I just had a dream where I felt untouched by the people I knew, logically, cared for me. They were so wrapped up in their own stuff and handling our relationship on automatic that it felt like the connection between us wasn’t real.
I have been wanting pasta for a few days and my mom made a pasta dinner but it was woven pasta that had a texture like yarn and felt fuzzy on the tongue. We were having dinner with guests and she hadn’t eaten all day and was running late and she was frantic. She called me over to help her take the pasta off the stove and drain it. I didn’t have any hot pads so I was using my skirt and not paying enough attention [I had other things on my mind, my own things] and ended up spilling and dropping the pasta. We heard a dish break and she was upset because it was her favorite dish. I couldn’t deal with the bad feelings I know I should be feeling about it so I took off. Later I realized that 1. We shouldn’t have been so rushed. The pasta could have sat long enough for me to get the right type of hot pads and the right approach so the dish didn’t fall. 2. Just because she hadn’t eaten all day and was running behind, I shouldn’t have bought into the crisis and rush at the moment. 3. The dinner thing was done “for me” but I wasn’t part of the planning or anything. It was something that others thought should be done for me but actually didn’t meet my needs at all. 4. The dish is old and there are a lot of other dishes and she isn’t around often to use them so when you step outside the situation, losing the dish is not that big a deal. It just wasn’t that important. There was also a section about my friends and I seeing a movie. I was in the back seat of the car and feeling the need to tell the pasta story, probably to figure out those points I listed. They kept talking in the front about something else that was a very light subject. When they didn’t seem like they were going to pay any attention to me, I continued my story just for myself in the back. It felt they they found even more to say than they usually did to keep talking over everything I was saying. I think that usually I take part in the light conversation and since I wasn’t doing “my part” they were filling in for me. When we got to the movie theater, they were surprised when I asked them when they wanted me to pick them up. I told them that since they weren’t really listening to me, I didn’t feel there was any point in being with them as they went to a movie but since it was my car and they would be stranded if I left, I would pick them up after the movie. They basically refused to understand and kept talking like my reluctance to go to the movie was about not wanting to see that particular movie and they just needed to solve that problem and everything would be fine. That is when we headed to my place and I decided to take off on my own. They were talking with my mom about my odd behavior and were trying to figure out how to watch out for me since I was being weird. They weren’t understanding the lack of connection or the lack of really being there. Everything was on automatic.
This is when I blew a gasket and stopped feeling and stopped reaching out to connect. I knew that I was in bad shape but felt there wasn’t anything anyone could do to reach me. Everything was fake. Even when they started to put effort into actually caring instead of phoning it in, it couldn’t touch me, I was too far gone.
I took off on my own, it didn’t really matter where. I was going to go on a long trip to visit a graveyard that I wanted to see and realized there was one in town, near the university, that I could try beforehand to see if that touched me at all. On the way, I passed a favorite professor of mine having car problems (he had a very fancy sports car stuck in the gutter filled with water). I passed him as not my problem but paused and debated back and forth if I should try to help. I didn’t feel it but logically, he was someone that I cared about so I eventually stopped to help. There were others helping at that time so I watched as they got his car out and working again. He was busy on the phone and didn’t even notice that they had gotten the car back on the roadway until they were done. He didn’t notice me and I wasn’t needed so I spent the time watching from the sidelines and left after I was sure everything was taken care of and ok. I wasn’t surprised or hurt that I was practically invisible. I felt that was the natural order of things in the mood I was in.
I made it down to the graveyard and decided to go to a section I didn’t normally visit. It ended up that there was working being done there by a group of students and instructors (sort-of). The student types were human and somewhat dense, the instructors heading the project were elfin-like fey types. I was familiar with this situation. I ignored them and felt they wouldn’t even see me or care if they did.
Everything was flat. I couldn’t see the tombstones but I knew they were there. There were markers where the stones should be, sort of like a map on the ground or as if the ground level was there but the things above that level were gone. I went up against a fence, away from the work being done, and messed with the location of the stones trying to figure out how I was interacting with them (I think this is a metaphor for how I was interfacing with the real world). I was poking around a rock hill thingy which should be the base for missing stonework when one of the students came over. He started to talk to me and I don’t remember what he did but he insulted me, or did something that I took as threatening and without thinking, in one motion, I pulled out a knife and swept my arm in an arc to slit his throat. When he fell, I thought that I probably shouldn’t have done that and should have walked away instead. I didn’t really care but I knew logically it wasn’t the right thing to do and his punishment was worse than his crime. But done is done so I went back to poking at my rock.
