drmentry82315 My mind is like... {nightmare}
An uncharted mountainous island surrounded by treacherous waters that are full of chasms, reefs, shoals and all that one can imagine...
Now imagine yourself a ship...
On a moonless night with no light house...
the details, details, details... tedious lil ol details that are... just bits of icky icing on a rotten cake.
the details are... not good.
the details consist of me running and hiding from a bad situation/relationship with my uncle and mother.
running from the Farm to try getting to the Trailor (Possibly) and away from a bad situation with them.
[sighs tiredly & unhappily]
it started with me sitting cross legged on the kitchen floor at the Farm coloring.
i have no idea how old i am in this. i seldom do. it's somewhere between a "then" and a "now" as near as i can tell you.
i'm sitting there coloring... half listening to my uncle and mother talking. some of it is about me, some of it... no idea. i only catch bits and pieces at best anyway and given how dreams, even bad ones (Especially bad ones), work... yeah i'm not going to know jack about it.
at some point my mother gets mad/upset/"negatively emotional" if you want to be clinical about it... and it would seem to involve me some how. how, no idea. i just know in the dream, my reaction was pretty much that of having a hot wire jabbed at me and made me Move rather than stick around asking questions.
[it's all Instinct... and rambling.]there was actually a lot of that when i was a kid. you didn't have the luxury of sticking around in hopes somebody would nicely and calmly explain to you the motive for other people's behaviors.
you just caught scent of BAD in the wind, grabbed what you wanted to keep and bugged out of there like a deer smelling a baddie. you didn't even waste time flicking your tail to warn others, you just prayed on the run that they were paying attention to the climate around them too.
so in That, i would guess the dream wasn't anything out of the ordinary. just an old stand by in the nightmare department to shake things up for whatever reason.
the urge to run... nothing new.
i could say i'm not a coward. or i could say that i admit that i am one.
neither statement would be completely true. i can be a coward. but most of the time that others would deem cowardice, i would deem merely being realistic and leaning towards self preservation because i Know there's no way i could win whatever battle i was running from. all i could do is grab who/what i held dear, and haul ass out of Ground Zero in hopes that we all made it far enough not to take on Too much damage that we couldn't survive it. it's a very basic instinct.
most Real heros wouldn't tell you what they did was heroic. they often say, "it's just what had to be done. my buddy/comrade/etc was in trouble, we All were in trouble, and i just Reacted."
so in the Real World, there's really no such thing as "brave" or "cowardly"... it's all Instinct.
anyway...
whatever was being said/done, it A.made me angry and B.made me wary enough to put my flight gear into operation. ASAP.
my uncle chided me (jeered at me) saying it wasn't any use trying to run. where would i go, how could somebody like "me" (a mere kid, stupid person, wtfe take your pick) hope to gain or manage. that just pissed me off worse and made me move Faster.
i already had my escape route planned out; mapped out and double and rechecked in my head for possible pitfalls and defects.
~again, i did a Lot of that as a kid. so nothing weird there. the Only weird thing in that would be that my uncle was involved. he was Never one to step in on Either side in such situations.~
i didn't have time for much in the way for prep. i only had them staying off me for That long because, like a cat watching its prey, they were curious to see what the little bug would do and how it would move. nothing more, nothing less. no pity, no consideration, just amusement that i some how thought i could accomplish anything but be irradicated.
so there was a lot of quick grabbing of stuff i would need for the run and ignoring the jeering while i threw what i could together.
by the time it had sunk in with them that i really Was going to do this, i had grabbed my gear, my dog (Lil Girl) and was out the door at full speed.
~also common...regardless of the threat, as a kid i'd grab the dog and/or whomever was defenseless on the go. no lil cousins/dogs/cats/etc left behind to face it alone. even when they didn't Want to go, they Went because i had a death grip on'em and was Not leaving them there. even when realistically They weren't the ones who had to worry about it. my mother would never have hurt my little cousins or taken it out on the animals that she couldn't get me. she didn't get abusive to animals until Much later in life. it took us Years to get the dog she dropped in our laps to understand we weren't my mother. and even Then she still had moments where she'd pee if somebody moved too fast towards her.~
the thing is, i Knew i could make it so they couldn't catch me. i Knew a lot of little tricks and ways to play the run-n-hide game so that others wouldn't catch me. now maybe they weren't unknown to my mother but she had set my uncle to hunt. and He wasn't there when my parents and i were running from various hunters. He had never experienced that. She may have but i was counting on her doing her usual thing and not thinking to share any insights with her baby bro on how/where to look for me. she was predictable that way. she was too narrow sighted to think of how to hunt something sneaky. no all Her playbook contained were tactics on dealing with straight up full out war. prolly part of why she had him doing it... killing, maiming, terrorizing- those were fun. but tracking- such a bore.
