12/20/02
Warm Fuzzies

After going to sleep I had an odd dream that, at least while I was having it, made me feel somewhat better. That doesn't happen often; usually my dreams are scattershot.

In it, still upset over something that happened online, I logged on again to Stories.com to find fifty-one messages in my inbox. Fifty-one? I NEVER get so much mail. Like the most I get is six, and that's all the newsletters I subscribe to. Immediately I was anxious; somebody was hate bombing me, or I'd broken ANOTHER rule and this was the consequence, etc. In short, I thought of a million bad reasons as for why there would be fifty-one messages in my inbox.

I browsed the site a bit--found some strange person who claimed to be hacking others' accounts to steal their items or something but didn't pay much attention to it--then got back to my inbox. Had I been wrong before or had MORE come in? Because right now the total of new messages was at like FIVE HUNDRED. I got VERY anxious now; with only about 300 messages in there currently, that was a lot more than I had had before! With a great deal of fear I finally clicked on the link to check it out.

I had been completely wrong. All the e-mails were NOT a reason for concern. Instead, I saw that they were from about three or four different users. I knew immediately what was going on. Said users were members of a special group on the site which would go and rate lots of items in others' ports, and for some reason they had chosen mine. They had R&R'ed a lot of my items, hence the massive number of e-mails. I don't know if it was their usernames or cute graphics they used to represent themselves, but at first about two of them were represented as bunnies, maybe one as a teddy bear; I can't remember the fourth, if there was one. I feel that at least one of the bunnies was an older woman, maybe in her forties or fifties. They were all decent, kindly people. Why had they chosen me, today of all days?

Just in case--I still found this all hard to believe--I checked out what they'd had to say about me, just a few messages. All ratings had been moderately high, and they'd had lots of encouragement (real, not false) to give. I was overwhelmed. To receive all this thoughtfulness when I was feeling pretty much at my lowest...I didn't know what to say.

The dream shifted and so it was almost in "real life" now. I sat on the floor in my utility room reading something which represented my e-mail. And I had two stuffed bunnies with me; I think one was red, maybe the other purple. In real life, I used to collect stuffed animals; I loved them so much more than dolls. To me dolls are cold and impersonal; you can't hug them very much; and they look like people, which you can never trust. Animals are soft and considerate and they never judge; so I have always preferred stuffed animals. But I put most of those toys (I had over a hundred) upstairs long ago, and have yet to get them back down. Only a few remain in my room, and my purple stuffed bunny--I think I named her Beatrice--is still up there.

Still, in the dream, these bunnies represented the people who had been kind to me when I wanted it most. I hugged them both to me and it felt so good. Then I remembered the other two members of the group--one of them a teddy bear--and suddenly those stuffed toys were sitting in front of me too. So I scooped them toward me, and though it was kind of awkward, I hugged them all tightly. I felt so good, if just for a moment.

My mom then came along and I think she asked me what I was doing, as I did look rather odd sitting there hugging these stuffed toys. I'm not sure what I told her, but it didn't matter. I was happy for a change, after all of that. It's so rare that I truly feel comforted, with no obligations/expectations in return.

There was some more to the dream concerning me going back online (if I'd gone off) and finding the SM (the webmaster at the above site) baffled over the hacker situation--this person was a moderator (??) who was apparently hacking into particular registered author accounts, removing a certain item from each account, and moving it to his own port or some such, just to make a point that it could be done. There was some kind of "double-click" move that enabled him to do this, but the SM had yet to figure out how to stop him. So he listed the as-yet-affected authors and urged them to point out what items of theirs had been removed. I couldn't understand why the mod hadn't been demoted yet for such a stunt, but this all seemed unrelated to what had gone before.

I haven't had my toys downstairs in ages, but I just remembered that the one I currently sleep with is a light aqua-colored bunny. I got it because it was so very soft to touch, though that's worn off by now; I still hold it because I like to hold something soft when I sleep, or put it next to my arm so I can feel it there when I sleep on my back. It's the only one of my stuffed toys that doesn't have a name. I never got around to giving it one. Maybe I should name it (Mana)Bozho or some such? "Bozho" does mean rabbit. I don't know, but the bunnies in my dream were similar to it and to Beatrice. I hate to say it but Beatrice was never even one of my favorites; why would she show up so suddenly? (I can't say who the other toys were, but the purple bunny distinctly made me think of Beatrice.)

My stuffed toys used to bring me such love and companionship; they were honestly my friends. I'd sit and play with them and give them voices and they all had personalities. For example, Fireplug the Dalmatian was such a showboat! Sometimes I'd pin his ears down and he would become Fireplig, his own little sister. And Stanley Steamer the dragon was talkative but often awkward; I used him once to give a speech in front of a class when I otherwise would have been too nervous, and it went over very well. Squawk-N-Talk and Fluff-N-Stuff were a blue toucan and a pink toucan whose names said it all. Glitteregg, Noname, and Fairbanks were a penguin-and-lamb family (Glitteregg and Noname being the daddy and mommy, Fairbanks being the son). Etc. On one occasion when I actually forgot one minor toy's name, I was devastated by my oversight; I took to writing their own names on them, so I wouldn't ever forget. I loved them all; there just got to be too many. I've always felt bad for sticking them upstairs, and I hope they're okay up there.

I'm just not certain why I'd revert to relying on my toys for comfort at such at time, at least mentally, and why they would take the place of users online. I know it was just a dumb dream, but at least for a moment it made me feel comforted.



2002 Dreams
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