10/21/03
Repressed Memory
I took a short nap on the couch late last night during Peacemakers and had a series of vague, interconnected dreams which, oddly enough, mostly seemed to take place in the living room, right where I was sleeping. What's more is that some of them featured an amount of lucidity, which is strange enough in itself. I can only guess that I was not sleeping soundly, thus knew somewhat what was really going on.
There were more dreams than this, but these are the only fragments I can recall. There was an air of tension to them all, and they all took place at night (when the nap was taken).
In probably the clearest part, I was lying on the couch on my side just as I really was and imagining a scenario with my character Detective Max Kristeva. For those who do not know, Kristeva is a character of mine who is a survivor of ritual abuse (loosely, physical/emotional/sexual abuse committed in a ritual/religious manner). The abuse happened over a period of years in his childhood, and he largely repressed the memories until adulthood, when he started to remember them both in and out of therapy. In my "dream," I imagined him remembering another incident of abuse he'd gone through, involving his father, the main perpetrator. In most of the scenarios he has remembered so far in my writing and ideas, the abuse took place in some horse stables on his family's property. In this dream I came up with the idea that Kristeva had also at least once been raped in a bed in his own house--I believe it was his father's bed, in this version. I imagined how he would have reacted to that, by simply lying there staring off into space and dissociating. It's like I was vaguely pretending to be him, since I was lying on the couch.
This dream was related to "Read The Words!" and "Peacemakers Is STILL On?"
Read The Words!
This dream was related to "Repressed Memory."
A now very vague snippet had me standing now, over near the stairwell/front porch area and facing the living room, looking at some crumpled papers. I can't remember why I was doing this, but I saw there was some writing on them. It looked to be cursive, done in pencil. I tried to read it but it was jumbled and obscured by the crinkles in the paper. I grew very frustrated as I looked at it harder--it was also dim over here, very hard to see--then I snapped at myself, "Look at it harder! Figure it out! Don't just brush it off like I always do, try harder and if I can't see what it says, MAKE myself see what it says."
This was very surprising in that I was commanding myself to have lucidity, to "make" the writing on the pages clearer! Did I know I was dreaming, then? I can't be sure, but I was lucid enough to command myself to control what was on the paper so I could see it--to actually attempt to READ it, rather than brush it aside and forget about it, as is too often the way in dreams. I really did wish to make out what the papers said, to the point of COMMANDING them to be clearer...but I did not get to see what they actually said. :/
This dream was related to "Peacemakers Is STILL On?"
Peacemakers Is STILL On?
This dream was related to "Read The Words!" and "Repressed Memory."
In the last fragment I can recall from my nap, I believe I heard Ma come into the room--either she was just arriving from somewhere (in reality she had been home for some time already), or was coming in to wake me up so she could go to sleep. I was still dozing on the couch; on hearing her, my head snapped up and I looked at the clock. It read 2:30 AM.
2:30 AM!! "What?" I cried. "It's TWO-THIRTY??" I sat up in groggy disbelief. "How did I sleep that long? What happened?" I was very upset because I go online from around one or 1:30 to three AM, and now I had only a HALF HOUR of time left to do all my things! I NEVER sleep that long--partly because Ma never lets me!
I was so baffled and confused. I glanced at the TV and noticed that--Peacemakers was on. But--that show had started at MIDNIGHT. And it was only an hour long! I glanced at the clock again and it still read 2:30. (Another very unusual dream occurrence, as writing does not usually stay the same for more than one reading.) But that made no sense whatsoever!
"This show is still on?" I exclaimed. "It should've been over a long time ago!" Then lucidity began to creep in, making me doubt everything I was seeing. "It can't be 2:30," I said...and I believe I willed myself awake.
Peacemakers was just ending, and it was not even one o'clock yet.
There were other dreams I had during this time period, but I can't remember them by now.
2003 Dreams
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