Nightmare #5

I was travelling in the back seat of a car driven by S.  My sister was in the front seat and my youngest brother beside me in back.  The trip was not my idea.  I was almost a hostage to the driver who went where she liked.  She said we were driving to Texas.  She parked at a mall to do some shopping.  My sister left with her.  I saw that there was a cougar in front of the car and at the same moment my brother got out.  He hadn't seen the cougar and was in great danger.

Nightmare #4

I was walking on a huge frozen pond.  In front of me a man was walking followed by two women.  I saw in the distance that the shore was not frozen and I was afraid that the ice wasn't safe.  I turned back the way I'd come to the land.  The others kept going and each in turn fell through the ice.  There was a brief time when I knew that they were alive in the freezing water and I couldn't help them.  Only the man screamed and then it was silent.  I knew they were all dead.  It was horrible to think about even in the dream.  That these 3 people had just died and I was a witness and bystander completely unable to help.

Nightmare #3

I had a nightmare this week.  I was in a hospital that was also a children's home.  An elderly woman had been admitted the night before.  The nurses pulled some curtains so that the children couldn't see what was in the hall outside her room.  On a plastic sheet were her arms.  They'd cut them off.  No explanation as to why.  The curtains were useless.  I saw and the children saw -- we all saw the severed arms.  There was no blood.  I'm not sure what this is about.  Of course I think of my mother in the hospital where she died.  I remembered today that the nurses tied her arms to the bed one day so that she wouldn't pull at her feeding tube.  She tried to convince my sister and me to untie her by cutting the ties.  They'd used pieces of cloth.  My mother thought there were nail scissors lost in the covers on her bed.  That was the day she was hallucinating.

Nightmare Cheetah

I had another big cat dream.  This time there was at cheetah in my parents' living room.  I saw it from the doorway.  My parents and brothers were in the room.  (I think these dreams refer to the time when there were only five of us.)  I was terrified of the cheetah.  I see also that I wasn't exactly part of the family group.  My brother tried to shoo it away.  I called to him to stop and don't try it because "Cheetahs are the worst."   By that I meant that they were the scariest and most deadly.

Actually cheetahs are the fastest animal on land.  This fits with my feelings about my father.  Fast and scary.  I remember him chasing that same brother through the living room and up the stairs.  I keep recalling his hand suddenly reaching out to enclose my golf ball and move it to make the game easier for incompetent me.  I coloured the cheetah in black and orange which reminds me of Halloween and my father's birthday on the 30th.

Back to the dream -- the cheetah moved along the front hall toward the kitchen door.  I came around into the kitchen the other way.  My brother followed.  I was having a lot of trouble keeping the door shut.  The cheetah stuck his head around the door and ate the cat food from bowls there on the floor.  Finally the cheetah went out the front door.


This picture from the internet really gives me the creeps.

First Footer, First Nightmare

I started the year with a nightmare.  And actually a timely New Year's Eve nightmare.  The first person through your door after midnight determines your luck for the year.  Or something like that.  Details are scarce for me.  I know that it's best to have a dark-haired man be your first-footer.  That's why Grannie like my father.  Hmmm.  Sounds to me now like she didn't much like him for anything else!  Anyhow, that's all I know about first footing.

I received a few such facts during my childhood, summed up in one sentence each -- no elaboration, no questions.  I've been thinking about this lately in relation to Grannie and wondering why she never taught me more.  Hogmanay, Robbie Burns night, whatever.  It came to me that Grannie seldom invited us to her apartment for dinner (she came to us) while my other grandparents went the whole Sunday-roastbeef-Yorkshire-pudding route.  Could Grannie cook?  Had she had a housekeeper to do it for her?  She pickled things.  Made pickles and relish.  That's a fact told by my mother.  Just thinking that this might explain my mother's lack of interest in cooking or teaching it to me.

Back to my nightmare.  I opened the door and a huge cat was trying to get in.  It was all grey, had no tail and was almost as large as a lion or tiger.  Much bigger than the usual cat.  I gasped and slammed the door shut -- and woke up gasping and shaking.  Horrible.

Tiger

I had two huge dreams last night.  One was definitely a nightmare.  I was playing in the back yard at my parents' house.  My brother was there.  He had a tiger with him.  The tiger belonged to my father.  I was terrified.  He put the tiger back into the basement by the outside steps and door.  But he didn't close the door.  I yelled at him, "Close the door, asshole!"  But he refused.  The tiger was huge and filled the entire basement.  I was upstairs in the house yelling at my father and my brother.  "If you don't secure the tiger in the basement I will call the police!"

I notice that in a couple of recent nightmares I yelled at my father.  This is new and is probably a cool thing.  That doesn't, however, stop the dreams from being nightmares.  And another new thing is that I felt them as nightmares at the time, in the night.  That is, I woke up terrified.

What hurt the most ...

The same night as the trunk dream I had another nightmare.  This one was about the end of a relationship.  I never saw how horrible the relationship was until this moment when it all turned to dust.  The dream relived the time when a former girlfriend told me that she was leaving me for another woman.  I was shocked and so hurt.  In the dream I tried to speak to my girlfriend.  I was so very upset but she wouldn't listen to me.  Finally I said that I had only one more thing to say -- that what hurt me the most was that she had stopped speaking to me.  In the beginning she could hardly stop telling me about herself -- but then she did.  The entire thing was a horror.  I cried so much.  Eventually she told me to stop crying because it hurt her too!  Imagine that.  And I had no come back.  I was drowning in tears.  I did stop crying and to this day still cannot cry.

