95. Today (Dreams)

Alex (one of the Beanies)

For a change, we woke up feeling well rested and content. Not sure why this has changed. Maybe because on our daily walk yesterday we ran a few blocks. We used to run and we loved it. It was an incredible feeling afterwards, as if our lungs had opened wide and we were able to breathe deeply. It felt like going for a swim on a hot day. That feeling of refreshment and spent energy, making you pleasantly sleepy and satisfied.

Or maybe it was the last dream we had. It was pretty interesting. We were working somewhere and three of us had to pack to go to some event. Packing our stuff was a nightmare. We had a lot of things but they had to be put in a big duffel-like bag in a certain order. We manage though, as complicated as it is. Once packed, we three make our way downstairs. Meanwhile, Graham, our son, is heading off to school for his first day. He sees a recorder in a store and wants to buy it for school. But we tell him, no, we have one back upstairs. So we go get it. We thought it would only take a minute to get the recorder but when we get back upstairs we have to unpack everything first, for some strange reason (hey it’s a dream, what do you want?) before we can get the recorder. We find the recorder and repack everything – which is a total hassle and time-consuming. Finally ready to go back downstairs. It only took us about 20 to 30 minutes to do all this. What a waste of time. We go to the elevator. Pretty sure we have dreamed about this elevator before. It’s a scary one. Goes extremely fast and you don’t feel safe in it. But we get on. And this older woman gets on too. She’s pushy and irritating. We call her a bitch out loud. She doesn’t care.

Then it’s a race between her and us to get downstairs. But we make it. Give Graham the recorder and wait for our bus. We have our hands full of things not totally packed. Get on the bus and give our tickets. The guy won’t give us our tickets back even though we need them for the next bus. He doesn’t care. Oh well, our group of three decide we will fight this. This is a country that has to fight for things. It’s not like living in Canada. It’s poorer and things happen more slowly. Where are we? We finally realize we are in Scotland.

Off the bus and we are out in the countryside. The two people we were with begin singing and it’s so beautiful. We begin to cry, realizing that we live in a rat race, and that even though these people are poorer than us and things don’t work as smoothly they are happier where they are. What a dream!

December 18, 1996 we had one of the most profound dreams we have ever had. Some guy in charge of things. He had all these women, including us, working for him, obeying his every command. Don’t remember what we did but we did something and one of the women says “Oh she’s finally remembering who she is”. Those words, upon waking, seemed so significant, as if realizing that we were finally acknowledging and remembering that we are multiple and that we were abused. It felt incredible.

There have been other dreams, though not many, that felt almost as significant as that dream. Almost. There was the Civil War dream that preceded the More Others emerging.

For a while, not so long ago, we had our powerless “dreams”. They weren’t exactly dreams but more of a feeling. It always started with all the lights in the world going out, the globe completely powerless. And it always ended with us waking up with a gasp. The shock of it all. That happened over and over for months. Found out those were called Night or Sleep Terrors. Never heard of them before. Never experienced them before. And they seemed to make a lot of sense, about our feeling very powerless.

Then in the past year or so our dreams have connected to each other. As if certain themes arise and dreams continue other dreams gone before. A lot of them take place where we grew up at our mother’s home. Sometimes we are in school. David, Graham’s dad, has been in many of those dreams and another friend we grew up with too. Guess we have been processing things from the past but it felt, and still feels, strange to continue with the same themes, sometimes even the same events.

Dreams can be so strange can’t they?