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Dream Therapy: I Need You
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.
Dream Therapy: Rough Terrain Part 1of2
Two TV’s watched in the living room by strangers. One TV worked clearly, the other was blurry. I talked to the mother on the phone as I steam cleaned the carpet and strangers watched my TV. I poured dirty water from a small bucket into a large bucket as I explained to the mother that our recent phone conversations weren’t helpful but hurtful. We talked while there was a chimp sitting on the sofa, this chimp’s name is Bob. A pigeon perched on my desk which had been moved into the hallway while I cleaned the carpet. The desk blocked the restroom and bedroom from any entry at all.
The mother and I began to argue about what to feed Captain. She said her co-workers thought I should feed Captain differently. At that moment Captain was outside with two snakes in his mouth, one gold and black spotted, the other black and white striped. I told her when her friends pay his vet bills they can have a say in how I feed him. He seemed quite content with his new feeding program of wild animals he caught in the yard. The mother went on to tell me she was sorry she’d let me down recently. She then said she was going to have to let me down 4 more times. I asked what she meant. She said she was bringing home 4 new people to live with us. I told her that’s not letting me down but they can’t sleep in my room. I can’t share a room with anyone I told her. My sister, who had been quietly watching TV with complete strangers piped up and asked, “Since when can you not share a room with anyone?” “Since right now!” I said, “I’m not sharing a room with anyone.” The mother and I chatted a bit longer then hang up.
Dream Therapy: Rough Terrain Part 2of2
Walked back out to find the mother and two other people that would be coming home with us. By the time we hit the exit door there was only one person coming with us. We walked together through rough terrain to get to the car. There were craters to avoid, high hills to climb, all in the dark. It started off light but the walk was so long it got dark. The other person we were with decided to take a different route to the car so we split up. That just left the mother and myself to try and find the best way around our obstacles and get to the car.
On our walk we tried several different ways to get over these obstacles but ended up exerting ourselves too much. I remembered I’d come over the same rough terrain alone and that if I just sat for a bit to think how I did it I could get us both to the car without more energy loss to either of us. As we set my plan in motion the mother became very tired. We’d found a sidewalk that took us around all the craters and hills but she was becoming delirious and tired. She said she needed to stop and rest just for a moment. We walked a few steps further which was to the entrance of a shopping mall. She opened the door, felt the cool breeze and collapsed in the doorway. I woke up.
Humiliation: Dream Therapy 1of3
If you saw him wouldn’t you publically humiliate him too? From there I went on a verbal abuse tirade. I was shocked and horrified that a van full of children and their mother ranging from 14 to 7 were yelling at my 3 year old brother for wetting himself in public.
The dream started out gross and ended bloody and down right disturbing but still telling. I felt so sick when I woke. It started off with my brother having a bowel movement on a brick wall at a store. He stood against the wall and you could see this mustard yellow BM go on the wall. The mother and I were in lawn chairs outside the store looking out at the parking lot. I asked my mother why she was allowing him to use the restroom on the wall. I don’t remember her answer but she let him continue. In several places the toddler marked the wall with BM. I told him to stop and that I’d take him to the restroom. He got angry and ran into the street. I ran after him to keep him from getting hit. Just before I reached him a van stopped because they saw feces on him. The mother, who was also the driver, got out of the metallic coral coloured mini-van, picked my brother up and began calling him names. Two young teenage boys (maybe 13 years of age) jumped from the side door and grabbed my brother holding him high in the air mocking him. The sun was out, it was a very hot day. The parking lot was packed with cars, traffic was heavy. The boys held him up mocking him because he had diarrhea on his shirt. I took him out of their arms and scolded the boys for their actions. None of the children in the car understood why I was so angry with them and their mother. They continued laughing at my brother. The mother said had I seen my brother use the restroom on himself wouldn’t I do the same thing? She wondered if I’d seen him use the restroom on himself and if I had witnessed it she thought I too would parade him through the streets humiliating him.
The mother and her children were well dressed. The hair of the children was dark, they looked Jewish which is of strong significance for me. They looked like a middle class family the kind society assumes has it together and would never behave in such a cruel way.
