Dreams: Relationships And Sexuality

Yesterday while taking a nap due to feeling exhausted and somewhat sick, I had a nightmare, one in which I had somehow met this guy and I found myself in his room which I knew to be inside his mother's house. I never saw her. The guy was kind of lonely so I wanted to help, yet throughout this all he exhibited a weird mean streak. Only afterwards did I realize that he had just been cruel. I eventually managed to sneak away and hide in a pile of firewood ("becoming the wood"). I woke up from this dream with one of my arms crossed over my chest, and both hands more or less clenched into a fist and my heart pounding like crazy.

Today I felt very agitated and depressed. After deciding to go take a nap again I got to my bed where something inside me kind of snapped. I felt so frustrated that I began to hit myself on the head over and over again until it started hurting so much that I could only drag myself into bed where I fell asleep. I then had another nightmare.

The initial part of the dream I do not remember well. I was apparently in the house in which I grew up, and yet it wasn't really. It was more light and spacious. There was something going on with food. Dinner, I think. I didn't feel like eating yet, until at one point I told my mother that she could warm up some of the pasta for me. Shortly after that I decided to go upstairs to my room. Nearing the top of the stair I could see that my room's door wasn't fully open as I had left it, but slightly ajar. Pushing it open I went into my room, which again wasn't really like my room of the past. Again more light and spacious. To my left was my bed, but in it was already someone. A woman. First she looked like Jeri Ryan, who was wriggling about under the blankets, seemingly amused. As I got closer and slid into the bed as well, she changed into a more African looking woman.

The moment I first saw a woman in my bed I didn't really feel anything, it was more a matter of observing a fact. Sliding into the bed next to her I found it to be a comforting thought to be next to her. Nice and cozy. Lying next to her she suddenly proposed getting intimate with me, which caught me by surprise. Working in my head through the logistics of such a thing, I found no problems there. Preparing, I had just changed from fully clothed into wearing the same but my pink pyjama pants instead of my jeans, when my mother came into the room to tell that dinner was ready. At this point I thought it would be a good idea to lock the door, so I got out and wandered over the other side of the room where I knew that the key probably was. I didn't find it, however.

Meanwhile the woman was just wandering about near the bed, talking with my mother or such. Her presence didn't incite anything negative, which I think meant that she was supposed to be there. Maybe she was my girlfriend after all. I decided to ditch the locked door idea and walked back over to her. My mother and the shadowy male figure I had sensed near her had left. As the woman and I came close we embraced. As we stood there, I started trembling. The really bad kind of shaking when you're either nervous or anxious enough to nearly bolt away to safety, or stricken with fear. I held her tightly as I said to her in a trembling voice that I felt so nervous, more than I had ever felt before. The image then suddenly distorted into nonsense.

As I woke up from that nightmare, I found both my arms firmly crossed on my chest and both hands tightly clenched into fists. I was crying.

Thanks to today's nightmare I think I now know what yesterday's nightmare was about, namely my experiences living together with that person. The second nightmare was for me a frightening look into how traumatizing sexuality has always been to me. I have actually experienced such trembling before with a real-life experience, though I chose to ignore it at the time. In the nightmare I chose to finally admit to myself that there's nothing which fills me more with terror than the thought of sexuality. I have just been forcing myself to try and accept it as something normal, while further damaging myself that way. My experiences the past months more so.

This all taken together it seems quite clear where some of my worst traumas are, and the worst roadblocks on the way to recovery. It's in some ways infuriating that a good, healthy relationship could be so beneficial to me, while the possibility of such a thing happening is sheer random chance. I could run into the perfect person tomorrow, or never. Maybe a plan B is in order, with a shrink specializing in sexuality poking and prodding me. Maybe.

Or maybe that's plan C and plan B is to become a bloody hermit.


Maya