so while i knew he would be harder to hide and run from than my mother, i was counting on him not realising i wasn't the usual uninformed prey you just thought in straight lines to catch. oh i knew Eventually it would occur to him. but i was hoping, Counting on, that by the time it Did, i would be safely tucked away some place that it would be too late and too hard to dig me out once i'd gone to ground.
so me n my dog... it's cold. it's sleeting. it's nasty... and here i am, dog under one arm and what few items of prep i could grab in the other... running in fuzzy slippers, a ratty old nylon nighty and a fuzzy blanket i had grabbed from the dog house outside on my way passed.
we made it a long ways before Lil Girl said she heard a truck on the road coming our way. she suggested i hightail it into the brush and she'd see if it was my uncle or not. i didn't like it but i knew that it may be our only chance. i wasn't going far though. no way would i let her get caught just to save my hide. but i had to agree with her logic... that she was a small hard-catch hard-notice little beagle and i was this big lumpy easy-Not-to-miss human... easy target in other words.
didn't like it, but had to agree with the assessment. so i hid in the overgrowth by the road and watched.
the truck coming was indeed my uncle. he slowed when he saw the dog but she shot off to the side and by the time he'd gotten the truck stopped completely on the wet gravel and had it braked enough to jump out, me n my dog were long gone.
but now we Knew where He was and what to watch for. sure he knew where we had Been but the elements were now in our favor. he would have to try tracking us through worsening weather and do so under the stressor of being the hunter.
we were the hunted. that, in its way, gave Us an edge.
because for whatever reason, despite what you might think, the hunted who are self aware and alert are a Hell of Lot harder to get. because they have Adrenaline and Paranoia on their side. that makes them a lot harder for the hunter who Doesn't have those traits to figure out. ~remember that kiddies. the movie tropes Do have Some truth to them... at least when it comes to the last character in the slasher flicks. they Know what they're up against and to Hell with playing fair after all their friends got picked off like dodoes before the sailors.~
we had found this weird hole in the road that actually turned out to be a sort of opening to a underground passage. like a redneck teenage mutant ninja turtle lare... a dirt tunnel under the road that smelled unpleasant but hey, it was a place to gather our brains back into one pan and recoop a little.
some strange people lived down there.
it was like what you might expect Never Never Land Really being like...
kids of varying ages with the minds of adults but still in their child bodies. a bit like the little girl vampire in anne rice's "interview with a vampire" i guess. old, cynical and perhaps just a tad mean and a lot bored but stuck as children forever or until the sun rises... whichever comes first.
and we had just plopped down into their humble lil abode.
unannounced and uninvited.
luckily for us, we were something of a diversion. a novelty. we relieved their tedium for a moment and brought with us the possibility that there would be more on the way if my uncle figured out where we'd lighted. imagine... being a bored elder entity and having a little silly ol taste of intrigue and mayhem being given you on a silver platter out of no where. it would be like somebody threw you a surprise party that you Hadn't actually ferreted out beforehand.
so these people agreed to help us.
a moment of weakness for them i suppose, but we were duly grateful and took it without hesitation.
we let them fuss a bit over us. feed us and let us get a little rest. they didn't have much to help us become better prepared but they did help us get what we Did have more organised so it would be easier once we went back up topside.
they were interesting kids really. they had settled on having their little community/commune/wha'ver being set in the times of France pre-revolution and they were the Royale Courte. complete with the powdered hair (because really, when you live in a dirt tunnel, Everything's dusted Anyway.) and the garb of the time. though the clothing was a bit worse for wear. (one can only use the same dress-up-n-let's-pretend clothing and props for so many decades with out the benefit of washing for just so long after all.)
admittedly they didn't Sound like the little kids they Looked like. as you might imagine.
but we weren't going to fuss about the little details and inconsequentials. no we did our best to show what grateful little common subjects we were and did the whole bow-n-curtsey routine. even the dog did cute tricks to show she got the memo.
we didn't have long though. or at least not as long as we would like. because there was a strange thumping at one end of the tunnel that let us know the trap door/redneck manhole cover/etc had been discovered and would soon be explored whether we were ready or not.
the people in the tunnel took a rather unholy glee at the prospect. we had told them what we were running from and as much of the why as we could fathom and it some how tickled them to think that just this once they would be being themselves and it would be for a Good Cause.
i wouldn't say they were of the mind that this was what they had been created for. no it wasn't anything as noble as that.
no it was simply a novelty that they could be Heros for once in their long existance rather than just being the same old same old.
so one of the less jaded ones led us to one of the ways out as far from the entrance we came in as possible with a quick "good luck" as we were shoved back out into the cold icky outside world again; only a little less scattered. we had had a moment of down time. we were back to being harried. but at least we had Had that bit of relief so it still helped.
