I hate it when I get over tired from loosing too much sleep. Yes, we will call it that for today. The truth is that I have struggled with "bad dreams" for my whole life. The short version of the story is that I had a sister, who was 4 years older than me. Shortly after I was born, when she was, of course, 4, she was diagnosed with leukemia. She lived until New Years Eve, just a few months after I turned 2.
We lived in a 3 bedroom house and I was still sleeping in a crib in my parents room as my sister had "the middle bedroom" and my older brother was in the third bedroom. Some point in time, it was decided that it was my turn to move in to that middle bedroom. It only lasted a few nights as I began having strange dreams in that room. Back to my parents bedroom I went. Things seemed to be somewhat better for me there, so I stayed.
Then, shortly after I turned three years old, on November 22, at 11:30 am (we live in Mountain Standard time, before you ask ) I was avidly watching tv as my mother was in the kitchen making lunch for us. Suddenly, I began screaming uncontrollably and my mother came running. Yes, I saw what happened and even at 3 years old, I understood what had happened before the reporters could even comprehend it. All my mother new was I was screaming, they killed him, they killed him over and over and she had no idea what I was talking about. I was glued to the television all through the subsequent events. From there, for years, I had a new round of reoccurring nightmares. Always with the same elements in them. I was at home alone for some reason. A knock came at the "back door". The one everyone who knew us used. I went and answered it, and standing there were three men in black suits with rifles and hand guns. I managed to slam the door and lock it but realizing that the "front door" was also unlocked I ran for my bedroom. It was summer in my dream so the window in my bedroom was opened and I kicked out the screen. I knew I could not get out of the house and hide so I climbed to the top of my closet and hid there (a favorite place of mine to hide as I could look between the sliding door and the frame and see everything in my bedroom but no one could see me) I stayed there while the men searched the house and for some reason never looked in the closet but saw the curtains blowing out the window and assumed I had climbed out. When they left to go to the back yard, I always woke up. Same dream at least every few months with a few details that would change, but over all the same until I was in college.
I have had various other reoccurring dreams over my life time and I seem to go through phases of dreams that are truly horrifying to people as I have told them about them over the years. Now I just tell people that I do not watch horror movies because what goes on in my head cant be effectively put on celluloid. When I am in, what I call a cycle, I even become almost afraid to try to sleep as I know it is coming and its just easier to stay awake.
During other parts of my childhood, we had to remove certain toys from my room as I could have sworn that said toys were sitting on the shelf "laughing at me". I was very frustrating to my mother.
During my first pregnancy, I remember dreaming over and over that you had to have a certain progression toward becoming a parent. First a woman gave birth to a ball. Then later on I dreamed that I gave birth to a Labrador Puppy as you had to see if you could keep something like that alive and well and healthy before you progressed to giving birth to a baby. All of this took place over the 40 week gestation period, IF you passed each test well. So, you can imagine that the approaching birth of my daughter was pretty tense inside my head.
All of this is background to understanding that my head goes to some pretty strange places in my sleep with out my even trying. Two mornings ago, I woke up in the morning knowing that I had agin been to someplace a little different. As I awoke, my husband keyed in to my mood, I guess as he asked what was going on? Some mornings it takes a little while to make sense of the jumble enough to get out of bed and function normally.
This particular morning, I cant say the dream was good OR bad. I couldn't really put my finger on that part of it. I could still remember the words in my head, but not so much the circumstances. The words that were still rolling around in there were:
"The Unicorn and the Pegasus are examples of the classic conflict between the fight or flight reaction.
It is EASY to choose one over the other without thought. When choosing wings, you can just leave with no thought to anything around you. When choosing the weapon, the one can just charge through with no regard. However, when you choose to take on BOTH, you must learn to maneuver effectively as you use all of your weapons,from head to hoof, which brings with it the need to be aware of collateral damage around you."
I'm still trying to put the pictures together with the words. Any thoughts?
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