dream/nightmare -- long post.
Jun. 1st, 2001 09:31 amFor those who just tuned in, I am a wicked vivid dreamer and like to analyze my own dreams (and even others, though I suck at it). So here's one from last night:
I was in a bookstore, a Borders-type place in a mall, though I think it was part of a school (like a college bookstore). I was just killing time, but not sure why and I was staying in another part of the building because I left my luggage in another room. I was in the bookstore, and I passed a magazine rack, and there were dozens of pristine copies of a particular magazine and then one beat up copy sticking out. I thought that it was my magazing that I brought into the store and put down, and then it got accidentally reshelved. So I picked up the magazine and started to leave -- I remember thinking that if it wasn't my magazine, no one would stop me anyway. I stepped through the security gates, and suddenly they went off -- they were very loud and flashy, and they door immediately locked. I turned around and saw an employee and a manager (and 30something large woman with short hair) who said "looks like we have a thief on our hands!" I hand the magazine to her and say "I'm sorry I didn't realize I still had this in my hands" and she said "no I don't think so, you're not getting away with this". She was completley over reacting, trying to hold me down, being condescending, waiting for the "police" to come and arrest me. I kept trying to talk to her and explain, but she was super snide and interrupting. I managed to convince her to let me go downstairs and get my bag so I would have it when the cops came. She did, I went and got my bag. Inside was a different magazine, called Hero, though it was a music mag. I had the receipt for it, and I was thrilled because I was going to use it as evidence that I didn't mean anything. I came back upstairs, and had to go into a room with the store manager/principal who started repeating back to me things I had said to the first manager. I explained that they weren't true, and...here's the tricky part. I knew this principal because I had graduated from the school, but the principal didn't recognize me because of my transition. So I decided to out myself, and when I gave my name and year, she remembered me and remembered I was a good student, so I won her over to my side and she believed me. Then the other manager came into the room with my mom, a security/cop, and a psychologist. My mom look scared like she was going to cry. First, I talked to the cop, explained what happened, showed my bag and the mag and the receipt and he left and said there was no evidence of wrongdoing on my part. Then I talked to the psychologist and convinced him I wasn't "crazy" and he left. So the only people left in the room were the original manager and my mom. Then the manager "became" Melanie's friend Me____ (same personality, different body -- this happens a LOT in my dreams), and she was smoking. At this time, I was no longer rattled, in fact I was feeling a little cocky and annoyed with this woman, but happy I would finally be able to shut her up. She started interrrupting my again, to explain about how she wasn't fooled and how she knows I"m a thief, but I kept interrupting HER and saying that she's being rude, unfair, and not following her own rules that she set up. I refuted her every point, and I remember using therapy-speak to shut her up ("when you interrupted me just then I felt that you're not respecting me, and I'm trying to give you respect so please do the same to me....blah blah"). She started to get really quiet and defeated, and in the middle of my talking, she suddenly averted her eyes and they glazed over. Then she took her lit cigarette and pressed it into her face, right on the bridge of her nose. She was only 2 feet away from her, and I heard her skin sizzle. My mom was screaming (which I've never actually heard before), and I jumped up, but decided not to touch the woman, because she seemed to have slipped into some other state or was having a breakdown, and I didn't want to make it worse by agitating her. So I started yelling for help, but stopped and started looking for a phone to call 911. I stepped out of the room while I was dialing, but heard my mom still screaming, and was scared the manager would hurt her. So I looked back in the room, and now the manager was Tracey Morgan (yes, from SNL) and he had lifted up his shirt and was putting cigarette burns on his stomach. I dialed the phone and then tried to think of what I should say to the operator.
Then I woke up.
Now I wasn't able to go back to sleep until I figured it out, and I think the dream was influenced by a recent viewing of Girl, Interrupted. But the jist of it was a problem-solving dream (which is sort of what my waking life is like now -- I'm in the midst of problem-solving different aspects of my life), and the whole dream was frustrating, except for when I started convincing all the people that I wasn't a shoplifter. I think when I had finally gotten down to the last 2 people, my brain suddenly changed the problem so that it would be harder to solve. I think it's interesting too that my mom was left -- I think I was planning on "dealing" with her once I got the manager out of the room. But I wasn't able to make it past the manager. But the manager had to change forms and change tactics in order to "trap" me. So I think it just represents my last "trappings" within my own mind, the way I hold myself back.