at some point there was a river i've seen in many other dreams... something in dreams that was familiar but i've never Actually seen/visited/been to in waking life.
there was a muddled hodge-podge of how we got across it.
rather I got across it because at some point the dog was off doing something. she'd caught scent of something intriguing to her, and in typical beagle fashion, pretty much abandoned me for a time while she tracked whatever it was. (beagles can be the most loyal of breeds but they Are easily distractable when their true nature is tempted. and they Were bred for tracking after all so one must forgive them this atimes Annoying birth trait.)
i was okay with this. not because i didn't worry about her, but because if she was hunting, that was one less thing i needed to be mindful of while i was being Hunted. at this time, i wasn't just in flight mode. i was in cool calm logical outrun the preds mode. i am no rabbit to run in front of the oncoming car. no, i am aware. tactical. coldly logical. i count the numbers, add the statistical possiblities and weigh the pros and cons with a clear analytical mind. and it's easier to do this with out the worry of more than just myself to look after. i knew she would be able to do her own thing with out worry. and if she Were caught, i knew that regardless of what my mother might think of doing, my uncle would protect the dog. if for no other reason than the dog was a papered hunting dog and worth more undamaged than my mother's irrational mentality to harm something just for the sake of doing harm.
unlike me... i, on the other hand, was worthless as far as the Family was concerned. a half breed fem. that as far as any were honestly concerned, i was a bastard to boot. so completely expendable. so no help for me.
but the Dog... yeah, no worries there.
so i could focus completely on My objective of staying out of the hands of those who had no concerns about my welfare beyond that of what they felt like doling out to me.
which i did with gusto.
because i didn't have to worry about running weighed down by carrying the dog i could take less obvious routes. ones that went through tighter animal trails and overgrown pathes most humans wouldn't be able to fathom much less follow.
years of training to outrun, outhide and outthink those in a position to make my life most unpleasant kicked in.
when i heard the familiar sound of my uncle's truck, i knew to freeze still as the trees around me. to turn into part of the background.
don't look. just listen. close your eyes or the light shining on them will give you away. shut off the whirling noisy sounds of your own mind and Listen to your surroundings. you are the rabbit with the mind of a wolf. Use It.
and i did. i've always excelled at that. at knowing how to ghost so others won't even sense my presence amid the flotsam and jetsom of everyday existance. i become part of their debres field. just a bit of driftwood amid the rest of it.
and the truck would keep going. sure it would be back, always back-n-forthing trying to figure out where i was. but each time it might be close, it would always miss that key location, that one spot would remain overlooked. the spot where, If he had Stopped and actually gotten out of the truck and had Actually Used his gift of tracking me, he would have found me.
so either he didn't want to Really find me, or he was being lazy or whatever other hundreds of other possible explanations there could be... the result was the same.
he didn't see me. didn't catch me.
and i wasn't stupid enough to throw away that advantage. i wasn't lazy enough or foolish enough to become complacent and ignore the fact that there was Still a danger there.
and so i made my way. but as i was nearing the place i had thought to run to, it occurred to me that it wasn't a haven after all. that while i had been running and on foot, my mother could have made it to the Trailor with ample time to spare and was laying in wait for me to stupidly walk on into oblivion.
i slowed my pace. gave myself time to think it through. time to come up with an alternate plan that they might not be able to anticipate. they knew, or thought they knew, where i would run to. so what were my options... Really.
the Trailor was out. they would expect me there and it was easily accessed by them.
and really, it wasn't that great of a place to lay low. not really. it was a run-down tin can at best. with no resources and no real safety. so even if they Didn't count on my going there (and honestly? my uncle had been driving in a pretty much straight line between the Farm and the Trailor the whole time as i saw it) even if my mother Wasn't already there, it was just a matter of time before she Could be.
so i changed my path. slowed and thought. i didn't have any other places i could go. my uncle had been right about that.
i couldn't go to the neighbors... they would just hand me over to my mother with minimal thought or fuss. no, she gave them too many gifts over the years, brought them status. she would hold her hand out, smile and that would be my end.
and i didn't have any friends. part of the price of being me and being in my situation. it made sure i was isolated and with out any resources that weren't connected to either my mother and/or her family.
so it wasn't as if i had any Other places to go But the Trailor.
but i would change my directions of approach. instead of coming in at a straight angle, i'd come around from behind... gage the threat from the back and make adjustments as well as i could to what i would plan to do from there.
no plan is so perfect that it can not be improved upon. and only a fool is so rigid in their planning that they do not Leave room for those improvements.
and despite what my mother may have thought of me, i'm not a fool when it comes down to the wire.
the rest of the nightmare was my sneaking around the back way and trying to decide if it was safe or not.
