Dream Walker

I woke up this morning feeling quite stressed. My dreams are always vivid, and what is interesting is how often I am alone in my dreams, walking, walking seemingly for hours at a time, trying to get home. Home in the past of my dreams was always, Roeselare, Belgium, where I grew up. Lately, home in my dreams has shifted to trying to find my husband and son, who live here with me in Olympia. In those dreams as of late, I end up being separated from them, and cannot find my way back to them, the same theme of my dreams in the past, where I would end up being separated from my parents and siblings. The one who would at times succeed in getting me home was always my father. In the dreams in the past, I was often waiting at a train station, waiting for the train that would take me home. In my recent dreams, where I am looking for Michael and Nicholas, I am always walking. Walking along freeways, with cars whirring past me, oblivious of my presence. I am walking in Austin, Texas, where I met my husband and where we both went to graduate school. Last night, I seemed to have been dream walking in the south somewhere again, maybe Texas, that part was not clear. In the dream I had been visiting a friend of mine who turned out not to be home, and I was walking back from her house, trying to find my way back to the house where Michael and Nicholas and I live. I kept losing my way, and ended up in a Chinese restaurant where the lady owner invited me to stay for lunch and meet her very extensive family who had all congregated to eat together. I remember being inundated in the very musical Chinese language sounds, and very glad to join in the gregarious, loud gathering. It seemed to take me forever to get out of the large restaurant after the elaborate lunch, and by the time I made it outside, I found myself lost once more, this time in a huge field full of enormous farmhouses and brand new log cabins. There were people everywhere, I felt like I had fallen into a spontaneous country fair. People were laughing, playing music, hauling hay, rounding up cattle, talking, building, chopping wood, and no one seemed a bit interested in my attempt to communicate my desire to figure out where I was and how to get back to my husband and son. I was hoisted onto a large tractor, asked if I wanted to stay for dinner, and the last thing I remember is trying to yell over the noise of the tractor engine, asking how to get back to the main road. It seemed very odd to wake up in my quiet house, and see my husband asleep and hear the soft snoring of my son in his room. The yard was quiet, and the sound of some enthusiastic early morning birds was very welcome. I felt like I had just fallen through an opening in the sky, in some kind of time warp. As loud as it was in my dream walk, as quiet was it in my house. As busy and crowded it had been in my dream, as quiet and solitary was it at my house. It took me a good half hour to get my bearings fully aligned again. It almost felt like I had really been to all those busy places in my long and quite frustrating dream walk. I felt physically tired, which made me smile. How odd was that. What would Carlos Castaneda and his guide into other worlds say about my dreams? And no, contrary to what a friend of mine suggested, I do not drink alcohol or do drugs. It does feel like a journey though, these dream walks of mine, that became much more regular and intense after my family fell apart and I went solo, refusing to be patronized or cajoled into submission at the expense of dignity and peace of mind and not least of them, freedom from lies and manipulation. These dreams do give me a very unique perspective on my relationships and my weaknesses and strengths. They also reveal quite a bit about how difficult it is to go rogue. These dream walks also reveal how vulnerable I feel since the loss of my family, so much so that now I dream I cannot find my husband and son who live with me and share my life daily with me. Post Traumatic Stress Dreaming... maybe that is what I am dealing with. Maybe one of these dreams, I will be allowed to make it home. I certainly am very determined, my tired feet this morning will tell you so.