Stupid meds
I’ve been having nightmares and now I wonder if the migraine I had yesterday was because of the Tylenol3.
I was having another nightmare when my man phoned me at 5:11pm. In the nightmare,
I was in some large sterile-looking apartment or house. Some of the walls were stark white with nothing on them, and some of the walls were antique white with nothing on them. My furniture and belongings was haphazardly placed throughout the house. My Ma was there, looking the way she used to when I was a teenager.I was feeling depressed and we were going through stuff together. I had a white coffee mug filled with tea or something, and my white landline wireless phone next to me on a desk I was sorting through paperwork at. The phone rang and I answered it. It was a woman about a job, and could I meet her in the next 20 minutes for an interview? I said sure and got the details, and we hung up.
I called to my Ma that I’d be going out soon, and I got up from the desk and went to my bedroom to get ready. My bedroom in the dream was as big as a Victorian kitchen - huge and tiled. The walls were antique white with very little on them. I entered my bedroom and walked towards another desk. This desk contained my computer, and as I went towards it, my Ma came into the bedroom and handed me her big brown leather purse, and walked out again. She was going through her old stuff, and had never been happy that I always went through all of her stuff as a child. I did this monthly at the least, rifling through her purse, her big three-tiered dark wooden jewelry box, and her dresser drawers, just to look at everything, because her life was so magical in those places. Her favourite things became my favourite things. This annoyed her to no end.
Now here she was giving her purse to me, and not seeming too happy about it, because it was tied to memories of me always rifling through it, so it’s not like it was ever her purse, anyway. I immediately grabbed the purse from her and without looking at her, I thrust my nose into it and breathed deeply. The purse still had a faint smell of the leather it was made out of, her checkbook, money and cigarette case, makeup powder and keys, anything else she ever kept in there.As soon as I huffed the purse, I felt severely depressed. Those days were gone. My childhood is gone.
I was choking back tears and had to get ready for this interview I promised someone I’d go to.
I turned and looked on my desk - there were several pictures from my childhood sitting there that I’d wanted to hang on my bedroom walls. I began tacking them up (most were without frames, and looked glossy and thin as magazine paper). One picture I kept looking at, which was especially thin, was a picture of my brother and I when I was about eight or nine. The walls we stood in front of were also beige or antique white, but the room we were in was filled with dolls and stuffed animals and marionettes.I looked closer at the picture and realised my brother looked like a girl. My next thought was, “that’s not my brother at all!” I thought that must be one of my childhood friends. I stared closer at the picture. It wasn’t a human child at all! It was a very tall doll with a long neck, wearing knickers and a hat with a little ball on top, like a medieval page boy or something. Then I saw the balljoints at the elbows and knees - yes, this was just a life-sized doll I was standing next to in my playroom in the picture. How strange.
Realising I was wasting time, I quickly got ready and went into the office or whatever room I’d been in before, and told my Ma I had to go. She was in a depressed funk herself, and so she was short with me. I told her I’d be back soon. Then she said she needed to go to the store or something. I either protested a little or went willingly with her. She drove in her car, but about five minutes from home, she got lost. I immediately panicked - this was supposed to be a short to-the-store-and-back again and now she’s lost!?!? I’d be late for my interview! I had a fit right there and put my head on the dashboard of the car as panic overtook me.
Ma aborted the outing and turned us around and remembered how to get home. I sulked back inside the door, more ready to cry than ever, and went to the office. I slumped into a chair and picked up the white landline wireless phone. I called the woman, whose name I thought was Jennifer, but was really Susan. I called her back and apologised for being a no-show. She sounded pretty disappointed in me and didn’t want to hear my excuse, but I gave it to her, anyway. I asked if I could reschedule but she didn’t want to. I hung up the phone and was about to cry and throw a fit when the phone rang in real life, and I awoke.
He just wanted to check on me, the sweet thing. After we hung up, I wanted to cry, but choked back the tears. It’s only a dream, it’s only a dream…
Dreams always contain some truths. I’ve been upset since going to Santa Rosa and coming face to face with my pretend life from childhood. I miss my childhood innocense, freedom and creativity.
I don’t know what all the white and off-white signified in the dream. To me it signifies sterility, but one source I check for dream analysis says “The color white represents purity, perfection, peace, innocence, awareness and new beginnings. If your dream prominently features the color white, you may be experiencing a reawakening or have a fresh outlook on life.”
(Note: my landline wireless phone is white in real life. :p )
The whole bit about my Ma’s belongings, down to her purse and the smell it contained, is all true in waking life, except that she had willingly given me that purse when I was still a child.
The part where I disappointed the potential interviewer - I think that’s a line out of my recent real life conversation with the business seminar woman, when I called to cancel the weekend because of the pain I’m in. She didn’t sound too happy that I was cancelling, but what else was I supposed to do, show up in this state and moan and bleed all over everyone? Bah…
The antique or Victorian look to the pictures I held is odd. The dream dictionary says, “To dream of antiques, symbolizes your time honored values, tradition and proven wisdom.”
I created a marionette when I was a child, and later in life I found out my father’s mother used to have dozens of marionettes and that she put on plays for children in Ontario, Canada. I even got a photo to prove it.
Could it be that marionettes showed up in my dream because of a combination of my childhood memory, knowledge of my family photos, and having recently seen Blade Runner, which featured dolls and marionettes in it?
No idea.
It’s a dream, after all. And I often dream of things from my childhood when I’m on Tylenol3. I think it’s because it suppresses my breathing, to be honest. Why my childhood though? No idea.