I don’t normally have bad dreams like this…still a bit shaken as I type this.
First, some backstory. My father is a person from whom I’ve been estranged for most of my adult life, and only in the last few years have we resumed cordial, if not always friendly, relations. The reasons aren’t important, but I did make a major breakthrough last year when I realized that I no longer hated him – I don’t really like him, but he’s mostly harmless now, and he’s too sad and pathetic an individual for me to summon any strong emotions for, either way.
Anyways, this morning I was napping on my couch (which has all but fallen apart – last night was the first time I’d been able to sleep on it without my neck crooking at such a sharp angle that it cut off my airway…no joke!) and started dreaming, but of course it was one of those hyper-real dreams that you accept as really happening, even when impossible things start happening…I was at home, and my father was there, I guess I’d invited him inside. We were talking about some personal stuff (don’t remember what) and he started to put his arm around my shoulder – suddenly, without warning, large gnarled tree branches came out of nowhere and wrapped around my body, arms and neck, choking and suffocating me! I struggled, but couldn’t scream because a hand was covering my mouth…and that’s when I realized that it was my father, trying to kill me!
I twisted and turned, but couldn’t escape. Bit through his finger, tasted blood, chomped through the knuckle bone and spit it out. He kept on choking me, giving no indication of pain whatsoever. Finally, I freed my head enough to start screaming, “HELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME!” – and then I woke up.
I think I understand what it means, but…anybody else wanna take a stab at it?
Other than the basic idea that you don’t want him back in your life because you’re afraid he’ll grasp and claw at every part of your life until it destroys you? Not too difficult to figure that out from the dream. Contact becomes intimacy becomes attempts to control becomes attempts to control what you say (hand on your mouth) and how you express yourself. Trying to hurt him to get him to stop doesn’t work.
Take it as a warning from your unconscious mind against allowing him to get any closer or to become a larger part of your life.
Of course, as scary as the dream was, it doesn’t have to mean anything. I actually had a very similar dream once only the person suffocating me was my husband. He attacked me for no reason and pulled my shirt over my head and I couldn’t breathe, and I kept beating on his arm to communicate that I couldn’t breathe and he kept screaming for me to shut up.
The man in real life couldn’t harm a fly and yet I woke up terrified and it took me a while to get over it. But it didn’t mean anything, other than that brains are weird.
That’s remarkably spot-on; at least, regarding how I’ve been treading in our recently renewed relationship. He’s an inherently controlling, manipulative person – someone who always needs to be the absolute center of attention, and he treats others (especially his children) as if they are extensions of his own ego. And yet, it’s not because of malice, or even selfishness – it’s more like he’s always been trapped in an infantile state of mind, like he never grew up past the toddler stage. Why nobody ever set him right, I don’t know…but it does make his negative energy far more challenging to deal with. Malice is easy to defend against, since you can turn the tables on the person trying to harm you. Ignorance? Not so much.