Humiliation: Dream Therapy 2of3
(Same dream continued)
I needed to go clean my brother up so I started walking to a professional building across the street from the department store. The mother didn’t want me to do it. She was irritated that I was going to take him off and clean him up. As I walked across the street my sister appeared beside me. The walk should have been short. Instead of just going across the street we ended up walking down a winding country road which lead to the professional building. Once inside I began washing my brother in the only water source they had which was the water fountain. The water was cold. He objected but I kept washing him. At that point my mother called my cell phone to see how things were going. We got into an argument about something. I don’t remember what. I ended up hanging up on her. My phone turned into a Caress soap box, coral pink box saturated by cold fountain water. I left it on the table and went to the restroom. I left my brother with my sister.
I entered a room where the restroom was at the back corner. The room was familiar to me. It was a fixer upper. You could see plaster and dry wall that hadn’t yet been hung. Some of the antique white paint hadn’t dried yet. Paint cans and brushes lay helter-skelter around the construction area.
Humiliation: Dream Therapy Re-Write 3of3
The idea behind dream therapy is to re-write a dream so that it ends the way you want it to. This is to give the dreamer a feeling of control. In some dreams I needed to re-write it so that I was the victor and not the victim but in this case I need to re-write the dream so that events unfold in a way I can accept without emotional burden.
The dream would start off exactly how it did, with my brother using the restroom on the wall of the department store by the parking lot. I’d reach over to him and ask if he wanted to go inside the store to use the restroom. He pulls away from me and runs into the street. A family in their van jump out, snatch my brother up and begin scolding and mocking him for having BM on his shirt. I remove my brother from their arms and call out for the police. There’s no way they can put their hands on this child and hold him up for the world to scorn and not answer for it. No words I can say will do, I need to call the police. The police show up and I make a formal report that this so-called mother put their hands on my brother. She’s furious that I’ve called the police but not apologetic. She doesn’t understand why I’m making such a big deal out of this. I tell her it’s because no one should be treated the way she just treated my brother and that she has no right at all to ever put her hands on him.
Callous Abandonment
Last nights dream was quite interesting. I was in a classroom at elementary school desks waiting for the group therapist to come in so those assigned to speak that day could talk. The group therapist came in and went directly to the chalk board and started crossing off names. As he called off the names of the people who wouldn’t be talking that day he put one white chalk line through their name. He then wrote 3 names on the board of people he felt needed to talk that day. After writing he handed us a workbook and told us information on how to understand these individuals would be in the book. He didn’t even let them talk. He just gave us a workbook and left the room. We were to understand that one survivor used a tiger as a service animal because of her severe PTSD issues. One lady is in a domestic violence situation because she doesn’t have strength in her voice to tell and the third person ended up being accused of a crime he didn’t commit and was killed in prison which affected a survivor in our group because he witnessed it. The group therapist came in, shook things up, told us one thing then did another and simply walked out of the room but not before turning the lights out and leaving us all sitting in the dark.
Dream Therapy: Why Are You Smiling? 1of2
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
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
Dream Therapy: Uprooted Trees
Last night I dreamed that my mother was taking a report about a crime that I witnessed. We were sitting on the side of the road by a tree that had been uprooted. Most of the tree had been removed by public services but the trunk was still in the ground. The whole time we talked she was irritated with me. The more she got irritated the more steam came from the ground by the trunk. I reached down and pulled part of the trunk up and off. I noted that it shouldn’t have fallen apart so easily because the wood is solid. She was irritated that I’d broken concentration to note the condition of the tree. She kept talking. I kept giving answers and watching as more and more steam rose above the grass line. Then in a totally different spot but not that far away a second steam hole broke through the ground. Now that had her attention. I told her perhaps the roots went deeper than anyone thought. Maybe they went straight to the core of the earth and the heat from the core hitting this cold surface made it turn into steam. I then reached over and finished pulling up the rest of the tree trunk which was maybe 2 feet thick. I realized it shouldn’t have been that easy to pull up. I also noticed no roots came up.
