Just a Dream

It was just a dream. Bits of flotsam and jetsam. Or is it jetsam and flotsam since that is the order they would happen? At any rate, dreams are often weird metaphors for what is going on in our lives, a way for the heart and spirit and mind and even the body to work together to keep us sane.

Still, I am going through my day with the emotional residue left by a strange dream.

I think the emotions of a dream are often stronger than their content. When we relate a dream it seems to carry no emotional impact to our listeners. They may find it odd, but they miss what the dream left behind in our hearts and minds.

I wrote a post last night, and I posted it this morning feeling the emotional residue of a dream crystalized in the post I had written.

The post was about the strange series of mechanical breakdowns in our home. How it laid stress on my fragile marriage and offered the fodder for theological debate between my wife and I on the goodness or even existence, of God.

Drifting off to a prescription drug aided sleep I found myself wading in deep dark water, a common dream metaphor for feeling overwhlemed.

There were things floating in the water.

Some were right on the surface, much of it floated at varying depths in strings and clumps.

They were fish hooks.

They were brightly colored bits of rubber and plastic imitating edible tidbits fish might enjoy, and each had hooks on them, some single, some triple, all brass.

I was moving to get people out of the water, my wife, my children. I could feel the hooks biting into my arms, legs, back, chest, sides.

When I emerged from the water the weight of those hooks, some of them clinging to dozens of others, pulled at my skin.

I got my family out. I pulled out a pair of wire cutters and clipped the barbs off the hooks that most hampered my movements and started going around, removing the brass snares from the flesh of my family.

A sense of horror rose in my heart. I snipped the tiny gaffs from my wife’s flesh, backing the curved metal pieces out of her skin.

Now and then I paused to remove a few from myself.

Snip. Off came the barbs. Then I’d tug at the bits of metal and nonsensical, nearly Dr. Seussical type rubber creatures with their impotent hooks stabbing out of their bellies, tossing them to lay beside the lapping water.

As the sun rose in my dream it rose outside my window. The alarm went off. I rolled out of bed.

I began my day with emotional gossamer threads of the strange dream clinging to my heart... Six hours later I still feel wrapped by tiny spider threads of emotional horror and pain and damaged flesh, it is clinging to the emotional reality of this new day.

At work I can accomplish clear goals. I almost wish I didn’t have to go home.