Dream Interpretation

This became a hobby for me in quite the unfortunate way. After leaving my abusive ex husband, I had vivid, frightening dreams for years, on a scale that outstripped the worst nightmare I had ever had, multiplied by ten. I decided I had to figure out what they meant. After years of writing them down and picking them apart piece by piece, I can now figure out what a dream of mine means in a matter of minutes.

I decided to take a nap this morning after I woke up because I didn't really need to leave the house until noon anyway, and while I was asleep, I had a dream that most definitely needed interpretation. I woke up about 5 minutes ago, and I know what it means already. Just for giggles (although it wasn't a giggly dream by a long shot), I'll share it with you today.

I was taking a shower in a bathroom that is rarely used in our house (in reality, this bathroom does not exist...in my dream, we had recently "rediscovered" a suite of rooms and I had decided to move in...for those who don't know, my husband and I are separated but living together as roommates in real life).

Anyway, as I was taking my shower, I was really enjoying this bathroom that we had rediscovered. It was a beautiful, sunny shade of yellow, the same color we painted the walls in the kitchen and hall way. I looked up at the ceiling and noticed that some of the paint had been pulled off...there were chunks and strips missing in uneven patterns, so I knew it wasn't painted over...it had been purposely peeled off. I assumed Jason had done this, and I planned to tell him off about it when I got out of the shower.

But when I did get out of the shower, I noticed quite a bit more damage to the walls. Someone had carved menacing words into the walls (I don't remember what they said...it wasn't threatening, just scary to read...like maybe someone had carved a curse into the wall, though that wasn't how I interpreted the words). I dressed quickly and planned to go tell Jason...I thought maybe someone had broken into the house, and we'd need to call the police.

The room outside the bathroom was my new bedroom. When I walked out of the bathroom, I noticed more carving and damage to this room. As I was walking out, I noticed that along one wall was a display case filled with frightening things, the like of which you'd see at Ripley's Believe It Or Not, or a horror movie museum. By this time, I was terrified.

I went to get Jason to tell him what was happening. He was busy talking to someone and was annoyed that I had bothered him. I insisted that it was important, and he exasperatedly agreed to go with me. As he was walking into my room, I noticed a door in an alcove outside my room. The door had been left slightly ajar. When I looked in, I could tell this was a display that was set up to be seen through the cracked door...it was a scene from a horror movie involving dolls (I don't remember which one, but in my dream I recognized it).

I nearly ran into my room to tell Jason about it. He glanced around my room, obviously annoyed, asking, "what did you call me in here for?" I showed him the walls, the display case, and told him about the paint in the bathroom. At this point, though, my memory was coming back to me. I remembered having seen the display case and the horror-scene in the alcove long ago when we first bought the house. Jason remembered them too, and just walked away. I don't remember if he said anything, but his attitude was, "We know about these things already, don't bug me while I'm busy."

That's all I can remember of the dream.

So now what it means...

I haven't seen this in any book, but what I make of bathrooms is that this is where I go when I feel dirty and need to be made clean. This is where I "keep" all my "unmentionables". In other words, all my dirty little secrets, all the dark things about myself that I don't like anyone to know. So, in my dream, I'm trying to scrub myself clean from whatever dark parts of myself I've brought out lately. This probably has to do with my separation with my husband and my feelings about that...at times, I feel that I'm being selfish and asking too much, even though I don't know anyone (Jason included) who agrees with that.

When I started noticing all this damage to the room, that was a signal that I had moved into this suite of rooms thinking that things would be very positive, but now I'm starting to notice the flaws in my plan. I have moved into another room in real life, so this correlates to me that this separation isn't all fun and games, and I'm noticing now that it's not the solution. There are just as many frightening things here as there were before we separated...I just didn't "see" them when I decided to move into this new room.

When I saw the display case and the scene from the movie in the alcove (remember, I later recalled knowing about these things when we moved in), that tells me that I knew all about these problems from the beginning (probably from the beginning of our marriage), and I chose to ignore them. In my dream, I vaguely remembered choosing to not use this suite of rooms just so that we could avoid the frightening stuff that was in there. In real life, that translates to making a conscious choice to ignore the problems we had. Now that I've "moved into that room", I can't ignore them anymore. They are right in front of me to look at every day.

I just remembered another part of the dream, at the very end. I asked Shannon (my best friend of 21 years) to come look at these things, too. She looked at them with curiousity, but just didn't see the issue. So, that's the last part of the dream to be interpreted. Neither my best friend nor my husband were able to see what the issue was here. It was as though I'm making a big deal out of nothing...but to me, these things were frightening, huge, dark, horrifying. I couldn't imagine spending another night in that HOUSE, let alone that room with all its carvings and horror film like memorabilia.

So, the significance that this dream has on my life is that I have to decide how long I can willingly stay in that frightening room. I've known about this challenge for some time now (years), but it's becoming more and more obvious to me, and more frightening as time goes on.

By the way, I want to be very clear here...Jason himself is not frightening. He is a wonderful human being, and I've been proud to share my life with him these past 8 years. It's the one problem that we have had that is frightening. Unfortunately, this one thorn in our sides has grown to monster proportions, and I don't know that either of us can tame it after having ignored it and let it grow so large for so many years.

So...how about it? Anyone have a dream they want me to interpret? If so, let me know in the comment section. Post your email address, and when we're done, I'll post my interpretation of your dream in my blog - and you can post it in yours, too. This could be a fun take-off from the interviews I did awhile back...I'd love to do more.