"dreaming of you" (family, health)
for some reason i have been dreaming about my family a lot lately. this is strange for a couple of reasons.
first of all, i don't remember ever dreaming about them before except to have nightmares, and the only nightmares i ever recall have been about my family. my father and step-mother were emotionally and physically abusive. there were eight of us who grew up together (not counting the numbers of foster children who were always in our home, at least two at a time if not three or four), but there were five different combinations of parents among us: child of father and wife #1; children of father and wife #2 (half of the eight, in which i was included, as second born); child of step-mother and husband #1; child of step-mother and husband #2; child of father and step-mother. my step-mother was not abusive to any of her biological children, nor was my father abusive of them--at least physically. there were two of us who got most of the honors, my older (biological) brother and i. the rest of them had it pretty easy--if you can call living with their general craziness and witnessing their behavior toward the two of us "easy".
a nightmare to me is having a dream that seems so real that it is as if i am right back in that situation. it is invariably something that i don't consciously remember but FEELS like it could have or did; i wake up feeling the weight of being in that household once more: depressed; trapped; hurt; suffering. it can take me several hours after getting out of bed to "shake it off". i have never in my life had any other kind of nightmare, and fortunately, these dreams that are nightmares to me have only come every few years, and less frequently as i aged.
secondly, these dreams over the last few weeks have been frequent and varied. two were nightmares, one was a pleasant memory of reuniting with my step-mother's extended family, which was the only extended family that we knew after my father married her besides an extremely rare visit from my father's parents and siblings. in my dream they were aged the 25 or so years since i last saw them, and i was recognizing them and enjoying the reunion. another was a pleasant dream that included my father and step-mother. it took me years to get past the ugly memories of life in their household, but there were good times between the abuse and the beatings and your run-of-the-mill slapping around. other dreams i've forgotten already, since that happens if i don't immediately write them down or review them mentally several times in a row after awaking.
i think dreams mean something, although i have no idea what, and i don't know why i am dreaming so much about my family these days. if i figure it out, though, i'll let you know.