One instructor raced to the side of the bleeding student and worked to fix his neck before he died. I was pleased that something was being done and then uninterested. Another instructor grabbed me and pulled me to the ground. They both were smaller than me but I didn’t put up a fight because I felt he was in the right. We talked. He seemed to understand that I didn’t mean to do it and that I was out of touch with the world. He felt bad for me but I still needed some sort of punishment because I had stepped over the line. He had a knife like thing and he lightly cut my face along the jawline and a few other outline type places. I wondered if I would be scarred or if it would even be noticed. But at that point he felt real. I was being seen for who I was, I was being touched at me instead of just having parts of bodies overlapping in space. I lay there as he got up and he put his hand on me and I felt cared for.
O, did I crave that. I realized that was what was missing before and I needed it. That was when I realized that everyone before was so caught up in their own stuff they didn’t realize that they hadn’t actually been in the same world as I was. Everyone else was an automatic and I was out of step and needing more. I craved more of this instructor but I also understood that it was a craving of being seen, heard and touched that I was craving not really him. He had his own life to live and what I was wanting was inappropriate. I needed to find other ways to meet my needs that worked for me.
I woke up at this point and started going over the dream. There were flavors of people/friends in each character. My method of transportation was floating as usual. I could go high or low if I concentrated as usual. The feelings from the dream were very familiar. It remains so clear and familiar that I decided to write it out. It is still very familiar feeling but not as strong or clear as it was in the dream. I think I know what it is about and I have slipped into autopilot somewhat myself, just to move around in this world and be willing to be awake.
I’m not sure what to say, which I realize is a little ironic, but I wanted you to know that I did read the whole dream.
–Ember–
I appreciate notes like this. Thanks.
Also I answered the what does driving mean to Gina in a very long response to bohemianbanshee’s comment that could be interesting to you.
Okay, here are a few things to keep in mind, in terms of your dream:
1. Food in dreams represents knowledge you are gaining. Food prepared by someone else = something that person is teaching you.
You somehow broke your mother’s favorite dish, which upset her. You didn’t want to eat it and felt it was unimportant. Your mother also appeared to be too busy to be as concerned as she could have been.
2. Driving in dreams represents your journey along your life path. People who are riding with you or driving you indicate the aspect of your life the dream pertains to.
You don’t feel your friends are paying attention to you. They think you don’t want to see this movie (don’t want this life? I don’t know).
3. Water in dreams symbolizes emotion. Flooding = being overwhelmed by emotion. Your teacher has a fancy sports car (a nice life?) that is filling with water. Has he been through some emotional difficulties? Have you had emotional difficulties concerning him?
Besides these things, the dream reads like you’re disillusioned with life (everything flat) and having a rough time (rocky ground). You visited a graveyard as well (possibly part of you has been thinking about life/death or the ultimate meaning of your life).
These are just some things I sense. Feel free to tell me I’m full of crap. I’m not trying to negate what you said about feeling uncared for, but rather, I think you should put it together with the other things (or not, if you don’t want to).
I kept a dream journal for years, and noticed many patterns in my dreams. Some I never would have figured out if I hadn’t kept the journal. Anyway, those are the things it would mean if I had this dream.
Anyway, those are the things it would mean if I had this dream.
I think this is really important to note. We have a lot of shared symbolic language, so that can be a good place to start.
I find it interesting, for example, that you say Driving dreams represent journey along one’s path. That’s not how I’d put it, but it’s very close to my own experience. I tend to view it as the question of control in my life. If I feel out of control, I may have nightmares of trying to steer from the backseat without having access to the pedals, or of trying to stop and only being able to slow most of the way down – that’s life, eh?
I’m intrigued at the overlap between your experience and my own, such as it is. I, too, have tracked my dreams for years – decades, even, and have determined certain patterns in my dreams, some of which overlap with other people’s patterns (like driving dreams) others of which do not (we aren’t on the same page about food in dreams).
When it comes down to it, dreams are in the internal language of the dreamer. So what does driving mean to Gina?
–Ember–
bohemianbanshee, I would like to introduce emberleo. emberleo, please meet bohemianbanshee. emberleo is a 5 (6 wing now, 4 wing before) who is a practicing pagan (of many flavors but mostly Norse mythology) and studying religion in college. bohemianbanshee is a 7 with a lot of 4-like traits that loves to poke at this sort of stuff.
I think you two would enjoy each other, if you could stand to type out your long thought processes (fingers get tired after awhile). I can see you guys talking long into the night over topics and enjoying the process.