there Was a spot, just as i was starting to surface and wake, where it seems like i caught a glimpse of my uncle realising that what was happening was bad. not in a he-goofed-in-tracking-me bad but that somewhere along the line the whole situation finally sunk in with him and he figured out somewhere in there that it wasn't funny. that it really Was something serious and Bad. that my running wasn't just a game, especially not to Me. and that if i Was serious and Was being that careful, it meant there was something really fubar'd going on. it finally seemed to occur to him that i Shouldn't have reacted like that. that it Wasn't the reaction of a normal kid in a little trouble, that it was a very very Bad symptom of something much much worse. something he seemed to finally realise he'd been trying to ignore and shouldn't have.
then he was still tracking me, but it wasn't to take me back to my mother to have fun with but to try maybe helping me? or at least explaining to me ~more like trying to get forgiveness and/or make excuses~ why he hadn't helped me...?
but the dream me didn't know any of that. ~and the waking me didn't trust it even knowing it~ so i kept to my course of avoiding being spotted much less caught.
i did notice he seemed to be getting more frantic in his maneuvers but the dream me chalked it up to my mother making his life hell for failing even if the waking me kind of Hoped it might mean he was getting scared/upset that he couldn't catch me before i walked into my mother's trap for me.
All in all, not a pleasant dream for me to be having.
And people wonder why I'm an insomniac. Some times I can't help it. Other times...
The footnote:
Well, there are probably a lot of possible meanings or interpretations to this mess I would imagine.
It doesn't take a degree in the mental pickery department to see that.
[my hypothies to some of the meaning to this]But here's what popped for me. and you can agree or not.
As I see it, a good deal of my life was as a person with one foot in the grave.
Hell, most (if not all) the doctors I've seen in the passed year or so would back that up. They all told me that I was Born with a heart defect that was exacerbated by circumstances I lived through and that it went untreated so long that it nearly killed me two Aprils ago. So I'd say that it's a good guess that the whole thing where I dreamed of hanging out with dead relies is pretty much on the nose as far as the "meaning" of that is concerned.
And if we infer that, we can further infer that the rest, all the running/dodging/weaving/etc would fit as well when you consider that once I got my feet under me where my health was concerned, I hit the ground running as it were.
And as in the dream, I don't have an exact end goal/location to run to, I'm just staying as far ahead of the dead or mental walkers (if you will pardon the cultural nomenclature) as I can. For as Long as I can.
As to minor details, like the blanket and the dog... The blanket was one that we had possibly buried one of the dogs we had last, though I'm not sure. And well, the dog in the dream was one I would have had in or around the time period the dream was taking place. As to her Talking... At one time I would say that it was one of those things where as a kid I understood the language of animals better than I do as an adult. Or it may be merely one of those Dream things... Where something is simply there to make it easier to travel in the dreamscape one finds oneself in. It's hard to say.
[shrugs] Who knows.
And if I had to guess at where some of the "family drama" came from, I'd have to say that well, like it or not, my past is littered with the damned stuff and there's really no way to pretty it up and/or pretend otherwise. Yes, I would have agree with Sandy's accessment that in many ways, I Do have all the hallmarks of a soldier fresh off the front lines that didn't come out mentally unscathed. Like it or lump it kids, it's the unpleasant truth.
Where my uncle is concerned... Well, nobody wants to think ill of somebody they idolise. And I did. Even though he never actively protected me from anything, I had always sort of given him a pass on it where I wouldn't forgive others for the same thing. Part of me just tried telling myself that he and the Family hadn't really witnessed or knew of what my mother had done to me.
It wasn't until towards the end, after Gramps had died and everything was being divvied up when my uncle told me they Had known. That they were "sorry." That they had known my mother was "rough on me sometimes." And that by giving me land I never asked for or wanted was their way of making up for it. I suppose they thought it was a noble peace offering on their parts. A small sacrifice to the little halfbreed bastard girl to make it all better. It never occurred to them it was like trying to put a bandaid on a rotten piece of flesh I had long ago realised needed to be amputated to save myself.
So, in the ways of dreams, my mind was finally admitting that even my "sainted" uncle was, atimes, little more than a faithful hound that wouldn't readily admit to himself he was sometimes doing the bidding of something far worse than just a mild parental disciplinary action. But in truth, even now, I see his passivity as not so much being his abandonment of me or aiding my mother but as him being like Switzerland to the Nazis actions. Something, that again, I find reprehensible of Them but the loyal part of me that is ever present is forgiving of when it comes to my uncle. I am aware of the hypocrisy of this. And yes, it does bother me. But...
Loyalty is one of those traits with in myself that I find to be a dichotomy... It is both a Positive and a Negative personality trait to have. One that I would rather keep and be in error at times than do away with and lose even a small slice of yet more of my humanity.
As to the rest... Well, I'm sure you'll forgive a writer's brain a bit of embellishment to make it interesting rather than simply going with the tired old symbolic. I'm nothing if not a good story teller and being a hack would be sooo gauche. [slight sardonic quirk of the lips]
Now imagine yourself a ship...
