An interpretation

So, the Big Love came over this morning and we talked a bunch about the meditation/dream from the other night.

This is what I came up with:

The ocean is the void. It’s the void that I feel I’m being sucked into, that I’m terrified of. The void is need, it’s fear and it’s cold and numbness and suffocating. The dead people in the void are my needs — the ones that I can’t handle facing, the ones that I ignore and pretend not to have. My needs have become toxic. I don’t want to get sucked under by them.

The beach is where I am now. It’s not exactly safe, but it’s not as dangerous as the ocean. It’s unprotected, and it’s close to the water’s edge, so I’d rather not be there. The closer I get to the water, the more terrified I become.

The shack on the beach is an empty shell. There are dried flowers hanging there, so someone used to live there, but right now it’s just a skeleton. It’s safer than the ocean or the beach because it’s protected, but there’s no glass in the windows, so I’m not really protected here. I think the shack is somewhere I need to get to. I need to rebuild it. I need to be closer to the void, to face my fears, my needs, but still be at a safe enough distance that I’m not going to drown.

The forest is the safest place in the dream. It’s warm and I can hide there. I can find a spot to sit in and I can see whoever is coming. There is a safe path from the shack to the forest, so I can definitely come out of the forest as soon as I’m ready. When I walked through the forest I found a boardwalk which led me to some little dormitory-style houses. There was a sign outside that said “Watch out for Cheeky Monkeys.” The first dormitory was empty. The second one was empty of people, but there was a sleeping bag on one of the beds and a pack on the floor beside it. I curled up in the sleeping bag and went to sleep. I have a tendency to hide in other people’s sleeping bags. I have a tendency to hide behind other people because that’s the only way I feel safe. I need to find a way to get out of the forest, to bring whoever’s sleeping bag it is with me to the shack on the beach. To show them the place that I’m going to rebuild and tell them that I don’t need their sleeping bag, but they’re welcome to come and stay with me in my beach shack once I’ve rebuilt it. Until then, I’m going to try to be okay without their sleeping bag, but knowing myself and my propensity to run toward other people and away from myself, I have a feeling I might wake up in other people’s sleeping bags from time to time while I’m rebuilding the shack.

I forgot about the boat. There was a little rowboat on the beach. It only had one oar. I think I should make another oar and go out on the boat. That way I’m not actually in the water, I’m still safe from drowning in the void, but I’m facing it, getting closer. Maybe from the rowboat I can call out to the dead people and ask them how to bring them back to life. The dead people are my needs and I want to know how to listen to them. I want to talk to them and hear what they have to say.

Lately, I’ve been hopping from sleeping bag to sleeping bag. This is a bad habit. The Big Love offered his to me, and I hid in it for three years. Then I realized that I couldn’t really breathe in there, and I hopped into the Catalyst’s. But then he went away and when we were together again, I realized that he didn’t really want me in his sleeping bag — he preferred for me to have my own and sleep beside him. This would have been a much better thing to do, but I wasn’t confident enough for that so I ran away from him. Then the man came along and he opened up his sleeping bag to me, but there were conditions. I was happy with the conditions, hell, I sort of created the conditions — that other people would be in there sometimes, and that I’d only be in there from time to time. Except now I’ve realized that I don’t want to be in anyone’s sleeping bag any more. I really like the man, but hiding in his sleeping bag is really stupid. He doesn’t actually want me in there. And I don’t really want to be in there either. With him, I’d much rather be running around having fun. I’d rather not have anything to do with his sleeping bag.

So what I really need to do now is get my own sleeping bag and rebuild the shack on the beach. And every day I need to go to the water’s edge and talk to the dead people in the sea and hear what they have to say. I really want to figure out a way to get them out of the void. One day, eventually, I will dip my toes into the void to see how horrible and cold and toxic it really is. But not for a while. I think I need to rebuild the shack first. Each thing in it’s order.