Meaning

Today I am thankful that the brain likes to ascribe meaning to experience.

The brain likes to fill in the blanks.

This can be a good thing; helping us quickly grasp what is going under in the world around us.

If we type wrds with missing ltters, people can still capture the missed letter and read the word completly.

This is partly why it is so difficult to proof-read important documents well.  We skip over missing words, letters and punctuation because our brain behaves as if they are there.

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I'm trying to understand my subconscious mind.

I'm trying to understand dreams that come and go every few years.

They're probably trying to unearth some unfinished business.

I'm trying to find something to convince my mind to stop the dreams.

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The dreams have come and gone since 1986ish.

They'll be about the same person. 

Usually, the person is in horrid pain - usually- I'll see scenes of addiction, of violence, of broken bones, car crashes and so on and so forth.

I've written about the Eros dream where the poor subject of the dream is getting hammered by Golden arrows and is bleeding to death.

I try to comfort him - but - Hecate's dogs are biting me to keep me away.  Hecate is the Greek Titan of protection.

I had a crush as early as '85 on this guy.  We dated in 86-87.  I was an absolute mess.  He was a little obnoxious and did some mean things.   We had many, many good moments.  The few bad ones were....bad. 

We were young, we were stupid.

In 1990, I learned that working a full time job and going to school stopped the dreams.  It was great!

I didn't stop school or work...I kept going with the intention of earning a doctorate in psychology.

The stalking became too much to bear at school in 2001 so I went to part time status.  In 2005, I wound up leaving with just a master's.  The stalking got the best of me.

I started a hypnosis educational website in 2005, did volunteer work and worked towards licensure as a drug and alcohol counselor.  I wrote a book, built a lot of websites and had a filthy and popular blog.  My main educational interest is in health psychology.  As an offshoot of that, it is the notion that a healthy sex life is important to physical and psychological health that intrigued me.  I wrote about ways to improve it.

I used to think that was my main interest because I spent my time with aging academic hippies who smoked a lot of weed and got turned on easily.  I'm thinking now it's because my marriage died because of the stalking.  Every where I went, my in-laws were there.  Until last year, I had a hard time believing my ex-husband had anything to do with it. Cops and private investigators tried to warn me.  Heck, my professors and shrinks did, too.  For some stupid reason, I believed him when he said he didn't know how they knew where to find me.

A strange thing happened when I quit school....the dreams came back with a vengeance!

It started with a dream of me kissing a stranger.  I woke up a little bit freaked out. To a therapist, that means you're not getting enough nooky.  I think I ran to a shrink who probably said the same thing and offered me drugs. 

Then, there were dreams of this guy getting banged up in car crashes with semi-trailers and breaking limbs.  In one of the dreams, the semi crashed into a crowd.  There were hurt children. I woke up crying.

They got progressively worse. I had no clue who the dreams were about.  In the dreams the guy wore blue jeans and a navy blue polo shirt.  I actually went out and bought a navy blue polo shirt thinking it would chase the dreams away. I almost wore this outfit one sunny day in August when I met the man in these dreams.  I changed my shirt at the last moment.  The other person wore that exact outfit.

One day, I had a dream of the Goddess Artemis/Diana.  She's a warrior goddess and protector of women and children.  At the time, I volunteered for political causes protecting children from the pharmaceutical industry.  That was the dream where I saw the guys eyes.  I woke up screaming his name. I used to call him Tom. 

Everyone heard me. 

I tried to pass it off as a dream about being the lead singer of Rush.  I don't think anyone bought that.  It got to the point people would ask local bands to play Tom Sawyer for me at gigs. 

Have you ever heard Tom Sawyer played through a bag pipe?  It sounds better than you'd think!

It only got weirder.

Every time I burned down a candle this guy's name would be in the remnants.  The stereo would go off at 4:00 in the morning blaring songs we used to listen to together.  I am beginning to think my ex-husband was messing with me to freak me out.  His mother wanted us to be divorced.  I think he played games like this to push me away. 

I went to school with my ex-husband's family and best friend.  They gave him information that I forgot about. 

Of course, it didn't help that I started to find stuff the person in the dreams gave me around the house.  These were things that I thought were long gone; stuffed animals turned up in the freezer, the oven, the exercise equipment....everywhere. I'd find his artwork, photographs and love letters on the bed. 

My ex denied digging through my things.  One day.......one day in 2006....my ex-husband called my name.   Now, this was when things were ultra bad and we lived on separate floors of the house.  He was yelling, I didn't know if he stubbed his toe or was dying, so I ran to his room.

He looked at me, handed me a note and said "he never wanted to leave you."

Talk about opening wounds. 