On a moonless night with no light house...
the details, details, details... tedious lil ol details that are... just bits of icky icing on a rotten cake.
the details are... not good.
the details consist of me running and hiding from a bad situation/relationship with my uncle and mother.
running from the Farm to try getting to the Trailor (Possibly) and away from a bad situation with them.
[sighs tiredly & unhappily]
it started with me sitting cross legged on the kitchen floor at the Farm coloring.
i have no idea how old i am in this. i seldom do. it's somewhere between a "then" and a "now" as near as i can tell you.
i'm sitting there coloring... half listening to my uncle and mother talking. some of it is about me, some of it... no idea. i only catch bits and pieces at best anyway and given how dreams, even bad ones (Especially bad ones), work... yeah i'm not going to know jack about it.
at some point my mother gets mad/upset/"negatively emotional" if you want to be clinical about it... and it would seem to involve me some how. how, no idea. i just know in the dream, my reaction was pretty much that of having a hot wire jabbed at me and made me Move rather than stick around asking questions.
[it's all Instinct... and rambling.]there was actually a lot of that when i was a kid. you didn't have the luxury of sticking around in hopes somebody would nicely and calmly explain to you the motive for other people's behaviors.
you just caught scent of BAD in the wind, grabbed what you wanted to keep and bugged out of there like a deer smelling a baddie. you didn't even waste time flicking your tail to warn others, you just prayed on the run that they were paying attention to the climate around them too.
so in That, i would guess the dream wasn't anything out of the ordinary. just an old stand by in the nightmare department to shake things up for whatever reason.
the urge to run... nothing new.
i could say i'm not a coward. or i could say that i admit that i am one.
neither statement would be completely true. i can be a coward. but most of the time that others would deem cowardice, i would deem merely being realistic and leaning towards self preservation because i Know there's no way i could win whatever battle i was running from. all i could do is grab who/what i held dear, and haul ass out of Ground Zero in hopes that we all made it far enough not to take on Too much damage that we couldn't survive it. it's a very basic instinct.
most Real heros wouldn't tell you what they did was heroic. they often say, "it's just what had to be done. my buddy/comrade/etc was in trouble, we All were in trouble, and i just Reacted."
so in the Real World, there's really no such thing as "brave" or "cowardly"... it's all Instinct.
anyway...
whatever was being said/done, it A.made me angry and B.made me wary enough to put my flight gear into operation. ASAP.
my uncle chided me (jeered at me) saying it wasn't any use trying to run. where would i go, how could somebody like "me" (a mere kid, stupid person, wtfe take your pick) hope to gain or manage. that just pissed me off worse and made me move Faster.
i already had my escape route planned out; mapped out and double and rechecked in my head for possible pitfalls and defects.
~again, i did a Lot of that as a kid. so nothing weird there. the Only weird thing in that would be that my uncle was involved. he was Never one to step in on Either side in such situations.~
i didn't have time for much in the way for prep. i only had them staying off me for That long because, like a cat watching its prey, they were curious to see what the little bug would do and how it would move. nothing more, nothing less. no pity, no consideration, just amusement that i some how thought i could accomplish anything but be irradicated.
so there was a lot of quick grabbing of stuff i would need for the run and ignoring the jeering while i threw what i could together.
by the time it had sunk in with them that i really Was going to do this, i had grabbed my gear, my dog (Lil Girl) and was out the door at full speed.
~also common...regardless of the threat, as a kid i'd grab the dog and/or whomever was defenseless on the go. no lil cousins/dogs/cats/etc left behind to face it alone. even when they didn't Want to go, they Went because i had a death grip on'em and was Not leaving them there. even when realistically They weren't the ones who had to worry about it. my mother would never have hurt my little cousins or taken it out on the animals that she couldn't get me. she didn't get abusive to animals until Much later in life. it took us Years to get the dog she dropped in our laps to understand we weren't my mother. and even Then she still had moments where she'd pee if somebody moved too fast towards her.~
the thing is, i Knew i could make it so they couldn't catch me. i Knew a lot of little tricks and ways to play the run-n-hide game so that others wouldn't catch me. now maybe they weren't unknown to my mother but she had set my uncle to hunt. and He wasn't there when my parents and i were running from various hunters. He had never experienced that. She may have but i was counting on her doing her usual thing and not thinking to share any insights with her baby bro on how/where to look for me. she was predictable that way. she was too narrow sighted to think of how to hunt something sneaky. no all Her playbook contained were tactics on dealing with straight up full out war. prolly part of why she had him doing it... killing, maiming, terrorizing- those were fun. but tracking- such a bore.
