Daily Archive for March 26th, 2008

Dream Therapy: Why Are You Smiling? 1of2

Published on March 26, 2008 in Abuse, Dream Therapy, Dreams, Mental Health, PTSD and Segments. 0 Comments

I sat in my grandmother’s dinning room adjacent to the kitchen, the lights were rather low. The kitchen was mess because a family gathering had just ended. Several family members stepped out for a bit leaving me and one other person in the house. We chatted for a bit about how I planned to leave my chocolate milkshake for someone named Sheila. As the other person, whose face I never really saw, talked about Sheila the patio door in the dinning room burst open. A young white male ran in disheveled, panicked. Then the front door burst open and Sheila ran in looking for the young man. They seemed to be playing tag but the young man was certainly not enjoying himself. He ran into the living room and sat in the chair by a picture window with heavy dark green curtains that successfully blocked the view in and out. Sheila ran up to him and punched him in the face a few times. She was laughing. The other family member and I watched in horror but didn’t stop her. I told the family member I wasn’t about to give a chocolate milk shake to an abuser so I dumped it in the sink. As I came back I heard the young man tell Sheila he knew it was his fault because he was smiling. While trying to convince her to stop and that he wasn’t mad he accidentally smiled again. Sheila responded by punching him in the face several more times saying, “You gonna smile again? You want to smile again?”

Commentary:

The young man symbolized my cousin, the woman hitting him my aunt. My cousin use to get in trouble for smiling. They’d ask him what he was up to. He use to sit on the stairs at the grandmother’s house listening to everyone talk. If he smiled he got in trouble. The beatings he took on those stairs always went without much uproar about it. The aunt tore into him from an early age up until the time she left him and his sister in the house and moved to Florida with her new husband. The house was paid for yes but they were only teenagers, not ready for the responsibility of keeping a house, paying the taxes on it, ect. In the dream the cousin was about 17 years old and looked nothing at all like he actually does. The aunt didn’t look anything at all like herself either. It was very typical for the only repercussions of beating your child to be something simple like “you can’t have desert.” Hurting your child was normal, not something they cast you out of good standing for. I suppose that’s why the only real denunciation for her actions was to deny her a chocolate shake.

Dream Therapy: What Are You Smiling About? 1 of 2
Wednesday, March 26, 2008-4:10PM EST
Dream Therapy: What Are You Smiling About? 2 of 2

Dream Therapy: Why Are You Smiling? 2of2

Published on March 26, 2008 in Abuse, Dream Therapy, Dreams, PTSD and Segments. 0 Comments

The idea behind dream therapy is to re-write nightmares and make myself the victor instead of the victim or simply write an outcome I can live with. If I were to re-write this dream the young boy would come bursting into the dining room still disheveled but met with concerned family members. The dream would go like this:

Begin re-written dream -

What’s wrong?
I smiled. She’s coming in the front door.
Go in the kitchen and stay.
I’d follow behind him with the phone in my hand. Aunty C, you need to go home and calm yourself down or I’m calling the police.
Aunty C tests the boundary, lunges for me and begins punching the teenage cousin who happens to be several years older than myself. I quickly dial 911. Several minutes later police cruisers show up. They’re met with a very tired and very bloody aunt who is standing over the dead body of a young man. She’s tossed to the ground and cuffed. The medical team pronounces the young man dead at the scene and handle the situation according to protocol. As they lift the young man’s body onto the gurney to take him away I can’t help but wonder how history has changed. One life taken before it was supposed to end changes things, for the good or the bad but it changes things. The front door closes. I give my statement and two family members are lost to me.

End re-written dream –

One might ask why it is I chose to kill the cousin in the dream. I wrote it that way to give history a change. The same man beaten mercilessly, raped, tortured and humiliated grew up to himself be an abuser. One life to save the suffering of others, I’m okay with that. My cousin had choices the same as I have choices and any other survivor has choices. He fell to statistics. Since I’m able in dream therapy to make the outcome anything I choose I chose to change history, to make sure he never got his hands on one more child. If only we could re-write history this easily.

Dream Therapy: What Are You Smiling About? 1 of 2
Wednesday, March 26, 2008-4:10PM EST
Dream Therapy: What Are You Smiling About? 2 of 2

Not Quite Dog Sick

Published on March 26, 2008 in For the Record. 3 Comments

I can’t believe I have a cold or something nasty. Congestion, stuffy head, fever so I can’t rest….hang on, that’s a commercial. I should get some medicine so I can sleep like I did before I had… ????? oops, that’s a commercial too, the same one in fact. I must be delirious.

I nursed a migraine for days but now I’ve got this going on. I’m going to sleep now. Yeah, it’s 6:09AM and I’m just now climbing into bed but this IS my vacation. … like I put off sleep only on vacation time. Who am I kidding…again with the delirious babble.

I’m sleeping now,
later tatters,
Austin