I need to shut down and get to bed VERY SOON, but am making a “mental note” of sorts before the day is completely over. When I woke this morning, I told Jeff I’d just had a bad dream. I didn’t say what about. Later in the day, I kept thinking about it. What I remember is that I was getting ready to marry someone that I didn’t want to marry. I might even have been in a fancy dress — it might have been THAT DAY. I kept saying, basically, “I don’t want to marry this guy,” and no one seemed to care that I didn’t want to. Finally I was trying to think of reasons I couldn’t marry him, that would make some sense and carry some weight with other people.
When I woke up, Jeff was talking to me (I’d slept late, as usual — and since it’s after 1030pm, I predict I’ll sleep late again tomorrow, thank heavens for weekends), and I remember being so glad I was married to Jeff and that it had just been a bad dream. But it kept coming back to my mind, and I started thinking the dream was almost like a template for one of the primary psychological struggles of my whole life: the feeling of being trapped.
I always tell Jeff, “Don’t tell me what to do,” and fifty similar things. It’s like I’ve been doing this since I was eight years old, not wanting to go to school: I hate school, don’t make me go. And in college and grad school, wishing I could read and write what I wanted and not just all the stuff that was assigned for me to read, study, write, take tests, et cetera. And of course, back again to my childhood, it’s also about the sexual abuse: him telling me what to do, convincing me to do things I didn’t want to do and shouldn’t have done, that made me feel guilty and dirty and ugly and different. Something as simple as Jeff saying, “It’s nice outside, you should go for a walk,” causes me to revolt, to want to say, “Don’t tell me what to do, I’ll do what I want to do, you can’t make me walk, you can’t make me lose weight, you can’t tell me what to feel or what not to feel, and dammit I’ll get myself a Heath Mocha Frost if I want one!”
So I think my bad dream came from a very deep place inside, and it troubles me, but also causes me to think in a way that might help me to know myself better. And yet, it does trouble me.