so while i knew he would be harder to hide and run from than my mother, i was counting on him not realising i wasn't the usual uninformed prey you just thought in straight lines to catch. oh i knew Eventually it would occur to him. but i was hoping, Counting on, that by the time it Did, i would be safely tucked away some place that it would be too late and too hard to dig me out once i'd gone to ground.
so me n my dog... it's cold. it's sleeting. it's nasty... and here i am, dog under one arm and what few items of prep i could grab in the other... running in fuzzy slippers, a ratty old nylon nighty and a fuzzy blanket i had grabbed from the dog house outside on my way passed.
we made it a long ways before Lil Girl said she heard a truck on the road coming our way. she suggested i hightail it into the brush and she'd see if it was my uncle or not. i didn't like it but i knew that it may be our only chance. i wasn't going far though. no way would i let her get caught just to save my hide. but i had to agree with her logic... that she was a small hard-catch hard-notice little beagle and i was this big lumpy easy-Not-to-miss human... easy target in other words.
didn't like it, but had to agree with the assessment. so i hid in the overgrowth by the road and watched.
the truck coming was indeed my uncle. he slowed when he saw the dog but she shot off to the side and by the time he'd gotten the truck stopped completely on the wet gravel and had it braked enough to jump out, me n my dog were long gone.
but now we Knew where He was and what to watch for. sure he knew where we had Been but the elements were now in our favor. he would have to try tracking us through worsening weather and do so under the stressor of being the hunter.
we were the hunted. that, in its way, gave Us an edge.
because for whatever reason, despite what you might think, the hunted who are self aware and alert are a Hell of Lot harder to get. because they have Adrenaline and Paranoia on their side. that makes them a lot harder for the hunter who Doesn't have those traits to figure out. ~remember that kiddies. the movie tropes Do have Some truth to them... at least when it comes to the last character in the slasher flicks. they Know what they're up against and to Hell with playing fair after all their friends got picked off like dodoes before the sailors.~
we had found this weird hole in the road that actually turned out to be a sort of opening to a underground passage. like a redneck teenage mutant ninja turtle lare... a dirt tunnel under the road that smelled unpleasant but hey, it was a place to gather our brains back into one pan and recoop a little.
some strange people lived down there.
it was like what you might expect Never Never Land Really being like...
kids of varying ages with the minds of adults but still in their child bodies. a bit like the little girl vampire in anne rice's "interview with a vampire" i guess. old, cynical and perhaps just a tad mean and a lot bored but stuck as children forever or until the sun rises... whichever comes first.
and we had just plopped down into their humble lil abode.
unannounced and uninvited.
luckily for us, we were something of a diversion. a novelty. we relieved their tedium for a moment and brought with us the possibility that there would be more on the way if my uncle figured out where we'd lighted. imagine... being a bored elder entity and having a little silly ol taste of intrigue and mayhem being given you on a silver platter out of no where. it would be like somebody threw you a surprise party that you Hadn't actually ferreted out beforehand.
so these people agreed to help us.
a moment of weakness for them i suppose, but we were duly grateful and took it without hesitation.
we let them fuss a bit over us. feed us and let us get a little rest. they didn't have much to help us become better prepared but they did help us get what we Did have more organised so it would be easier once we went back up topside.
they were interesting kids really. they had settled on having their little community/commune/wha'ver being set in the times of France pre-revolution and they were the Royale Courte. complete with the powdered hair (because really, when you live in a dirt tunnel, Everything's dusted Anyway.) and the garb of the time. though the clothing was a bit worse for wear. (one can only use the same dress-up-n-let's-pretend clothing and props for so many decades with out the benefit of washing for just so long after all.)
admittedly they didn't Sound like the little kids they Looked like. as you might imagine.
but we weren't going to fuss about the little details and inconsequentials. no we did our best to show what grateful little common subjects we were and did the whole bow-n-curtsey routine. even the dog did cute tricks to show she got the memo.
we didn't have long though. or at least not as long as we would like. because there was a strange thumping at one end of the tunnel that let us know the trap door/redneck manhole cover/etc had been discovered and would soon be explored whether we were ready or not.
the people in the tunnel took a rather unholy glee at the prospect. we had told them what we were running from and as much of the why as we could fathom and it some how tickled them to think that just this once they would be being themselves and it would be for a Good Cause.
i wouldn't say they were of the mind that this was what they had been created for. no it wasn't anything as noble as that.
no it was simply a novelty that they could be Heros for once in their long existance rather than just being the same old same old.
so one of the less jaded ones led us to one of the ways out as far from the entrance we came in as possible with a quick "good luck" as we were shoved back out into the cold icky outside world again; only a little less scattered. we had had a moment of down time. we were back to being harried. but at least we had Had that bit of relief so it still helped.
at some point there was a river i've seen in many other dreams... something in dreams that was familiar but i've never Actually seen/visited/been to in waking life.
