Beautiful Vistas In Anxious Dreamscapes

This blog is a practice in writing and letting my own voice come out.

First, I want to comment on the first thing I saw when I came to my office to write. It's the picture you see above. Of course, when it was on my screen it was a whole lot prettier. Copyrighted by Robert Harding. I always appreciate the pictures that Bing or Microsoft shows me before I log into my computer.

I want to write about a dream I had. My dreams are always full of symbolisms surrounding the theme of anxiety. The anxiety is about locating my car, calling someone on the cell phone, finding shoes or dresses to wear. There is also loss, change of scenery, and abandonment. There were four characters in my dream, my son, Eddard, that would change into, my youngest brother, Philip. My dad that really looked my ex-husband and Andrea, a girlfriend from graduate school. The fourth person is me.

We were touring Europe and I was cognizant that this is the third time I've been there. In my dream I was recalling the last time I was in Europe where I saw a cruise/show ship just like they do in Disneyworld for Fantasmic (somewhere in Paris and in the daytime, Fantasmic is a show they do on water and only at night). This time we were in a strip mall or indoor mall like a flea market. We stopped at a restaurant that let its customers eat on the counters on barstools around the kitchen where they prepared the food. You can see the waitresses gather the food. There were also display cases. I was enjoying an aperitif when my group stayed and sat at different points on the counter. We started where Eddard/Philip was and I left my bags with him. Ed/Dad kept walking and decided on a place completely on the other side of the counter. My girlfriend and I decided that we wanted something more substantial and asked for the waitresses for menus. On the menu were all kinds of exotic bugs and mosquitoes, and these were supposed to be edible. The bugs are supposed to be eaten with IPAs or liquor. I couldn't understand how anyone could eat bugs no matter how avant-garde they presented it. I tried very hard to not show the disgust on my face for it would seem classless. What an ironic situation! I looked inside and saw plates of pasta with marinara. The pasta were really long and huge, lo-mein-like noodles. I decided that's what I wanted. My friend walked around the counter to get the attention of a waitress. And eventually, she went to the bathroom. I motioned to the waitress if it was possible for me to order pasta. She motioned back with her fingers signaling it was prix fixe. This means that the pasta could only be offered in a multi-course meal with a set price (obviously so much more than what I was willing to spend granted that I started with aperitifs). I decided I didn't want the pasta after all and that I was better off getting my group and leaving. We were done and there were more things to see and do. When I went to find Eddard/Philip, he wasn't where I had left him. The bartender on that side had sealed it off to clean it. I went around the other way to find my bags still there. Now, where is Eddard/Philip? I went to Ed/Dad to get onto him for not keeping his eyes on him. What if he's gotten lost and I can't find him? Then I woke up.

Needless to say, I was anxious when I couldn't my child where I left him. That was too much anxiety that I couldn't handle and so I willed myself to wake up.

The other anxious part that was explored in length in the dream was wanting something to eat but the cafe/restaurant didn't have what I wanted on their menu.

My therapist often used this kind of metaphor in my early years in therapy. I was grieving the loss of my parents. I had chosen a different path than what they wanted me on and I was grieving this. So when I asked my therapist, "why can't she love me the way I think I deserve to be loved?" His response would be, "you keep going to the hardware store and asking for milk," or "you keep going to a restaurant and asking for strawberry shortcake when they don't have it on their menu." Those answers used to strike my heart like daggers and my tears couldn't stop flowing.

The path that I have chosen took many, many years to get used to. Sometimes when I look back at what I left behind, there's a twinge of grief. This grief and loss take the symbols of not finding my car where I parked it, not finding a suitable dress for an occasion, not finding the pair for the shoe that I have on my other foot or having shoes to wear.

There are other dreams, but I will stop there for now.