#538 Comments, and Dreams

Sunday 01/22/06

I got a comment from Patrick, of Patrick's Place, on entry #522, telling me how to find the missing comments. (Wow! Patrick visited my journal? Even if it was just that entry, I'm flattered!) I did as he said, and I found all the lost comments, including the one on #509 from Little Red (thank you for your sympathy), some spam comments, and I few I need to respond to via email. So thank you, Patrick.

There was also a "lost" comment from Gabreael of Gabreael's Mind, Body, & Spirit on entry #518 Scary Dream, wherein she points out that a house usually represents us or our family situation.

Yeah, I knew that. But I've also found that sometimes, where dream interpretation is concerned, you know darn well what it's all about, it should be clear as day, but things will still obstinately hide from you for a while.

When I was waiting for the oil change the other day, there was a young man in the waiting room who was on the cell phone constantly. He was speaking Russian in all the calls he made. I was even able to understand a few things he said from having heard some of the older folks, back when I lived on the mountain in high school. And as I sat there, I realized that the man in the dream in entry #518 was speaking Russian.

I should have recognized it right away in the dream, but I guess I hid it.

Roman had told me his people were from Russia.

The man who was trying to get into my house was smallish and thin and dirty. Roman is not tall, but he's a bit stocky, and he smells good even after getting sweaty and not having had a shower in 36 hours (sigh...). So I think the dream man was not so much Roman himself as the situation we're in - me (small), him (Russian), her (thin), the triangle (disheveled and dirty).

Ever since he had confessed his duplicity in early November, I haven't like the way I'd been feeling. I didn't like the thoughts I had or the way I was acting. I'd never really had any experience with jealousy before, and I didn't know how to handle it. By that first week in January I was beginning to not like me. I was losing respect for myself.

For me, if you know anything about my background or history, losing love or respect for myself is not a momentary problem or a trivial thing, something I can get back easily. There was a period in my life when I had no self respect, when I was sure that there was something horribly wrong with me, that everything that went wrong anywhere around me was obviously my fault, that I was unloveable, and I deserved nothing. It took me a long time, several years of therapy and hard work, to learn that I am not a bad person, that I am important, that it is possible to love me, and that I do deserve love.

I had that dream Sunday night/Monday morning, before the Monday night I last stayed over with him.

That Monday and Tuesday I was with him, several hurtful things happened, and as usual I stood there and took it. Then Tuesday afternoon I had a flashback to a very nasty time of my life, and then and there I realized that if he didn't love and respect me enough to protect me from these hurts, then it was up to me to love and respect and protect me.

That evening as soon as I got home I wrote the email to him suggesting a backing-off, and the next evening he suggested "the break", and I was fine with that. (Well, not fine, but accepting that this is what has to be. Otherwise the me I know and love dies.)

It took me until Tuesday to get to that point, but the dream shows I was already aware that the situation was trying to break into me and harm me, and that I was going to have to do something. The weird thing is, why bother with the dream? I did consciously already know.