there was a muddled hodge-podge of how we got across it.
rather I got across it because at some point the dog was off doing something. she'd caught scent of something intriguing to her, and in typical beagle fashion, pretty much abandoned me for a time while she tracked whatever it was. (beagles can be the most loyal of breeds but they Are easily distractable when their true nature is tempted. and they Were bred for tracking after all so one must forgive them this atimes Annoying birth trait.)
i was okay with this. not because i didn't worry about her, but because if she was hunting, that was one less thing i needed to be mindful of while i was being Hunted. at this time, i wasn't just in flight mode. i was in cool calm logical outrun the preds mode. i am no rabbit to run in front of the oncoming car. no, i am aware. tactical. coldly logical. i count the numbers, add the statistical possiblities and weigh the pros and cons with a clear analytical mind. and it's easier to do this with out the worry of more than just myself to look after. i knew she would be able to do her own thing with out worry. and if she Were caught, i knew that regardless of what my mother might think of doing, my uncle would protect the dog. if for no other reason than the dog was a papered hunting dog and worth more undamaged than my mother's irrational mentality to harm something just for the sake of doing harm.
unlike me... i, on the other hand, was worthless as far as the Family was concerned. a half breed fem. that as far as any were honestly concerned, i was a bastard to boot. so completely expendable. so no help for me.
but the Dog... yeah, no worries there.
so i could focus completely on My objective of staying out of the hands of those who had no concerns about my welfare beyond that of what they felt like doling out to me.
which i did with gusto.
because i didn't have to worry about running weighed down by carrying the dog i could take less obvious routes. ones that went through tighter animal trails and overgrown pathes most humans wouldn't be able to fathom much less follow.
years of training to outrun, outhide and outthink those in a position to make my life most unpleasant kicked in.
when i heard the familiar sound of my uncle's truck, i knew to freeze still as the trees around me. to turn into part of the background.
don't look. just listen. close your eyes or the light shining on them will give you away. shut off the whirling noisy sounds of your own mind and Listen to your surroundings. you are the rabbit with the mind of a wolf. Use It.
and i did. i've always excelled at that. at knowing how to ghost so others won't even sense my presence amid the flotsam and jetsom of everyday existance. i become part of their debres field. just a bit of driftwood amid the rest of it.
and the truck would keep going. sure it would be back, always back-n-forthing trying to figure out where i was. but each time it might be close, it would always miss that key location, that one spot would remain overlooked. the spot where, If he had Stopped and actually gotten out of the truck and had Actually Used his gift of tracking me, he would have found me.
so either he didn't want to Really find me, or he was being lazy or whatever other hundreds of other possible explanations there could be... the result was the same.
he didn't see me. didn't catch me.
and i wasn't stupid enough to throw away that advantage. i wasn't lazy enough or foolish enough to become complacent and ignore the fact that there was Still a danger there.
and so i made my way. but as i was nearing the place i had thought to run to, it occurred to me that it wasn't a haven after all. that while i had been running and on foot, my mother could have made it to the Trailor with ample time to spare and was laying in wait for me to stupidly walk on into oblivion.
i slowed my pace. gave myself time to think it through. time to come up with an alternate plan that they might not be able to anticipate. they knew, or thought they knew, where i would run to. so what were my options... Really.
the Trailor was out. they would expect me there and it was easily accessed by them.
and really, it wasn't that great of a place to lay low. not really. it was a run-down tin can at best. with no resources and no real safety. so even if they Didn't count on my going there (and honestly? my uncle had been driving in a pretty much straight line between the Farm and the Trailor the whole time as i saw it) even if my mother Wasn't already there, it was just a matter of time before she Could be.
so i changed my path. slowed and thought. i didn't have any other places i could go. my uncle had been right about that.
i couldn't go to the neighbors... they would just hand me over to my mother with minimal thought or fuss. no, she gave them too many gifts over the years, brought them status. she would hold her hand out, smile and that would be my end.
and i didn't have any friends. part of the price of being me and being in my situation. it made sure i was isolated and with out any resources that weren't connected to either my mother and/or her family.
so it wasn't as if i had any Other places to go But the Trailor.
but i would change my directions of approach. instead of coming in at a straight angle, i'd come around from behind... gage the threat from the back and make adjustments as well as i could to what i would plan to do from there.
no plan is so perfect that it can not be improved upon. and only a fool is so rigid in their planning that they do not Leave room for those improvements.
and despite what my mother may have thought of me, i'm not a fool when it comes down to the wire.
the rest of the nightmare was my sneaking around the back way and trying to decide if it was safe or not.
