Date: 29-02-2024
I had such a depressing dream last night. I was with my brother. He was a teen, about 13 or 14 years old. I think I was a little older in this dream. Perhaps it was us as we were when he was about 13 or 14 years old, making me about 17 years old. It was nighttime. We were on the move, or perhaps even on the run. We were somewhere we were not allowed to be. We were sneaking around and joking the whole time. It was a forested area with occasional houses here and there. We were roaming the area but we were heading into a certain direction, though I don’t remember why. We’d been here for a couple of hours.
We then heard voices in the distance. People were coming our way. It didn’t seem like they were after us, but it was best if they didn’t see us anyway. I recognised one of the voices as a colleague of mine who teaches mathematics, though as I type this I have no idea if I actually did or if that was just a given in the dream. I actually don’t think I can identify my maths colleagues from voice alone. We hid in some bushes that reminded me a lot of the bushes at our grandparents’ house near the street on the property of the school there. When we dived into the bushes to hide we were barely in time before being seen. I recall the site was a bit sloped.
We were higher up than the people that were approaching us. They walked by down below as we kept quiet, even holding our breaths in as it was dead quiet around us. These people were a group of 4 kids, the youngest, perhaps not even 8 years old, and the oldest a little older than my brother was in the dream. They were bullies. My brother and I were hoping they would not notice us, cause there wasn’t all that much cover where we were at. But the youngest of the group had seen us. I put my finger to my lips as to signal him not to reveal us, hoping for his sympathy. But he pointed us out immediately. There was a slight altercation but nothing much came of it.
We moved on and were heading towards our parents’ house. This house was now situated at the corner of the street of where the student dorm house I used to live at is. Outside on the street in front of the house a police car was parked. It looked like my parents were getting a visit from the police. I worried this was because of something I had done, or perhaps because we were out at night in a forbidden area. We rang the doorbell or knocked. The door was open. The inside of the house much resembled the actual house as it was 10 years ago. In the hallway my dad stood in front of the opened door to the living room. He was just there and didn’t do much.
Halfway down the stairs leading into the basement stood my loudly crying mother. She had her back to us, and she was being held in the arms of someone who I thought to be a police officer. She was crying hysterically, but I could tell she was dramatising it. It was exaggerated. The officer kept saying comforting words to her: “There there. Easy now. It will be okay.” I asked what was going on, and two officers came from behind my dad and stated they had come there on request of my mother, who had issued a complaint against me. “Wait. What?” The officers gave me a letter and left, but the one holding my mother was still there, and started explaining.
It was only then that I noticed this wasn’t an officer, but was actual my good friend RT. He explained my mother had come to the conclusion that I had gone too far. I had played with a ball too roughly, and I had squeezed oranges to make juice too loudly. Indeed I had made orange juice recently. And the ball they were referring to in the dream was a ball that was supposedly a toy we got from our grandfather on our dad’s side. It was the size of a tennis ball, pink and green coloured, and was part of a tennis set of which the rackets were already lost/gone. I had playfully kicked it against the wall a few times when I was outside, some time ago.
The letter I held in my hand was a copy of the testimony the police had received. But this testimony was written by my brother! I inquired with him. He bowed his head and started saying things I was quite sure mom had fed to him. “I had gone too far. It was true. He shared her opinion, and she was right in this instance.” That was the gist of it. I glanced the letter, which was an A4 sized paper copy of a handwritten letter of the same size. There was a lot of text. I read part of it, and it detailed how I had squeezed the oranges too loudly, and how I played with the ball in question in such a manner it could have resulted in the loss of this item, which in the letter was a described as a valuable heirloom of our grandfather.
But the thing was that we all played with that ball. It wasn’t off limits. Grandad left us many things, we just used them. It was ridiculous to suggest I kicked the ball too hard. And the oranges? How can one even squeeze oranges too loudly? The things in the letter weren’t factually incorrect but worded in such a way it portrayed the ordinary things I did in my life as actual acts that showcased how terrible I was and that the police needed to intervene. And it was truly ridiculous what it said in the letter. Clearly my mother was behind this testimony, and she had manipulated my brother into writing it. It angered me they had teamed up against me like this.
I resisted the allegations and addressed my mother and brother: “So I kicked the ball? That is my crime? I saw a ball on the ground, and I kicked it? And I kicked it too hard? Is that what I did now? I kicked the ball with which we all play, but when I did it we almost “lost” the ball? Have I accurately described what I did wrong there? And the oranges? I squeezed them so terribly loud that all the juice was squeezed out of them? And it was so audibly noisy, you had no choice but to call the police? That’s how hard I was squeezing the oranges? That you needed police help to stop me squeezing these oranges? Am I getting this right?” I highlighted how ridiculous their claims were with sarcasm. They all looked like fools after my angry rant.
