little stint in dream therapy I learned about the symbolism our dreams represent. We are working out answers to things from our daily life while we sleep. I woke up feeling pretty confidant in what my dream was telling me.

I have been feeling really depressed lately. I mean REALLY depressed. I haven't been able to pinpoint the exact reason, but I know that it has to do with disappointment in myself for not reaching the goals I had set out for myself when I was younger and more ambitious. Instead I have just gone with the flow of circumstance, jumping off of the boat onto dry land when I wasn't happy with the course. Instead of doing anything, I just languish, waiting for something to happen.

In last night's dream, I was in Africa. I had found a long lost best friend whose life I was trying to save. It was a coincidence that our paths crossed. I didn't know that I knew her. I had just heard of her murder on television then was reading about it in the newspaper when she walked through the door. This stranger somehow was very familiar to me. Together we began investigating what could have happened. We were at this type of shop looking around and I found these secret camera pins that you wear on your shirt that record everything that you see. I kept wondering how they worked because they were so small and how they could be very good because they were so inexpensive. I thought I should give one to my friend before the murder took place so that there could be witnesses to what happened to her.

The next scene is at night, a bar atmosphere. Similar to my life in Cleveland, Ohio when I used to spend a lot of time partying and going out with different guys. This is where I had met Dan. Tried on his lifestyle. Loved passionately and furiously. Then he was killed. This is when part of my soul hit itself from me. All that I had known and felt was gone...numb.

The dream goes back and forth between me with two different men who I care for deeply. I am very much in love with them both. I have to choose one. I am helping him sort out his life. I am in a room with two women sorting through his stuff (this is reminiscent of going through Dan's things with his mother & ex-girlfriend after his death). I am deflecting any blame for his life being the way it was. I am letting them know through my projected thoughts that I was there to help him. I am furiously sorting things in neat piles. My clothes are going into a dresser. I realize that I need more space for my things. A flashback shows me another option I could take. I could go and sort through someone else's mess and I shudder and decide to continue the task at hand. I see the two women are handling this room just fine and move on.

I am now at a college campus. This probably represents me moving back to Louisiana and attending LSU after Dan's death. I am enjoying myself somewhat, but I am much more a shell of a person now. Kind of feather-lite and fragile. Faisal is in this dream. He is the one I rebounded to when I started at LSU. He was from another country, another religion, another world. What drew me to him was his smile, his joy, his outlook on life. He never intended to have a serious relationship with me. I don't know what I intended. Towards the end of the dream I leave the dormitory to grab something outside. I am in my pjs. When I go back to the door to go inside there are people there collecting money that you must pay to enter. I told them that I live there and that I didn't have anything on me and to look at me, I'm in my pajamas. They tell me that you have to have money with you at all times. A friend pays the $1 to get me in. We discuss the ridiculousness of having to pay to get into our own place. We pay tuition and lodging fees here already, why this inconvenience. I think I want to write someone to put an end to it, but I am too tired. I do not have enough fight left in me to do anything about it. I begin looking for a place to go to the bathroom. I climb stairs looking through door after door. I see lots of school children in uniform. I hear teachers saying we need to get a complete count of all of the students. It occurs to me that the money being collected was actually a means they were using to get a head count. Somehow that makes sense to me. I am also getting a sense that things are coming to an end. Maybe the semester is ending or graduation is looming. Some kind of change is in the air. I finally find a bathroom labeled "Myself". A girl comes out and I move to go in after her and she hesitates to let me in. I'm wondering why she thinks she has a say about whether I can go in or not. I look and there are some girls sitting nearby on chairs. Maybe they were in line to go next. Maybe she is supposed to tell the next one they can go. I don't have time for her to be decisive and push past her and close the door. It is a single bathroom and I am relieved. No stalls to share. As I sit down to relieve myself I notice there is another entrance to the room that I wasn't aware of before. People start filing in and wait in line right in front of me to use the toilet next. I am furious. How did they get in here. I yell at them and ask them if they saw the sign on the door. I tell them it says "Myself" meaning me and me alone gets to use this restroom and they have to leave. There are school children and even grown men in the line. I am the most furious that the men are there, seeing me using the restroom. I shove them all out and shut the door so I can have some peace.

Later I see Faisal leaving. All of his things are packed. I see he has used one of my bags. He is going home to his country I guess. My first instinct is to call out for him, beg him not to go. The feelings of abandonment well up inside and threaten to flood over me. Somehow I stop myself though. I am telling a friend that I will not chase someone. If I am not what he wants, then he is not the one for me. I am still intensely sad, though. My friend reminds me that he has seen me on top of the world. I have loved more intensely than anyone he has ever seen. I have that to hold on to. The friend is leaving. He's going to Indiana. Everyone is going somewhere when they leave school. I have nowhere to go. I feel lost. My friend says I can go to Indiana with his group and I consider it for a minute. That is not my dream. I look at him with this thought in my head and he pretends he was just kidding because it's not feasible. He bids me farewell and we part ways. I sit wondering what to do and decide I need to stay home and maybe start going to the gym. I need to spend this time building myself back up and working on myself from the inside out. I need a life renewal. I wake up with the thought that I need to purge all of the old from my life. The baggage. The weight that is holding me back. I want to get rid of anything that is not affecting my life in a positive way. I wake up rejuvenated and ready to make changes. This was a very enlightening dream.