Stimming memory dream?

 Not dream:

In the day I was walking past a school sports day on Hackney Downs. They had loud music playing and I shuddered at the sensory overwhelm. At the edge away from everyone with two adult supporters was an autistic boy (I guess) age about 13. He had a white t-shirt on with the word "DANCE" written on it in gold capital letters. He was smiling and "stim dancing" happily to the far off music.

I smiled at him, he saw me and smiled back.

Dream that night:

I was with T&S at a dance class. Sarah had performed a dance move well. It was my turn and the teacher came up to me in front of everyone and said "stop moving your arms in that stupid / silly way!". I felt two parts of me, a younger part steeped in shame. An adult part of me was instantly furious and shouted "No!" putting my hand up. Thoughts flitted through my head along the lines of:

"I have just found out I may be autistic, these are my stimming arms, how dare you shame me like that, its not ok to do that!".

By the time the words were formed the teacher had gone, I walked off to find him. I couldn't see him, but I found my mum! She was sitting at a table with headphones on working on something. I sat next to her and started crying - weeping / sobbing uncontrollably actually - saying "mum I need help".

I felt how warm she was, that she loved me too, through her eyes. But her body stayed with her task, in her own world - and she did not respond or move help me. Looking at her profile was very like a picture I drew of her as a child, of the profile of her face. I have often felt that drawing conveyed something about how I predominantly saw her. I touched her arm a few times but then went on my way.

I collapsed by a wall and was once again weeping / sobbing uncontrollably, even more so this time. I was kind of vaguely aware that I was having a total melt down. This time my Dad appeared! I sobbed "Dad, dad, I need help!" He moved towards me and seemed to know  exactly what to do: he touched me firmly to comfort me (pressing my body hard in places) and I was grateful.

Before the dream I had been very anxious about something at work. I felt a dark dread that someone (a male client) might make a complaint about me. I felt gripped for a while, by a terribly anxious old shame place of feeling "wrong". After the dream - I felt thoroughly relieved of this shame state - like a catharsis had taken place through the dream and something had released from my body.

Memories:

The dream reminded me that I went to dance school - I have pictures of me looking like I am really enjoying it - but then I suddenly stopped. I can't recall why I stopped and I wondered, did a teacher actually say something to me about how my arms moved when I danced? Before I went for my ND pre-diagnostic session, I went through old photos of me from when I was young and found a couple in which my arms were twisted into "odd" shapes.

I also recalled that my Dad would play with me very physically and vigorously. We would play "bucking bronco" where I would sit on his back and he would throw me off. He would tickle me hard, bury me in sand on the beach, we made HUGE sand castle cities that took a whole day to build. He was quite unavailable in many ways emotionally, but I have pictures of me looking very happy playing with him when I was young enough to want to do that.

The neglected baby

 I am in a large old communal building of some kind, it is institutional but with big beautiful wooden bannisters and stairs.

A family lives in one of the rooms. I become aware that they have left their baby in there, alone and unattended. I feel how awful it is for the baby to be alone - I feel and sense her, her aloneness, the emptiness and quiet of the room, her abandonment, sense of annihilation even - before I even go in to get her.

I break into the room and take the baby, I comfort her, hold her, she is responsive to me.

In the corridor outside I meet the family - in particular I recall the Dad. He is tall, cocky, arrogant, defensive. I shout at him "You should never leave a baby alone, EVER, NEVER, there are absolutely NO circumstances in which what you have just done is OK. NONE, what so ever."

I am repetitive and forceful in my argument, he seems to take it in.

Post script

I have been having a difficult couple of weeks when I have this dream, feeling often despairing and hopeless. In bed before I fall asleep I am tuning in to this sense of despair. I wonder where it comes from, is it me? Someone else in the house has been having a difficult time, am I feeling her feelings I wonder?

I am wondering all this lying in bed when I spontaneously place my hands on my solar plexus. This feels very calming of the despair, I feel a sense of "sunshine" - something gold and warm. This is the first thing that has genuinely touched this sense of despair in the the last two weeks.

I fall asleep holding my solar plexus then have this dream.

I am struck by the solar plexus being the seat of the sense of self, and how this dream perhaps represents a place of annihilation in my infancy - when my mom (and primary mirror) retreats to bed in depression when I am 6 months old.

