Dream 4/25/09

So I had some of the saddest dreams ever last night (4.25.09)

The dream that made the biggest impression on me: I started out in my parent’s house – but it’s not the same house as this one. Instead it has some wall to wall rugs, and is pretty damn charming. I wish I lived there, really. A bunch of relatives come to stay because someone (maybe Mara…lol, again) is getting married. Not me. And I’ve helped them clean in a massive, massive way so that the house is the best it’s ever been. Uncle Brian and Aunt Vicky are some of the relatives over to stay, and they brought with them a big orange mane coon, Who’s name is Aster or Caster or something like that. He greets the day by leaping on his hind legs for a while wherever he’s going. It’s adorable, but strange, and a little frightening because he’s unpredictable and could launch himself at you unexpectedly for pets…claws out. But Aster is leaping down the hallway toward me and then past me, the hallway with a long reddish rug all the way down it. It’s not a frightening hallway, not creepy and cavernous, there’s a ¾ wall that opens into the well-lit kitchen, which is getting all the morning sun.

I’m in the hallway (still?) later that afternoon, and clouds have moved in. I’m talking to someone who is a stranger to me, and there is an older woman too, who looks like Maude from the Golden Girls. The stranger is my age or a tiny bit older, female, very attractive to me and not in an unapproachable way. I feel shy around her. It’s at this point I realize we’re not really in 2009, but possibly in the 1800’s because we’re all in period dress. Maude is cooking something on the stove (onions?) in a big metal pot and the young woman is helping her. I’m shyly making conversation when it starts to rain. It looks like rain. The kitchen windows are wide open but it seems like we don’t have glass in those windows, the rain just comes in. But it’s not rain, it’s pellets of rock, hot rocks like from a volcano. They’re painful when they hit you, and so I duck behind on of the only places where the pellets can’t seem to reach. I’m kind of outside, but under an overhang, and just protected enough by the wall that the pellets can’t reach me. I call to the young stranger, but she looks at Maude, who seems to strongly disapprove of me. I am trying to assure her that I’m safe, that I’m alright, and the young woman seems to want to believe me, but the older woman’s obvious disapproval prevents her from joining me. I realize that young woman is the bride in this time period, suddenly, with a mix of shame and relief that I didn’t do anything to make an ass out of myself.

A second part to the dream, or possibly an entirely new dream: I’m at school, and we’re at something like a sock hop. The gym we're in reminds me of JDZ's gym. I’ve gone with what seem to be the only lesbian couple, but they’re not known that way because Tora, the butchy dyke of the couple, passes easily as a male and doesn’t bother to correct people when they misidentify her gender. Julia is blonde, of average height and slight build, and wears a beautiful dress. Tora wears clothes like a gangster, baggy pants, shirt with writing on it and a big logo on the front, but her face – even in the dream – reminds me strongly of Bre. I’m very attracted to Tora, but recognize that she’s happily settled with Julia. We’re all twenty-somethings, and yet we’re also in school together, apparently high school. Torah sings Julie a love song in between two dances. I feel happy for them, but sad that I have no one of my own.

Suddenly a rich punk lunges at me. He takes me by the hair and pushes me down, slapping my face, then my back as I turn away in fear. I get angry and I turn around and fight back. The whole time he’s saying things like “dirty faggot” etc, things to hurt me that only do in a distant way. I see his face twisted in stupid anger and yet joy at the violence he’s inflicting. (This scene reminds me of Jane Eyre, which I'm currently reading - the fight between Jane and John near the beginning of the book) A principal comes and seperates us – Rich guy get’s off scott free and I’m being told I’ll be suspended for this. I’m taken to the principal’s office.

In an attempt to explain myself, I say this:

“Sir, that guy, think what his life will be like? He’s rich, his family is. He’ll go to a good school and meet a beautiful wife and have beautiful children and have a beautiful, blessed life. And what will happen to me? I’m poor. I’m a lesbian which is why I keep getting in fights. I probably won’t find someone for me, I won’t marry. I probably won’t make it to my 30th birthday.” He listens to this, and says he’ll forgive my behavior today but not to get in any further trouble. But my own admission – that I’ll be alone and die that way, still young – haunts me and I wake with the saddest feeling ever in my gut. I never guess that any part of my subconscious felt so damn self-pitying about the whole gay thing.

As I woke, I had a final dream, and it was so brief yet it made an impression. There are two knights on a desolate battlefield, armed with swords and shields. One is black and one is dark green, but they look nearly the same in the moonlight. They are fighting bitterly, and I realize they’ve been fighting this way forever, since time began. The black knight slays the green (or is it the other way around? There’s no way to tell yet I want to know, as though it matters) and he falls on the ground. He lies very still, and the metal of his armor erodes away to dust. From that dust emerges a knight exactly the same as the one who died, but his armor shines more in the light. He takes up the fight again.

Strange dreams. Night of 4/25/09

Things that influenced these dreams: the actress who played Maude on Golden Girls died yesterday. Reading Jane Eyre, which is all from the point of view of a clever, but bitter protagonist that is continually victimized (so far, I'm only half done!), and that was kind of the theme of the dreams, excluding the final vignette. As I was waking I must have briefly glanced at my bookshelf; box set for Narnia has a picture of a knight in black and a boy in blue/green fighting with swords and I carried that back to my mini-dream. Also last night Brittany and I were talking about the liklihood of me being a victim of a senseless hate-crime, and I argued that I'm less likely to be targeted than a black man, because at least I'm not obviously gay ALL the time, wheras he's always obviously black. But just thinking about getting attacked for being gay must have disturbed me enough for it to leek into my dreams.

When I woke I felt very very sad, but I've been working on cheering myself up. Really, it's silly for me to feel bad about my lot, and who says I'll never meet the right girl? I might. And I have family and friends, they wouldn't let me die out in the cold, and even if I DID end up single the rest of my life...I have those same family and friends, it's not as though there isn't warmth or joy in my life as I am.

<3 Maddie