Dreams

I had a dream last night. It wasn't the usual outlandish dreams that I have that I have no idea where they come from. This dream comes from something all too concrete. It may be that no one will read this blog, but I have to let this dream out of its cage or I may explode.

I was in the basement of my childhood home. It was roped off with crime scene tape, and I was studying the scene as a man collected the evidence. Some of the items strewn across the basement floor belonged to me, but I couldn't go near them because they were part of the crime scene. The man informed me that I would not be allowed to collect my belongings until tomorrow. I tried to explain to him that we used to own this place and that was why I had some things there, but he just walked away. I began to panic. Something very important to me was in the backpack in the middle of the floor, but the tape was as good as a brick wall barrier. The police and the investigators were leaving, and anybody could walk in and steal my backpack during the night. I had no way to lock the doors. The house no longer belonged to me. I had this overwhelming feeling that someone was going to come into this house and steal my things and there was no way to stop them. I decided to set a trap for whoever might try to take my things. I found some chalk lines and decided to dust chalk on the entrances so that whoever might try to get in the house would be stained with chalk and leave prints. The first chalk line I found was blue. I set it down checking the others. I needed red. Red had stained my jeans while roofing, not blue. I found a pinkish one and a red one and began frantically dusting the floor with chalk. Suddenly, I became aware that my dad was there. I was afraid he might ask me what I was doing, because the chalk lines were his. But to my surprise he just started talking about this job he was doing for the neighbors. He said he needed my help with it. I was reluctant to offer my help, because I knew it was unlikely that he would pay me for my work. I asked him what the job was. He said it was polarizing something. I was just trying to decide whether I should help him, accepting the fact that it was be charity, or turn him down because he is always breaking promises and letting me down, when I woke up to my alarm.

My dream is dredging up the struggle that is constantly going on in the background of my thoughtscape. My family was evicted from our home, which for me was a very traumatic event, the overwhelming sense of powerlessness and helplessness still haunt me at times. My father lied to us, saying he had taken care of the situation, and we weren't going to be evicted. I never knew when he was lying or telling the truth--just like I never knew if he was drunk or sober. There were always hints, but I could never be sure. He has lied so much and is drunk so often that I can't ever trust him. Part of me loves him. I do have good memories of him, and I did learn a lot from him. The smells of construction harbor the good memories. But there is that other part of me that hates him for being drunk and lying all the time. The smell of alcohol makes me relive the frightening and frustrating times, and although I try to remind myself that other people can drink and not be alcoholics, everytime another person drinks or talks about drinking, I get this sick feeling in my stomach. Anger, sadness, and love tear me apart inside. I feel like I'm being torn apart by a magnet--polarized like the strange job in the dream.