RT now started to mediate between the three of us, but I had no desire to mend things with my mother, and I felt betrayed by my brother for allowing himself to become her minion again in one of her new games. I was so sick of this. So very very tired of these drama games. And I wasn’t very forgiving to RT either. He should know better than to fall for this kind of manipulation. I ignored all RT was saying to me and focussed on my mom again, who had now started doing something else. I think she was setting the table for dinner, and was pretending that whatever had just happened didn’t happen.
She was all of a sudden completely recovered from her previous hysterical state, like as if the police addressing me now had taken care of her problem. Which was complete nonsense even within her own nonsense, cause I would still squeeze oranges to make juice and play with tennis balls from time to time. I wasn’t mandated to never do any of those things. Nothing changed! I burst out of my skin, and told her she is what roughly translates to “a drama whore” or “attention whore” (aandachtshoer). “Cause you are just manufacturing this drama to get attention!” She pretended to be deeply insulted and perplexed, and pulled the victim card: “Are you calling me a hooker?” “No!” I said: “You are an attention whore.”
She kept focussing on the word ‘whore’ and tried to get me to admit I was falsely accusing her of having sex for money, but I kept affirming the term I used and explained both words in the proper context of my remark each time: “No! I said ‘drama whore’. A whore who craves for drama and attention! That’s what you are.” The dream went on a while and eventually I went with RT, but I was still pissed off the rest of the story, and I can’t recall what I did after this altercation. Man I was pissed. Why did I get so pissed still? I was furious with her, but also quite mad at my brother and RT for allowing themselves to get pulled into this.
Analysis:
Oh boy. If my dreams predict anything than let that be that I am not Zen about my family situation. I think because I have been reading and translating all these old dreams this process has boiled up a lot of suppressed anger. There is so much residual anger inside me. I exploded, though was able to keep my cool within my anger. I didn’t shout at her, but I spoke with a loud voice. And believe me, my teacher voice is loud. What I have come to see translating all these dreams the past few months is that I am readying myself to distance myself further from this family situation, up to a point where I am spiritually planning to detach myself completely. I do not wish to leave any of them alone, with perhaps the exception of my mother. But even still that last part is just something I might be saying out of suppressed anger. The anger blinds me, so I cannot see how I would wish for her to play a role in my life again in any future. But let me get back to detaching myself. This idea to do that is based on how I think the distance has allowed me to appreciate my dad again. He did have to die for me to fully be able to do that, but near the end as we were apart I think our relationship began to heal on its own, from both sides. I too wish for all the poison to die with whatever ties I cut. When we find each other again spiritually, we can grow new ties without the poison.
But my dreams often have a way of showing what the future has in store for us. I would not be surprised if I find a letter in the mail, or E-mail in my digital mailbox, somewhere in the future. That letter/mail might come from my brother or someone else my mother got to do her dirty work, but it will be the product of that consequence evading witch, She has ‘persuaded’ people before to pick up a pen. I recall the Christmas card me and my siblings received. Also the three letters my dad supposedly wrote before his death, which we never again heard of after I outed her on that. And recently my sister reminded me she also had received a letter from our parents a few years back when she finally got her own house but had no money to put something on the concrete floor in the kitchen. They (my parents) actually belittled and criticised my sister for that specific thing after she had just won custody of her children after two years of legal hell. Should I receive such a letter/mail from my brother or anyone else, I will not read it, but will safe it just like I did the Christmas card appendix. Whatever I will do with it, I will not read it now while I know I am so full of anger. I may never read it. If the dream is any indication, the letter/mail will be filled with exaggerated complaints and nonsense accusations.
But there are more things at play. A neighbour has made a noise complaint. It is the second neighbour to do so. The complaints go a little too far for my taste. It’s not the message, but the package and its means of delivery. If a neighbour comes knocking and just simply says their children can’t sleep because of my garage noise or something, I would stop that very second. By complaining they are doing the same my mother is doing, which is to evade confrontation. I hate that. Just tell it to my face. Maybe a police visit is on the horizon, and in the dream it looks like it will be a group effort involving people I would not expect this from. I am not looking forward to that. I hope it won’t come to this.
There’s a couple of things that I also noticed which I can’t put my finger on. My mom was halfway down the stairs to the basement. Could mean something. I don’t know what. Maybe that she is descending downwards?
My brother and I were young again, both teens. Though also sometimes I was me as I am now. But I was that teen with the knowledge I now have, any way. Maybe this is about old routines?
My dad was there, but took no role. But I did get the feeling he was on her side in this, though he did nothing.
My sister was completely absent from this story, which I am glad to be able to say. This doesn’t involve her.
I think this dream shows me how old pains and new pains are tightly intertwined with each other.
I hope dreams like this aren’t target practise, but can actually serve the purpose for me to get it out of my system. Man, did I feel betrayed, haha.