I can see driving = control for you. It seems that 5s have a big deal about being in control of themselves and the 5s I know all seem to stand out a bit when it comes to driving. It is enough of an issue that for the most part, I know what driving means to my 5 friends where as it isn’t even discussed with a lot of other friends.
Driving in my life is something I am willing to do but would rather not do. I used to love it and got burned out from being one of three drivers for a group of 23 friends in the 80s. And being one of the main drivers for the friends I got when I came out here and was not appreciated for all the rides I gave. I love being a passenger but consider it a luxury I don’t have to have.
There is a certain feeling of being enclosed together and separate from the environment when with friends in a car. To be ignored in that situation is almost like adding insult to injury since interactions are limited. That might be relevant.
I can see the journey of life taken with friends and then wanting to go my own way on my own because I am not getting what I need being with my friends. And them not wanting to let go (it is an extreme action on my part but it is one I have done over and over in the past) but not groking what needs to change.
I am interested in your interpretation about the food.
The thing that I think has the most meaning is the instructors at the end of the dream. That one brought about what had been missing all along and that I couldn’t find with the people I know. I wish I understood about the face drawing/cutting thing. And I miss that touch, just the laying on of a hand on the middle of my back. It was such a real connection. That is what I crave and need. How do I find that. I think it symbolized exactly what it is, connection to others.
My relationship with food prep is so skewed, I don’t feel qualified to guess what it means in your head, and it’ll take a while to figure out what it might mean in mine, honestly. I’ll give it a shot in a while?
But yeah, to me the thing that really jumped out was how much more real the very end felt, reading it. The person directly touching you, and cutting your face in a way that, to me, implied delineating the edges of your mask – reaching under it, even, just a little, to say “I know you’re under there, and I see you, but I won’t pry the mask off, because that would harm you. But yes, you ARE there, and I DO see you, right now.”
Were it me, I’d have wanted to pursue the spirit helper you seem to have encountered, not that I always succeeding in doing such. In your case, though, it could be symbolic, rather than a true Visit, and I think it would carry the same wight either way.
I’m reminded of cutters in general – “When everything feels like the movies, yeah you bleed just to know you’re alive!”
–Ember–
I don’t think you are full of crap and I really appreciate your feedback on the dream. Thanks!
I am pretty sure that I understood what the dream meant to me over all. It seemed to really underscore a lot of my trying to find connection with others and feeling withdrawn/distant/disconnected/out of sorts. Also the search for life meaning which right now is all tied up in connection to others. It is a major focus on mine now and this dream seemed to just be putting in other terms than the way my waking reality shows it.
Also, I find when I am awake, I am very closed off. I am not actively searching for it because the process hurts too much right now. I feel like I need to protect myself and I indulge in fake versions of connection and distraction. I don’t feel I would be able to open myself up even if the chance came along right now. The dream was a way to continue searching while being safe.
The elements didn’t stand out to me other than as part of a whole so your analysis is probably going to be very useful.
1. I have no idea about the food. I did get the idea that the pasta was not about me but it was expected for me to accept that it was for me. In therapy, we (my therapists and I) have discussed how I was left in a crappy situation in elementary school for 4 years because my parents thought it was best for me and they were so caught up in their own crap, they didn’t really see the real me. This is what most of the interactions in the dream felt like. People seeing me as they paint me and saying it is real rather than having a real connection to me and seeing what is here.
I think the issue with my mom is that she makes her life into drama and then I end up needing to deal with drama, her crisis becomes my crisis when it shouldn’t be. Her life doesn’t need to be drama and her choices are what leads her there. I shouldn’t be buying into it and getting myself all worked up.
The pasta was really funny. I wanted the smooth slippery slide of spaghetti and this stuff was fuzzy and like a sweater even though it was eatable pasta. It was so wrong. I didn’t feel like she was feeding it to me so much as it is what she was making for the dinner and since I had wanted pasta and it was pasta, I was suppose to accept that it was for me and I should be pleased with it. I tasted it on my own to see if it would meet my craving and it didn’t. I didn’t eat any more. Not only was it unsatisfying, it was disappointing.
Maybe that represents that the knowledge I am getting right now isn’t meeting my needs/desires/cravings? Which doesn’t make sense because the new knowledge on the scene is the brain scan stuff and I am slurping it up as fast as I can and it is helping make sense of things. I don’t know what knowledge the fuzzy pasta would otherwise represent. I will have to think on that.
