Selling My Survival

I love dreams. I think they are fascinating in their symbolism. I've become an amateur dream guru. I don't often remember my dreams, unfortunately. When I do, I take great delight in deciphering them. Well the one I had last night just didn't give me a challenge at all! It was so obvious, it was ridiculous. It did make me laugh, though, in the plain talk of it's message.

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My father grew up in an old farmhouse. His whole dysfunctional family lived there many years. He moved out when he married my Mom; his parents and sister stayed. There was a barn with horses, which were my passion when I was younger. My brother and I spent many summers there. My grandparents slept downstairs. My Aunt's room and a guest room were upstairs. I slept on a roll out bed in my Aunt's room and my brother was in the next room. My Aunt worked the night shift and therefore didn't get home until about 2am. You can see the kind of freedom and opportunity that afforded my brother to abuse me on a regular basis.

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In my dream, this house was for sale and I desperately wanted to buy it. I was looking around at it's state of disrepair thinking "I can fix this, I can fix that. I can replace those. I can make this work." Every single thing was crumbling, filthy, falling apart. I was trying to hide things that were broken and playing down the seriousness of the homes condition. My BFF was there and my contractor Dave was also there. I looked to Dave and I said "What do you think? We can make this work, right?" He shook his head and said "Don't do it."

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At the same time, I was trying to figure out how I was going to get the money to buy this house I was still so determined to buy. I found a small curio cabinet that was filled with tiny figurines of wolves. I took two of them and I drove down the road where there was an Indian at the side of the street. I pulled over and tried to sell these wolf figures to him. He asked me if I was sure and, when I said yes, he paid me a great deal of money for them. I returned to the house and looked at the remaining figurines again. Although I knew I could sell them to pay for the house, I suddenly realized how valuable they were and knew it was not worth giving them up to buy this house that was falling down.

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So the first part of the dream.....completely obvious. My abusive past, trying to cover it up, trying to fix it. The second part still made sense but I wasn't sure about the symbolism of wolves and indians so I looked them up in my trusty dream dictionary. Wolves symbolize survival and Indians represent the primitive and instinctual aspect of yourself. So I was trying to "sell" my survival to hold onto my past and the Indian, my instincts, made me realize that the "wolves" were too valuable to let go of. Great dream. Great lesson.