The People Behind My Eyes

I was standing in a Texas bar listening to the band play. They’d just finished up and my sister decided to sing a little bit. She was half hidden behind an oriental screen, you could only see long reddish-brown hair and the top of her. The band noticed that she was pretty and began making comments about it. As they walked towards her I put my head down and hid behind the rim of my hat. There were 3 band members that surrounded her and made comments about her long legs and beautiful hair. Then they decided to carry her off. My mother sat there, did nothing at all as they carried her oldest daughter off to rape her. I jumped on the back of one man and pounded and screamed, “She’s just a child, she’s a baby! She’s just a child.” In the dream she was about 17, the men were in their 40’s. One man turned and looked me in the eye and I said in a begging tone, “Please, she’s just a baby, let her go.”

I could tell that it hit home but he still wanted to go along with his boys. I followed them and kept grabbing and beating on the one I figured I could get through to. They took her to a movie theater. Two men disappeared with her. I kept fist fighting with the one I thought I could get through to. “Give her back, she’s just a child.” I realized every time I said, “She’s just a child.” I’d get a different look in his eye, like it hurt him to hear he was about to take part in the rape of a child. I figured if I said it enough maybe he’d make his boys let her go. So I kept saying it and kept saying it, pulling on him, fighting him, screaming at him, begging him, “she’s just a child.” After a bit his heart hardened and he just wanted to distract me so his boys could hurt my sister. He fell down on the theater stairs which lead to the auditorium. His head faced down, his feet faced the top of the stairs. I walked slowly up to him to see if he was dead, if he wasn’t I had a rock I intended to finish him off with. When I went to investigate his condition he jumped up, laughed and ran back up the stairs to mock me again. He fell the same way, head down, feet towards the top of the stairs. I realized I was wasting my time pleading to him so I left him on the stairs and went looking for my sister.

The theater turned into a huge house with several floors. The sister was on the upper floor where there were two rooms that looked as if they’d before been used for the purpose of gang rapes. As I turned the corner the song Te Necesito started playing over the speaker system in the house. I could see the sister in a white sheet lying on her belly sleeping. As I got closer I caught sight of the second bedroom where my mother was. She was in a white sheet as well but half covered. I realized then the mother convinced them to take her instead of her daughter. She wasn’t bruised but she’s obviously been assaulted. She had long but superficial cut marks on all her limps. The cuts I say were superficial because they were not meant to kill her. They were deep enough to need stitches in all of them but not deep enough to hit major arteries. The rows and rows of knife cuts were everywhere but her face. Somehow she still seemed beautiful to me. I remember thinking how graceful she looked half covered in the white sheet, which had no blood on it at all. She had no blood on her either. She just lay there, exhausted, ravaged but still beautiful. The longer I looked at the mother the louder the Spanish version of Te Necesito played. I woke up.

These are the English lyrics that got loud at the end of the dream:

And I feel lost like I’m lost
As a needle in the middle of the sea
As the moving sands I submerge
Among my loneliness

I don’t know if I have lived ten thousand days
Or one day ten thousand times
And I add you to my history
Wanting to change what I’ve lost for something better

Te Necesito by Shakira, English lyrics. By clicking the following link you can listen to the entire Spanish track for free. Te Necesito - Spanish track .

Commentary: I believe the sister and the mother represent me. I think the trickery by the man who seemed to care was just to prevent me from focusing on the other two men. I think this all playing out in a theater hall goes along with how much of a performance our lives were. I think me laying there with no blood on me even after being harmed to that extent symbolizes how I refused to show any signs of distress.
It would have been nice for the person to actually have been my mother successfully protecting my sister but seeing as how she’s a major offender that would never happen.
Recurrent dream theme: abuse, fighting or arguing, mocking, theater
Feelings upon waking: sad, angry, anxious, a bit dissociative

I don’t even know how to begin to re-write this dream so I suppose it’s more of a dream journal entry than dream therapy.

Joan of Arc
Dream Therapy: I Need You-Tuesday, May 13, 2008-11:30AM EST