Mindful-fun-da-mentals

Explorations of mind, paths, and life

Mermaid Dreams

Posted on July 16, 2008 - Filed Under self reflect

I find it interesting STILL that I continue to have these dreams with both water and houses. Despite the fact that I had this dream two-three nights ago, it sits on my mind like a repeating flashback. Monica and I were back at our home on Discovery Drive in Tucson, AZ – the one we moved to when we were still young (I was in 6th grade). We were there as adults. It is night time, warm and yet pleasant. The stars are out and we can hear the desert creatures investigating the landscape, singing their lullabies. We hop into the pool and start to swim around, talking and laughing. Beneath the water, just like when we were kids, I can see Monica’s hair floating around her face and her big smile under that plastic veil that water creates on the face when immersed. We surface, laughing. She points to the deep end of the pool, and in the deepest part are two black triangles. She swims to one and does a “freeze-frame” pose like she is horrified, then surfaces and asks me how it looked. I laugh, and give her the gory details of the pose’s effects. With the two triangle pieces the scene reminds me of the security bars of a roller coaster ride, and her pose was just as if she were tearing down the steepest part. She sends me to the deep end to do one, and we surface again, laughing at our silliness. Then, as if stepping outside my body I watch us both underwater, posing as if on a crazy ride, our legs flailing and faces contorted, our hair moving around our faces. We grasp hands as if this particular drop is to our deaths. This behavior isn’t out of the ordinary for me in real life, provided I am with Monica. We get out of the water and dry off, walking into our old home…

At this point the dream is hazy. I do know that the inside of the home was a run down version of my current living space. I know that I wandered through rooms (like most house dreams) looking at things and noting how worn they looked. I almost felt as if the house was tired.

So, I ask myself now, since dreams are symbolic of parts of ourselves, what a house “means.” House [free flow thoughts here, so don’t expect much] – house keeps your stuff, it is a place to stay, a place to exist, a space that is owned by you and kept by you. I keep my own home. I do not like it messy, however I am not a fanatic about its maintenance. House – holds things that have memories attached to them. Most of my stuff has meaning because it is attached to an event, person, or place, otherwise it is not that important to me. I would imagine i keep stuff i don’t need because of the attachments, psychologically, to the memories behind the items, or what they symbolize to me. In what ways is my house run down and tired? What tasks, chores, things, am I attached to that I don’t need but keep in my life?

Then there is the ever present water. Water is the cleanser of my life. I live for showers. If chlorine didn’t bother me so much I would live in it. Water is life, it can hold me firmly and yet not too hard. I know I am also afraid of it sometimes. My near-drowning experience has created a level of anxiety for me when I feel like the water has too much control over my movement. I am always a stronger swimmer in my dreams than I believe myself to be in my life. There is something safe about the water in my dreams, always blue, somewhat sad, calm, quiet, eternal.

Then I wonder, in what ways is life holding me? Do I desire to be wading around in life in such carefree abandon and fun or am I spending my time wishing I were a stronger swimmer?

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