The Power of Dreams

Dreams and the waking conscious are powerful things. How many times do we wake up with a strong idea rattling around our head? Or perhaps, you suddenly bolt upright because yesterday’s problem now has a solution. Yet, even when they aren’t giving out story ideas or solving problems they can be entertaining and sometime frightening. Dreams also give us insight into ourselves.

When I was younger, around the time of my parents’ divorce, I had a reoccurring dream. It never happened the same way twice but it was always the same thing.

I would be at a place waiting for my mother to pick me up and take me home. I’d wait for a bit and then shed arrive. Sometimes she’d get out and talk to the person whose house I was at. Sometimes she’d just say something through the open car window. But, every time she would drive off without me. I would be left there, standing where I was crying.

Even retelling the dream makes me misty eyed. I’m still afraid of being abandoned or forgotten, just not so much that I continue to have that dream.

Another dream form my youth, about the same time frame I think, is the one in which I died; yes, died. It’s a bit convoluted and hard to describe, but I’ll try.

It starts off at night in an abandon bus yard. The yellow school buses are all park, silent for the night. There is a jacket lying on the ground and, being cold, I pick it up. No sooner do I put it on then all the bus headlights flick on like monsters opening their eyes. I run and manage to make it inside the house. I’m not quite sure what happens inside the house, but there are more people and I think ghosts that chase me. Then it’s morning and I go for a walk with my dog. We head just into the woods where I’ve dug out a fort. Climbing inside we curl up for a nap, oblivious to the construction equipment nearby. We get bulldozed over and die. Now a spirit, I wander about until I come across this amusement park. I can still clearly see it in my mind, but describing it is a completely different story. Take the Titanic, cut it in half and set it on land, slightly buried into the ground. Now paint it pink, hot pink. Add zip lines from the decks to the ground in multiple places, and then populate it with arcade games, bowling allies and kids. Yeah, something like that. So, as a spirit, I float up to one of the decks and meander about. Then I take possession of a girl. I have no idea who, but I’m alive again I guess.

Looking back I can say, my dog’s death had to do with the fact we had to put her down eventually. But the Bright Pink ship, and there is now way I knew this when I had the dream, but the Bright Pink ship was related to my mom’s first boyfriend after the divorce. The man hated the color pink. The brighter and more fluorescent the more he hated it. He also happens to be the only person I hate.

So this turned out to have nothing to do with my original thought. But hopefully you were at least entertained by my dreams. Because what started this dream blog idea was my waking up early in the morning two days ago thinking about St. Malroy’s Forever and the fact that I might get to be a beta reader, and what kind of valuable feedback I might be able to give, being an American adult over 30.

:} Cathryn Leigh