It was a note I was given on May 1, 1987 (I think) basically telling me that Tom was leaving me so I could live my dreams.  I never read the note.  My memory is of me sitting in psych class, next to my friend Andy.  My old boyfriend handed me a note, told me he was leaving me and spun on his heels and left.  I do remember him standing outside of the door watching me.  I held back tears.  Andy tried to comfort me.  He told me just to go home to my bass and do things to make myself happy.  I did.  I realized there was no reason to read a note.  He wanted to move on.  So I let him.

Andy....he's still awesome.  He's been married to the same woman for thirty years!  He shares pictures of their dogs on social media from time to time.

The week before the break-up, I was offered a scholarship to a music school.  I didn't take it.  My grandfather had cancer.  I wanted to stay to care for him and I never told Tom about it.

I just went on with life and kept myself busy to push away the dreams.

I had an unthinkable thing happen a few weeks later.  It was graduation day and an asshole who ran around with my sister thought he could do whatever he wanted to me.  It was so bad, I fainted.  There was no amount of hot water that could take that disgusting feeling off of my skin. 

At that point, I never wanted to see Tom again.  It wasn't his fault.  I just had a lot of shame about it.  I felt like damaged goods.  I was thankful he didn't have to be there for that crap.

Now, I will tell you that men didn't hold it against me.  The few that found out about it were incredibly pissed.  One guy, a self-described Satanist, had his coven go through my apartment and take things out of there that this guy touched.  I think they hexed him.  In the end, my friends packed up for me and I moved and let them take what they wanted.  There were boxes and bags I had never opened since that day.  I think that's where my ex-husband found all that stuff from the past. 

Wow.....that's my life story.  So many years have passed.  None of this seems real.  When I think about it, I have cellular memory.  I feel pain in certain parts of my body....thirty years later!

I think it's time to think about something else. 

Oh, and my grandfather recovered from his cancer and lived to be 86. He died of a heart attack after uncle ripped off his life savings. 

If you want to see me in a tizzy, tell me about a rape victim being screwed by the system.  That always gets me involved in politics.  The city I live in.......ugh......made the mistake of arresting a rape victim for saying the word cunt in front of a lady cop right after her assault.  She was arrested and charged with verbal assault. That was in 2010.  I was a fixture at the municipal building for the next year or so until they dropped the charges. 

I'll put that pain to good use. 

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Now, I'm all over the place with the story.

These horrible things make me who I am today.  If I weren't a foster kid, rape survivor and stalking survivor who has become terrified of having a love life, I probably wouldn't be so damn bitchy.

I'm trying to remember everything because it helps me understand the utility of remembering.

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A man came to my office yesterday.

He put me in mind of Tom.

Tom met me for lunch nine years ago.  It was a very emotional day.  There were funny moments; like the moment a clown stood outside making balloon animals.  I could see the balloons inflate around Tom and I could not help laughing.  Tom finally decided to turn around when the clown was no longer there.  Silly.....

I should have taken a picture.  There will forever be a memory in my head of my old friend sitting there and a growing blue oblong balloon extending itself from the side of his chair. 

I shouldn't have laughed because Tom seemed sad and confused. 

The man that I met yesterday had the same demeanor.  He had just run into his high school sweetheart and she invoked in him feelings he really didn't know what to do with.

He sat in my office crying.

It broke my heart. 

He relayed that he always felt that he screwed up with her due to his age and lack of maturity.  He was beating himself up for things he did decades ago!

We all did stupid things!! Every single one of us made mistakes.  Hopefully we learn from them and grow.

His story broke my heart.

All those empowering things I didn't get to tell Tom just kind of came out of my mouth. 
Then I did a better job hypnotizing this guy to let go of his ex and get out there and date.

Back in '08, I tried to use NLP to get Tom to date.  I've had a lot of years to think about how I should have handled it since then. 

They funny part of that is I had two years between the Diana dream and actually meeting Tom to figure out what I'd do if he actually came to me looking lonely. 

I'd been working on that hypnosis session since 2006 or so!

I hope this gentleman got the benefit of all of that thought. 

He seemed happy and empowered by the session.  He said my words flowed very nicely. I've had a lot of time to think about these things.

Maybe....there is a point to all the reminiscing?

Maybe. 

I don't know.

My brain is trying to fill in the blanks and make sense of the nonsense.

Why can't I just stop thinking about it?

What do the dreams mean?

I don't even write about all of them.

There are so many.

Maybe if I can find the utility of the dreams, they'll go away. 

If you made it this far, I'm sorry it was so long.

I hope that you understand yourself and that everything you do has a beautiful synchronistic pattern to it so that you find many wonderful and fantastic things along your path.

Love ya lots,

S.