2. The driving thing has the element of that it is my car we took and I don’t want to strand them but I have the option to ditch them to their movie and do something for just me. I am pleased with this option. I figure I am working cross purposes with my friends because they think going to the movie is an us thing and so when I say I don’t want to go, they try to come up with another us thing but are still dialing it in. I want to connect with them but am tired of pretending that is what we are doing. Since I feel alone already, I want to actually be alone and free of needing to pretend and having my options limited. It is true I don’t want this life. I think it is interesting that you saw that from the limited detail I wrote out. The feelings involved feel like this isn’t the related answer but it is a very true thing. It makes me wonder if your interpretation is more accurate than mine, even with less information, because you are on the outside and can see things much more objectively.
3. Flooding. It is very easy for me to get overwhelmed with emotion so I can see where that would fit in. I have no idea who or what my teacher is representing. The character is a favorite prof of mine from college (late 80′s) and I haven’t heard from him since at least 2000. A few years ago, …
To be continued in next comment.
Continued.
…I tried to email him and didn’t hear back. Since the actual person or anyone who might have been part of the dream character isn’t in my life, I don’t know what the dream teacher is supposed to be related to. I felt like I wanted to help but the feeling wasn’t really registering inside me so I kept going.
Maybe it is symbolizing how disconnected I am right now to any teaching/teacher. Things tend to wash over me rather than sink in. I can logic my way around a lot of things but am not really feeling them. And with the stuff I need to learn, I need to feel them. But I don’t feel I can afford to remain open to that learning anymore.
I wonder who the people were who took care of his car. I think him not seeing me is another sign of not feeling important to someone I care about and them not being aware that I care. I wonder if it has anything to do with a crush I have on a guy that is friendly with me but otherwise seems to be uninterested. I am working on getting that resolved one way or the other but am trying to let it take the time it needs instead of making it go one way or the other as quick as I can so it is resolved. Him being the prof doesn’t make sense. I do really dislike that I am so crazy over him since there are a number of things that point to him being a bad idea.
I like your interpretation/simplification of disillusioned with life (everything flat), having a rough time (rocky ground) and graveyard (possibly part of you has been thinking about life/death or the ultimate meaning of your life). That is an interesting viewpoint on this. Yes, everything does feel flat. Waking up to reality feels like I am losing at least one dimension to get things to fit into just three. Life is very rocky right now and it is not smooth. One of my circle of friends just died young so there has been a lot of thought about death and how we are all related and what that means. I have also been searching for what I think adds meaning to life which for me is that deeper connection. Life is worth living when I can really see the world around me and feel others and be open to it. I need real connections with others to allow me to be that open and that is missing now. I had it once so I know it can happen. I just need to be able to support myself in that state rather than depend on others for the support.
One thing about graveyards is that I don’t see them filled with dead people. I see them as a place of peace, beauty and settled energy. Timelessness. Death for me has held the concept of freedom from all the pain and struggles of life and it appeals to me for that reason. A cemetery is almost like a physical promise of that release and it makes me feel secure. It can feel like home away from home. Typically (this idea is just coming to me) when people go to a cemetery, they are reaching inside themselves to connect to the ones they lost and opening up. While there is grief, there are a lot of positive emotions behind that grief. Rarely do people go to graveyards to be hateful to one another. I like the idea of focusing on the togetherness that is part of cemeteries and I feel that is the way we should be in our everyday life. (I don’t know if this matters but as a point of reference, I have always wanted to be remembered when I was alive but want to be completely forgotten when I am dead. I want to leave an interesting tombstone behind just because they are cool but don’t really want to be marked as having been here. I give into the idea that people will want to remember me but that is a them thing, not a me thing. I don’t want immortality or to leave behind a legacy.)
As for patterns, I know that my floating is a big one. I used to be able to fly by falling and missing the ground (to quote Douglas Adams) but now it is all about floating from one place to another. I don’t think I walk at all anymore. I will watch for others.
Thanks for the ideas and the perspectives. I appreciate them.
In therapy, we (my therapists and I) have discussed how I was left in a crappy situation in elementary school for 4 years because my parents thought it was best for me and they were so caught up in their own crap, they didn’t really see the real me.
What an understatement. It wasn’t just a crappy situation, it was downright evil. I’m so very, very attuned to what happens in my daughter’s school experience because I know just how evil, nasty, and soul-sucking kids that age can be. I suspect the average parent would think I’m a little hyper-vigilant because I am so aware of it and so ready to pull her from any school that doesn’t deal with those kids who are bullies of the worst sort – the kind that have learned how to be vicious only when no teacher is looking.
I read your whole entry hon, and the comments.
I don’t really have insight that you don’t already have. I can only say that I hope you find your connections.
(((hug)))