I Missed A Day

Sigh. 

I know, I missed posting something yesterday. It was not my intention, but it really came down to being busy. I had to completely switch two rooms in my house around, which involved at least 167 trips between the basement and my bedroom, which are 2 stories apart in both directions. By the end of the day, I was sore and exhausted, so that is my excuse. 

Yesterday is not the only day I have missed in my life in the past 24 hours. When I say "missed" I don't mean it in the sense of "I missed my appointment." I mean it in the sense of "I long for the day that."

I have been having vivid dreams. I mean, vivid in the sense of waking up pissed off and disappointed that what I dreamed was not real. The kind of dream that if I drank alcohol, I would have felt intoxicated when I opened my eyes vivid. In this one, I dreamed that someone who died was very much alive and being a pain in my ass, which made me grateful she was alive, because that is what made the dream so vivid. If she wasn't being a pain in my ass in some small way, then she wouldn't be alive, kind of dream. Having her be a pain in my ass is what I have missed. 

I have a love/hate relationship with those kinds of dreams. In one sense, they give me a few more minutes with someone I love, but they also making missing someone who isn't really here extremely intense those first few minutes after you wake up. Love the connection, hate the reality.

The other thing I miss is the direct communication. Why do dreams have to be coded in riddles and symbolism? Why can't I talk directly to the person I am dreaming about? Seriously, if they are taking the time to show up in my dream, the least they could do is talk to me, not at me. 

Some dreams are straightforward enough to unravel, while others are recurring, screw with your mind, and make you wonder "What is this fuckery?"

Freud believed dreams represented a disguised fulfillment of a repressed wish. He believed that studying dreams provided the easiest road to understanding of the unconscious activities of the mind.

According to him, sources of dreams include stimuli from the external world, subjective experiences, organic stimuli within the body, and mental activities during sleep

“The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind” 

― Sigmund Freud

 

Jung saw dreams as the psyche's attempt to communicate important things to the individual,and he valued them highly, perhaps above all else, as a way of knowing what was really going on. Dreams are also an important part of the development of the personality – a process that he called individuation.

"This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once: scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic." - Carl Jung

 I am not sure who is right, but I tend to agree more with Jung. There is a lot of symbolism in some dreams, while others seem to be more straightforward and speak to some of the things going on in my waking world. In some ways, it feels like I am interacting with myself, which is simply represented by the appearance of other people. It is, after all, my subconscious mind working on a problem while I sleep. I have to at least own that part, right?

Regardless, I am exhausted and emotionally drained from the dream, because the emotions I feel during it are just as real as the ones I am having now. Vivid dreams are like that and while I don't know why the dreams of late are as vivid as they have been, I know that it is just part of the process I am going through to reacquaint myself with who I am. 

So, I missed a day. It isn't the end of the world. There is today, and I am here... keeping a promise to myself.