there Was a spot, just as i was starting to surface and wake, where it seems like i caught a glimpse of my uncle realising that what was happening was bad. not in a he-goofed-in-tracking-me bad but that somewhere along the line the whole situation finally sunk in with him and he figured out somewhere in there that it wasn't funny. that it really Was something serious and Bad. that my running wasn't just a game, especially not to Me. and that if i Was serious and Was being that careful, it meant there was something really fubar'd going on. it finally seemed to occur to him that i Shouldn't have reacted like that. that it Wasn't the reaction of a normal kid in a little trouble, that it was a very very Bad symptom of something much much worse. something he seemed to finally realise he'd been trying to ignore and shouldn't have.
then he was still tracking me, but it wasn't to take me back to my mother to have fun with but to try maybe helping me? or at least explaining to me ~more like trying to get forgiveness and/or make excuses~ why he hadn't helped me...?
but the dream me didn't know any of that. ~and the waking me didn't trust it even knowing it~ so i kept to my course of avoiding being spotted much less caught.
i did notice he seemed to be getting more frantic in his maneuvers but the dream me chalked it up to my mother making his life hell for failing even if the waking me kind of Hoped it might mean he was getting scared/upset that he couldn't catch me before i walked into my mother's trap for me.
All in all, not a pleasant dream for me to be having.
And people wonder why I'm an insomniac. Some times I can't help it. Other times...
Click to viewThe footnote:
Well, there are probably a lot of possible meanings or interpretations to this mess I would imagine.
It doesn't take a degree in the mental pickery department to see that.
[my hypothies to some of the meaning to this]But here's what popped for me. and you can agree or not.
As I see it, a good deal of my life was as a person with one foot in the grave.
Hell, most (if not all) the doctors I've seen in the passed year or so would back that up. They all told me that I was Born with a heart defect that was exacerbated by circumstances I lived through and that it went untreated so long that it nearly killed me two Aprils ago. So I'd say that it's a good guess that the whole thing where I dreamed of hanging out with dead relies is pretty much on the nose as far as the "meaning" of that is concerned.
And if we infer that, we can further infer that the rest, all the running/dodging/weaving/etc would fit as well when you consider that once I got my feet under me where my health was concerned, I hit the ground running as it were.
And as in the dream, I don't have an exact end goal/location to run to, I'm just staying as far ahead of the dead or mental walkers (if you will pardon the cultural nomenclature) as I can. For as Long as I can.
As to minor details, like the blanket and the dog... The blanket was one that we had possibly buried one of the dogs we had last, though I'm not sure. And well, the dog in the dream was one I would have had in or around the time period the dream was taking place. As to her Talking... At one time I would say that it was one of those things where as a kid I understood the language of animals better than I do as an adult. Or it may be merely one of those Dream things... Where something is simply there to make it easier to travel in the dreamscape one finds oneself in. It's hard to say.
[shrugs] Who knows.
And if I had to guess at where some of the "family drama" came from, I'd have to say that well, like it or not, my past is littered with the damned stuff and there's really no way to pretty it up and/or pretend otherwise. Yes, I would have agree with Sandy's accessment that in many ways, I Do have all the hallmarks of a soldier fresh off the front lines that didn't come out mentally unscathed. Like it or lump it kids, it's the unpleasant truth.
Where my uncle is concerned... Well, nobody wants to think ill of somebody they idolise. And I did. Even though he never actively protected me from anything, I had always sort of given him a pass on it where I wouldn't forgive others for the same thing. Part of me just tried telling myself that he and the Family hadn't really witnessed or knew of what my mother had done to me.
It wasn't until towards the end, after Gramps had died and everything was being divvied up when my uncle told me they Had known. That they were "sorry." That they had known my mother was "rough on me sometimes." And that by giving me land I never asked for or wanted was their way of making up for it. I suppose they thought it was a noble peace offering on their parts. A small sacrifice to the little halfbreed bastard girl to make it all better. It never occurred to them it was like trying to put a bandaid on a rotten piece of flesh I had long ago realised needed to be amputated to save myself.
So, in the ways of dreams, my mind was finally admitting that even my "sainted" uncle was, atimes, little more than a faithful hound that wouldn't readily admit to himself he was sometimes doing the bidding of something far worse than just a mild parental disciplinary action. But in truth, even now, I see his passivity as not so much being his abandonment of me or aiding my mother but as him being like Switzerland to the Nazis actions. Something, that again, I find reprehensible of Them but the loyal part of me that is ever present is forgiving of when it comes to my uncle. I am aware of the hypocrisy of this. And yes, it does bother me. But...
Loyalty is one of those traits with in myself that I find to be a dichotomy... It is both a Positive and a Negative personality trait to have. One that I would rather keep and be in error at times than do away with and lose even a small slice of yet more of my humanity.
As to the rest... Well, I'm sure you'll forgive a writer's brain a bit of embellishment to make it interesting rather than simply going with the tired old symbolic. I'm nothing if not a good story teller and being a hack would be sooo gauche. [slight sardonic quirk of the lips]