A funny thing happened while waiting at the airport...

So after my very productive night, I went to bed and I layed there and relaxed and said to myself...or more precisely, I said to my subconscious and my brain "I welcome new dreams tonight and I'd like to dream about the situation with my mother" I had heard from some dream expert on the radio that you really can "program" yourself to dream and be receptive to dreams. So I gave it a try. Whoa.

First I have to say....last night, I didn't engage in my addiction. I didn't engage in any dissociative behavior. I didn't watch TV. I didn't sign onto Yahoo and chat. I didn't even call a guy who gave me his # yesterday! I did what I had to do. This morning, instead of oversleeping like I have gotten into the habit of doing lately....I actually woke up before the alarm went off. And I felt good. Tired, still...but good. I took a shower and then as I was drying off.....BAM BAM BAM BAM.....I got punched in the gut by recollection after recollection of all the dreams. I ran to my bedroom, towels falling off me, trying not to forget any meaningful detail. The more I wrote, the more that came to me. I don't know how all of these segued into one another or if it was a series of different dreams. And in fact there are 3 "flashes" (little snippets of dreams) at the end that I'm not even sure if I dreamed last night or if they were just coming back to me from a previous night. The first two of which I've had before. Weird.

Okay....Dream #1: If you've seen the movie "Joy Luck Club" you will understand the reference to the title of "Big Mother". Basically there was a man married to a woman, his "first wife" and then he marries lesser wives, concubines. If the lesser wives give birth to a child, the first wife, Big Mother, claims them as her own. So...in this dream, there was a very formal, proper, statuesque older black woman who was a Big Mother figure to me. She had an obvious air of self-importance and superiority. It was clear that she had high expectations of me and also of my DD. She expected to be honored, catered to, revered. We went to a church together. It was a black Baptist church. I was following behind her as a subservient and DD with me. She was kindof "presenting" me to the men in the church because apparently my status as a single mother was shameful to her. My DD was watching a movie on her portable DVD player and it was some well known "black cult" movie. The pews of the congregation were already full and we were sitting off to the side. There was a large couch, on which two elderly white people were sitting. There was plenty of room on the couch for DD and me. There was also a narrow, high back chair that was clearly only for one person. I was preparing to sit on the couch with DD and leave the chair for Big Mother. DD had an orange soda and she put it down on Big Mother's chair while we were trying to get situation on the couch. Big Mother came over and purposely knocked the soda over onto the ground and spilled it. She told me to clean it up. I layed down on the floor to clean it but it turned out to be M&Ms akk under the couch. I was scooping them up, stretching to reach under the couch. When I got up, the orange soda was all soaked into my shirt from laying on it.

Dream #2: Was about my XDH. I was chasing him? Or maybe just following him. Basically, I knew he was doing something wrong and I wanted to catch him at it. We was with another man who was young and I knew this was a boyfriend or lover....some sort of romantic interest. They went to Dairy Queen for ice cream. In the dream, DQ had 2 different stores. At the first you got your ice cream and then you had to go down the road to the second stop which was a drive through Toppings palace with every topping you can imagine all over the walls and you just scoop everything you want into the giant styrofoam bucket of ice cream. So I was driving and looking for the toppings store. It was a multi lane road. I thought maybe I should turn around and go back to the highway and so I did but then I realized it was a 1 way road and so I had to continue in the same direction. (**ding ding** No turning back....I'm on this road and I can't do anything but forge ahead!) I got to the toppings palace and filled up my bucket. XDH and the boy were sitting on stools at a counter outside. I walked by them in a flaunting manner just to make sure they saw me there so he knew he'd been caught . But I never said anything to him. I had to walk back to the other side of the palace to return to my truck (the car that XDH and I used to own together) There were groups of guys in the parking lot....like the "popular boys" at high school. Pretty boys, arrogant boys. They were laughing and conspiring as I walked by. One of them tripped me and my ice cream went flying. I think DD was watching all of this but I'm sure. He tried to pin me down. I was flat on my back and he was over me, his feet holding my legs down and his hands holding my arms down. He dared me to go ahead and try to fight him and to see how much it would hurt my back to try to keep him from pinning me. He was laughing, so f**ing arrogant like there was nothing I could do about it, knowing he had the best of me. I got one hand free and began pinching his nipples really really hard with the tips of my fingernails, digging them in and twisting until he was screaming in agony. (oh, ding, ding again....that there is my rage I think!)

Dream #3: I was at my friend A's house. It seemed to be Thanksgiving or some sort of holiday. There was alot of family at her house. She invited me to follow her upstairs for something. As we were walking up the stairs, I was behind her. She was wearing a really short dress and letting her rear hang mostly out of her underwear. She was really waving her butt in my face and then her underwear fell off and she was coy about it, making that exaggerated face, like wide eyes, mouth in an "O" and putting her fingertips over her mouth...like a Betty Boop, or something. So we got up the stairs into a bedroom with two twin beds. Her daughter L followed us up there. L is 4 1/2 but she was wearing heavy makeup. Some other teen-ish girl came up. I think she was a niece or cousin. I was headed for the bathroom and she kindof jumped up onto the bed and ran across it to cut me off and get into the shower before I could get in there. There was water all over the floor and I slid and fell then just layed on the floor, sadly sighing "That's two." I took it to mean two falls on the floor, but don't know.

Okay, those are the dreams I remember most of. Here are 3 flashes of memories I got as the morning wore on. #1 and #2 are repeats of dreams I've had in the past.

Flash #1: I was wandering in a huge parking garage. I felt lost. I don't even think I was looking for my car, I was just wandering. I know it was the parking garage for an upscale hotel directly on the beachfront. I eventually made it into the hotel. I was in a dark cramped corridor and it was like a maze. I couldn't figure out where to go. None of the doors were marked.

Flash #2: Something with my friend J...there was an empty room, almost like the shrine room of a child who died young. I knew that someone had died but I wasn't sure who. I think it was her boyfriend who was off fighting in the war.

Flash #3: Another parking garage dream (going to look up the symbolism to that one! Okay, closest I could find was Parking Lot: To dream that you are in parking lot, suggests that you need to slow down and take some time to relax from your daily activities.) Okay, so this one was like light grey concrete, very smooth, angular, lots of those hanging light fixtures and it was very bright with this gross yellow-ish artificial light. There were ramps and I was having grocery cart races with my mother. At one side of the garage were sliding glass doors to a hospital. There was someone else in the garage, someone chasing me but she never saw him. I think this carried over into my being pursued at my grandmother's old house and my hiding in the dark, in the barn, trying not to be found.

I've made a few connections to things as I was writing. And I did notice 2 repeating themes of garages and also hospitals (from the gorilla dream) so I can't wait to see my T on saturday.

Here is the last piece of news for today......I am not religious at this point in my life and I'm still very unsure of how to pray, how to build a relationship with God but this morning. I did something. I admitted my powerlessness over my addiciton. And I prayed to God to help me, help me to make better choices, help me by proving distraction, by replacing addictive behaviors with empowered and healthy beahaviors.