A Gun in my Pocket

 I am walking up a hill with a friend, the police are coming the other way and searching peoples pockets for guns. They search my friends pocket. I am scared because I actually have a gun in my pocket. It seems like the police are going to walk past and miss me, I feel relief. But at the last minute a male police officer walks towards me and asks to search my pockets.

I say you are going to find a gun in my pocket, and he shouts loudly at me to lie on the ground. He goes to my pocket and pulls out a gun wrapped in an Asda bag. I say let me tell you the story of how I came to have a gun. He says it doesn’t matter, it’s illegal. I am shocked because I thought I had been careful to buy a legal gun.

I begin to tell him the story anyway - I have a client I am scared of, and that’s the police have failed to protect me, and that’s why I have a gun. I think about saying I was on my way to put it in a gun dropbox, ready to get rid of it.

Tony and Sarah are nearby, tony looks pleased and says "she is going to tell her story" (a midgendering but it feels relevant that it is the 'she' part of me represented in this dream). Inside I feel a little worried, have I exaggerated things? If I tell my stroy, will someone be angry with me and I will get into trouble?

We moved towards the police car, and everyone starts to pick up rubbish. It's quite odd that they are all pausing to do litter picking at this time! Next, the policeman takes a big old, solid wood writing desk out of the police car. It is mine and I ask why he’s leaving it on the side of the road. He mutters something, and I take it that he can’t take the desk to the police station.

I am scared, that is my old writing desk. I don’t want it to be left and get lost, here on the pavement.

Reflections

Police man a protector part. I have Tony my actual safe masculine encouraging me to share my story. But the police man leaves the writing desk on the road side. I feel guilt that I might get into trouble, these are my protector parts.

Conversation with friends unearths the following: “trauma demands attention” and “it needs healing somehow". A family may heal a perpetrator by feeling his feelings and processing them for him, through our own body. I have over focused on my dad’s side and the murder on that side of the family. In a recent constellation - the incredible power in my maternal ancestry was reflected back to me. 

Everyone stopped to pick up litter. In Lofoton I “went to the source” of my maternal DNA in a mountain lake. The location we were visiting was the area where my MtDNA halpo group originated from and I felt this in 'visionary' ways. At the lake I saw something deep in the water - even though it was really icy cold and deep, determined I dived down and pulled something out of the water. It turned out to be a piece if litter! It was a milk carton - with images of cartoon violence on it - tom and jerry whom I used to watch as a child, filled with casual violence. The lake was huge - but the violence was tiny in comparison to this huge river of life.

Trauma demands attention, it may flood us and it’s all we know or feel. But that river of life is vast and this carton - with its cartoon drama violence - was tiny by comparison.

Also note the Asda bag - capitalism wraps around this story - around the gun and the need for protection, protection rooted in violence. This is more than an individual story of personal trauma history. Its a story of capitalism and how it is intimately entwined with violence, with an immature aspect of human psyche.