But I'm still sort of haunted by the image and the sounds.
I was in a bookstore, a Borders-type place in a mall, though I think it was part of a school (like a college bookstore). I was just killing time, but not sure why and I was staying in another part of the building because I left my luggage in another room. I was in the bookstore, and I passed a magazine rack, and there were dozens of pristine copies of a particular magazine and then one beat up copy sticking out. I thought that it was my magazing that I brought into the store and put down, and then it got accidentally reshelved. So I picked up the magazine and started to leave -- I remember thinking that if it wasn't my magazine, no one would stop me anyway. I stepped through the security gates, and suddenly they went off -- they were very loud and flashy, and they door immediately locked. I turned around and saw an employee and a manager (and 30something large woman with short hair) who said "looks like we have a thief on our hands!" I hand the magazine to her and say "I'm sorry I didn't realize I still had this in my hands" and she said "no I don't think so, you're not getting away with this". She was completley over reacting, trying to hold me down, being condescending, waiting for the "police" to come and arrest me. I kept trying to talk to her and explain, but she was super snide and interrupting. I managed to convince her to let me go downstairs and get my bag so I would have it when the cops came. She did, I went and got my bag. Inside was a different magazine, called Hero, though it was a music mag. I had the receipt for it, and I was thrilled because I was going to use it as evidence that I didn't mean anything. I came back upstairs, and had to go into a room with the store manager/principal who started repeating back to me things I had said to the first manager. I explained that they weren't true, and...here's the tricky part. I knew this principal because I had graduated from the school, but the principal didn't recognize me because of my transition. So I decided to out myself, and when I gave my name and year, she remembered me and remembered I was a good student, so I won her over to my side and she believed me. Then the other manager came into the room with my mom, a security/cop, and a psychologist. My mom look scared like she was going to cry. First, I talked to the cop, explained what happened, showed my bag and the mag and the receipt and he left and said there was no evidence of wrongdoing on my part. Then I talked to the psychologist and convinced him I wasn't "crazy" and he left. So the only people left in the room were the original manager and my mom. Then the manager "became" Melanie's friend Me____ (same personality, different body -- this happens a LOT in my dreams), and she was smoking. At this time, I was no longer rattled, in fact I was feeling a little cocky and annoyed with this woman, but happy I would finally be able to shut her up. She started interrrupting my again, to explain about how she wasn't fooled and how she knows I"m a thief, but I kept interrupting HER and saying that she's being rude, unfair, and not following her own rules that she set up. I refuted her every point, and I remember using therapy-speak to shut her up ("when you interrupted me just then I felt that you're not respecting me, and I'm trying to give you respect so please do the same to me....blah blah"). She started to get really quiet and defeated, and in the middle of my talking, she suddenly averted her eyes and they glazed over. Then she took her lit cigarette and pressed it into her face, right on the bridge of her nose. She was only 2 feet away from her, and I heard her skin sizzle. My mom was screaming (which I've never actually heard before), and I jumped up, but decided not to touch the woman, because she seemed to have slipped into some other state or was having a breakdown, and I didn't want to make it worse by agitating her. So I started yelling for help, but stopped and started looking for a phone to call 911. I stepped out of the room while I was dialing, but heard my mom still screaming, and was scared the manager would hurt her. So I looked back in the room, and now the manager was Tracey Morgan (yes, from SNL) and he had lifted up his shirt and was putting cigarette burns on his stomach. I dialed the phone and then tried to think of what I should say to the operator.
Then I woke up.
Now I wasn't able to go back to sleep until I figured it out, and I think the dream was influenced by a recent viewing of Girl, Interrupted. But the jist of it was a problem-solving dream (which is sort of what my waking life is like now -- I'm in the midst of problem-solving different aspects of my life), and the whole dream was frustrating, except for when I started convincing all the people that I wasn't a shoplifter. I think when I had finally gotten down to the last 2 people, my brain suddenly changed the problem so that it would be harder to solve. I think it's interesting too that my mom was left -- I think I was planning on "dealing" with her once I got the manager out of the room. But I wasn't able to make it past the manager. But the manager had to change forms and change tactics in order to "trap" me. So I think it just represents my last "trappings" within my own mind, the way I hold myself back.
But I'm still sort of haunted by the image and the sounds.