Nightmare

I was in a car driven by my mother.  We left from our house and I asked her where we were going.  She replied that we were going to the airport to pick up my father.  He was there looking at a museum even though he was blind.

Later my father was in the car and no one was driving.  My mother was in the trunk.  Locked in the trunk.  I could hear her in there.  She said she had to go to the bathroom and was now locked in the trunk.  It was horrible.  The car then was a flat metal thing with a clasp locking it shut.

I got into the driver's seat, stopped the car and got her out.

We were at my grandmother's house.  My father's mother.  I yelled at my father.  There were several strong young men there to help and protect me in case he attacked.  I told him that he would be in the trunk next -- and to never ever put her in the trunk again.

Puppy

I had a dream this week about a puppy.  I have never had a dream about being pregnant or having a baby but this dream was about giving birth to a puppy.  A doctor injected me with something and the next day I had a puppy -- in the usual way.  He just popped out inside my jeans.  It was a tiny Yorkshire terrier like I've been looking at recently.  Even more surprising -- this was not a scary or repulsive dream at all.  I am afraid of most animals, especially cats.  I've worried that being pregnant would freak me out, feeling some unknown thing growing inside me and that having a baby to care for would terrify me.  The doctor was even a man.  Strange!

Nightmare #2

I did another version of the nightmare with crows and wild animals.  I'm starting to think the black crows are also my father -- his presence everywhere in the house, in my life and in my head.  And then the wild feelings that no one would see.  And the constant terror and threat of rage.

Nightmare

I had a nightmare last week.  It was at my parents' house.  I was extremely upset and scared because the house seemed to be overrun with animals.  Many huge crows came in the window at the top of the stairs.  There were also several large cats that kept taking swipes at me with their sharp claws.  My parents ignored the animals and my upset.  It was horrible.  Maybe the wild beasts were feelings that no one wanted to acknowledge were there.  The picture didn't feel nightmarish enough so I've added a second version below.

Tied-Up

I had a dream last night.  I was late getting ready to go to a dinner party with my family and several other people.  I wasn't dressed up enough or on time and my father was furious.  Scarily angry.  I didn't know what to wear.  I thought of putting on a tie but I knew I would have to borrow one from my father and then ask him to tie it for me.  That was a terrifying thought because it would be much to easy for him to strangle me.

This relates to something that happened last week.  Someone I know was wearing a tie and I asked her if she knew how to tie one.  She said no but that someone had tied it for her.  That set me off into jealous thoughts of who that someone might be.  This person was also in my dream last night.  She was going to the same dinner party but in a different car.  I couldn't find her.  I needed to ask her what to do about my father and his rage but I couldn't find her.

Stitched Up

This week I had a disturbing dream.  I was in a doctor's office having a minor procedure done -- removing a wart or something like that -- when I happened to see a drawing of what the doctor intended to do.  In a difficult two hour operation he was going to sew up my genitals.  I was horrified -- and not only because it was without my consent or knowledge.

When I woke up from the dream my first thought was of an operation to make me a virgin again.  That some man had thought this a good idea.  Value added.  I know this is actually done.  I also know that my father began exploring my body when I was very young, before I went to school -- so that he might think it a good idea to start afresh.

Another thought was of being stitched up -- a phrase used in police shows about someone who's been set up to seem guilty but is not.  This idea reverberates for me as well since it's only recently that I've understood that the trauma I endured was not my fault.

And then there's the idea of control.  Lack of consent or prior knowledge.  Shutting me up in every possible way.  Silencing me.  Keeping me from experiencing the life of an adult -- a girl, not a woman.

Sadly every one of these ideas has meaning for me. 

Cats

Even the word gives me the creeps.  I wrote earlier that I'm terrified of cats but it's not so simple.  For one thing it should be the other way around.  Cats terrorize me.

Cats are repulsive.  Loose fur over the solid body underneath.  And I'm particularly worried by dead cats.  In nightmares cats are often dead and dismembered.  Horrors that cannot be explained by known experience.  I can't really think of many cats in my childhood.  My cousins had a cat.  We visited their house once a year on Christmas Day.  I remember dogs walking by.  Jessie from the street behind, for example, was some kind of low-to-the-ground beagle.  He waddled through our yard much like Toby at the cottage who was even lower and fatter.  I don't remember cats.

Once in high school English, a cat came in the open door of our portable.  The teacher asked if anyone was afraid of cats.  Of course I didn't speak up but I was stunned that someone would ask.  Could ask.  It was possible to say that I was afraid of cats.  So I still say that I'm afraid of cats -- which explains nothing.

Things that happened in the night; no. 3

I had a nightmare about a building excavation.  The site was covered with a thick layer of concrete.  Workers were trying to dig up the concrete to clean out the dirt underneath.  It turned out that under the concrete was a sea of putrid muck that made the men vomit or pass out.  I watched all of this knowing that the putrefaction was my life.

Things that happened in the night; no. 2

Naturally I've had many nightmares over the years.  Who hasn't?  Many of mine feature cats or, as I pointed out in an earlier post, toilets.  I'm terrified of cats.  Here's what I saw in a recent nightmare -- a living, moving, snarling cat's head had replaced the cow's udders.

Toilets

Oddly, my only recurring nightmare is of overflowing toilets.
A horrible, disgusting mess.  Me, my life experiences.