NavyBlueFlower
Member

Note: Subway trains and broken staircases - most often, staircases under construction - are frequent images in my dreams.

The university / multilevel shopping mall with a Starbucks is also a frequently recurring dream theme.

I'm with Karin, my best friend from elementary school, a Swedish blonde who was very popular with the boys in later years while I was her ugly friend. Two boys from our class are there. We're all adults and we're talking about going for lunch. I'm having trouble with something (perhaps parking my car?) so I lag behind as they start for a lunch place. Karin waves at me as she goes toward the university because she has a class in an hour. I decide I'd rather go to Starbucks in the university than tag behind Robbie and David to go to some fast-food place full of stuff I can't eat. So I veer off and go into the mall / university looking for the Starbucks, hoping to find it in the hour I have before class.

Unfortunately, I enter the complex and find myself in a stuffy furniture store section that appears to have no way out to the rest of the mall. I do see a staircase that seems to be under construction. I see that some steps are there. I ignore it and keep looking. I find a set of concrete steps leading down into another hallway, but as I approach the crevice I find that the steps are against the wall and I'm standing next to a vertical drop. I'll have to jump to reach the stairs. I decide to put my handbag down and try it. A passer-by is urging me on. I throw myself against the wall and land on a step. The passer-by cheers me and then makes as if to throw my handbag to me, but he considers this a moment and then runs off with my handbag. I have no way to get back up there to chase him. For a moment I wonder whether I can make him come back and throw me my handbag, but then I dismiss that as unrealistic.

I go down the steps and I'm on a subway platform. I don't know whether the train is going to take me south or north. If north, I'll end up in the Starbucks section of the mall. If south, I'm out of luck. A train comes and nearly knocks me over. I don't get on it. I leave through a doorway...

...and find myself under a very low ceiling about to crawl out through a small opening that looks like a bird's tail. In a moment I realize I'm under a plane!! I panic and scramble to get out. A worker is there and tells me I shouldn't even be anywhere near the runway. I ask the worker how to get to Starbucks and he tells me to just go through that door behind him. I head toward it. That's when I wake up.

I'm back home by the lakeside after the department-store incident. I'd backed down with the police. I have a car. I have to go to a scene study group tonight. I'm finishing watching an old episode of Little House on the Prairie (playing on my TV as I'm sleeping in real life) and hoping to finish a due report as my parents come home. I'd really been hoping to leave before their arrival in order to avoid any trouble, and I know they're going to want to "discuss" this out (yell at me, put me down and hit me) instead of letting me go out. Then I hear my parents down at the lake trying get the boat into the water in high waves. My sister Bren and her friends, and Joanne and her friends, are there playing and there are a bunch of children flying kites. Dad comes in the front of the house and collapses exhaustedly on a chair. He's present-day Dad, and he's had two full-leg amputations. I ask him if he needs anything, and he says just get that damn Little House on the Prairie the hell off the TV so he can watch the news. I can't turn the show off (it's playing in real life), so I just toss him the controls and rush out to help Mom, who I can see is face down in the water with the boat out behind her. I almost trip over Dad's prosthetic legs on the way down to the beach. They've been discarded right before the steps to the house. I get to the beach and Mom is standing up by this time and the boys are in the boat having a good time. I brave Mom's thunderous look and ask her if she needs anything. She doesn't respond. I ask her if she needs a towel or a blanket and she says yes please. Some of her friends are on the dock judging me for being an unhelpful daughter. I run to the beach house to get the towel and shake the sand and spiders out of it before I bring it to her. Then I leave her there and run back up the hill, tripping over one of the kite strings - which takes me up, flying. It's a good feeling and it shows that I'm being included in the family games. I consider not going to the scene study because being included in the family fun is huge. As I'm trying to make thiis decision, I wake up.

My dad, my sister Bren, and I are in a department store. I've just completely defied the family by refusing to go to an all-day Mennonite church service and opting to hang out with the backsliders in the Mennonite Social Club instead. I'm refusing to say I'm sorry, and I'm telling my father he can't boss me around. I'm trying to get them to follow me to the Mennonite Social Club to show them that it isn't sinful. My father starts chasing me and hitting me with his fists. There's nothing in the Bible that specifically says he can't do that. I cower and try to protect myself. I yell at passers-by, "Help! Please call the police!" but no one helps, they just stare. I finally get away and he orders me, "Get in the car!" I say no. I keep refusing and I leave. Then my father starts to get flirty and cajoling. He calls me his little girl. I don't like the way he looks at me. He goes off to look at the rest of the store, and then he shows up again with a sly smile, saying, "I tricked you. You thought I'd left you. But here I am." I run away. I find a clothing store manager and tell her everything that's going on. She says we'll have to find store security and they will report it to the police. I'm just trying to GET it to the police, and no one seems willing to help me so far. The store manager finds one of her bosses and I tell her the story. They all say, "You poor child," and try to console me, but I can see they're also too freaked out to want to get involved. I go back to the part of the store where Bren and my dad were waiting. I see a note from Bren about where dinner is, etc. and they've gone home. I look around and there are a bunch of presents to unwrap! It's also a living room display, so it looks like it's my own apartment. I learn from security that I'll be allowed to stay in the store overnight and to help myself to any products I may need, such as toothpaste or shampoo. I'm happy. I discover that Bren has left a stick of chocolate licorice to make up for anything my father did. I still want to report my father, but I'm enjoying the comforts of this home display and considering just letting things be and accepting the gifts of material comforts and security. Someone shows up with "sexual intent vision" glasses to spot any illicit intentions on the part of my dad during his next appearance. I wear them too when my father shows up the next day, but I worry because I'm not good at pointing the camera while hiding that I'm wearing them. I'd also be punished severely for that unthinkable level of defiance toward my parents. That's when I wake up with an intense vascular headache and feeling sick to my stomach.

Real-life note: My father hit me, but never sexually abused me. He would be horrified and devastated if he ever knew that at 14, I was generally terrified that he might cross that line. I suffer from PTSD related to treatment by my parents and bullying in school. Also, I needed extra Clonazepam (extra-dosed under medical advice) to get to sleep last night because I'd run out of Mirapex.

It's the early 80s and I'm in my late teens/early 20s. I have an assignment I'm working on for university and I need more paper for the typewriter. I go all around the house, hoping to find some paper that Dad has left beside a typewriter somewhere or stowed away in one of his heavy wooden work desks. I can find none, so I sigh because I'm going to have to go upstairs and ask for some from my parents and I know things are tense up there. I go and ask for some paper. My mother asks me to apologize first for my tone of voice earlier. I now remember that we'd been sitting on camping chairs in the forest and she'd started to slap me around, but then we'd come into the present (me 47 years old and in good physical condition; her in her mid 70s and weakened) and I'd fought back, bringing her to the ground. She'd felt humiliated and hadn't spoken to me since. She and Dad were afraid I'd gone bad and would end up a street kid. So I ask for some paper, I'm asked to apologize, and Dad and my sisters just mouth to me, "Just do it." So I frame an apology under a tight smile. I'm given some paper. I go out the front door to the street where I grew up, and I let out a scream. It's heard inside, and then my mom herds my two sisters, both under 15, out the door and into the station wagon. They're about to leave the family and leave me with Dad and she and Dad are even talking about how to divide up the dogs. I look at the dogs and know they're crying inside because they know they're about to be separated forever and it's my fault. I can't believe my sister Bren is in the car and not saying anything. I yell at her that I thought she was my best friend and that she's a traitor - and it seems someone I can't identify is beside me feeding the word "traitor" to me, coaching me along. Then I yell at my sister Joanne, who is now a tall blonde woman with a two-year-old son. I see a Sunday School schedule where my sisters and I attend a shul while my nephew attends a Sunday School class on Jesus. (We're not Jewish in real life - at least not in practice, only in partial background.)

I wake up with people vaguely whirling about me, blaming me for breaking up my family. I'm still drugged up with Clonazepam and therefore half in dreamland, so I know I have to go back to sleep and kill myself in the dream to show everybody I'm a valid person. I know it's safe to kill myself in the dream, because I'll just wake up here. So I go back into the dream and then I'm watching news accounts of myself taking Clonazepam two at a time and delaying each dosage so I don't throw up, so that the overdose'll take and I'll get to leave. But instead I see myself as a blonde teen prostitute with tatoos all over her body. The tatoos are in the form of black vines crawling over every inch of my skin. There's a documentary narration voice stating I woke up here, my name was Margaret as a kid but it's now Megit, and I'm serving fries - which men are only too happy to take from me. The way I'm serving fries is, well, pornographic, and one by one. Apparently Margaret had woken up drugged up and surrounded by a prostitution ring. The documentary goes on to say that the rest of the family - who are now African-American brothers - has reunited and the sons have their own sons, who uncomfortably remind them of themselves.

Very important note here: I'm not suicidal in real life, not in the least. I used to be. But I'm too old and too well medicated for that crap now. I had forgotten to take my antidepressant yesterday morning, but had realized and taken it at night.

Another note: Yes, my mom used to slap me around a bit. She'd get in strange moods where you could almost see a thundercloud over her head. I remember once I saw her like that and stiffened up as I had to walk by her, and then she whaled on me with four or five slaps and told me it was because I was walking with my "nose in the air" looking like I had a "stick up [my] ass". I was scared of her and my dad, who got his slaps and kicks in as well when he went through his depression, to the point that at the age of 14 I almost left home. This is just another PTSD-type nightmare. I read a story about a street kid yesterday, so that was probably what triggered the element of fear of what could have happened to me.

I'm talking with Niri, an old friend from high school. She mentions she's at this hotel in this strange city because Adam is presenting a paper at a conference here. She says she met him a number of years ago and now she wants to have a baby on her own and is hoping that he will be the father this weekend. I feel very jealous. I ask, "Can we share him?" She evaluates this, and asks how long it's been since I've seen him. I don't want to tell her it's 20 years, lest she quote a smaller number and claim priority. I realize I want to have his baby too - to my surprise. I hadn't thought I'd want a baby. But I now realize how perfect the combination of his and my DNA would be.

I'm in an apartment suite with Adam. I know I have to leave for my first day at high school, so I try to find my clipboard and a bathroom. I can only find an exposed toilet in my bedroom, and as he's coming to poke his head in, joking about how the room is in a different city and the weather is so nice at my end of the suite, he points out another bathroom behind a closed door. I go in and notice it's all stocked up with paper supplies and there's a whole cupboard of fresh bread - this turns out to be a laundry room.

I go to the school and find a table outside. The woman there says, "You're late!" I look and notice my slip is the only one left. I do the paperwork and get my list of classes. As usual in these dreams, the first class is history (that's always the class I've missed all year and suddenly have an exam in). I go to class and I'm yelled at for being late. I leave the class and decide to skip it to buy all my books and go chill in the cafeteria.