I am curious about the building in the dream too. It is very like the convent that Sister Catherine Mary lived in - she was a nun in the hospital when I was born, her hands were the first to hold me. We would go and visit her once a year in the convent which was a very peaceful and tranquil place, I loved her Irish smiling eyes and warmth of voice.

Why was this lost baby (the lost inner me) in this place?

I don't know - but the retrieving of this part of me feels very deep and profound - like a soul retrieval.

White Rhino at an English Festival

 I am at a festival with my partners and their adult son. First S arrives, then T, then Ts son D - we are all staying together in a caravan.

We are scanning about and wondering what to do when we realise we are still in a pandemic still. We realise this means there are no tents, no gatherings, no dancing, no music, no groups ...

Awww this is going to be REALLY BORING we all say in moaning childish voices!

We head out of the caravan anyway to see what is going on. There is a shower and I say "oh I need a shower, please wait for me". I strip off and get inside, though I feel a bit self conscious as the shower is in a glass cube! My partners son is nearby and think "I hope he can't see me ..."

The window is partially steamed with droplets of water obscuring my vision, but as I scrub my body enthusiastically with lots of foam getting really clean (I am quite enjoying this) I peer through the glass and see - A WHITE RHINO!

It is not just the species 'white rhino' though that would be amazing enough in a green English festival field! It is a PURE WHITE RHINO - absolutely pure white - strolling relaxed and totally at home through the English fields.

I rush out of the shower to tell my partners "LOOK LOOK ..."

But by the time I get out the white rhino has gone. In its place are two children wearing masks, a boy and a girl aged about 6 or 7. One wears a pure white mask (the girl I think) and I think to myself, is SHE the Rhino? They run up to us, I find them kind of eerie, uncanny - I instinctively avoid them. However D (Ts son) welcomes them and rolls about on the floor with them in a playful fashion.

"Oh maybe they are ok" I think - and reflect not for the first time how good D is with children.

Someone from the past ...

 I am going to meet a friend Alice and a few things happen on the way.

I have on a coat she has lent to me, I look in the mirror and at first it looks colourful and funky. But the more I look at it the more I dislike it. There is a hood which when I pull it up is structured and boxy - like some kind of "post modern" exploration of a nuns habit! I try to fold it down - this makes it slightly more tolerable but I end up feeling like my head is boxed in by this ridiculous contraption.

The more I look at it, the more it feels like some kind of awful fashion statement, not me at all and I take it off. I head to see Alice, I am walking trying to recall where she lives. Its on the edge of my memory, I am on a street, surely it is this way, it looks so familiar ... 

I take one last turn and head up a road thinking "if I recognise something in the next few minutes I will know I am going the right way. If not this is my last attempt and I will turn around and head home."

I turn a corner, something looks familiar - a shop, a doorway ... - as I am looking I see someone in the door way and then realise - it is ST! ST is a former partner of mine from my 20s, I have lost touch with him and sometimes grieve that. We lived together for 7 years I think - he was probably the closest I came to settling down in a conventional dyad relationship.

I see him in the shop - my heart leaps - I am SO happy to see him and I am also very afraid I will "scare him off". In the waking world I have written to him several times in the past years and he doesn't reply so I have [eventually ...] reluctantly stepped away accepting that he doesn't want contact with me.

He seems to be with a woman and a baby in a pram. I have a tinge of sadness that he has a child with someone else (he is the closest I came to having a partner I would have children with), but delight leaps in me too. I have worried about his silence and whether he is ok (in waking life) - in my dream I am delighted that he is with someone and is a parent and looks ok - as I would be delighted to know he is well in waking life too.

But then things change. The woman sees me and snarls something derogatory about me being "the ex". The baby in the pram on closer inspection turns out to be an old lady being pushed around (the woman's mother). Both are smoking, snarling and mean spirited - I am suddenly deeply concerned for ST. What I see represents my worst fears that he is in harms way and being exploited somehow (when I think about him in waking life these fears sometimes arise).

I fake a smiling hello to the two women - and then a real greeting to ST - the moment of saying hello to him is such a powerful jolt, finally seeing him again and being seen by him too. I am still afraid to "scare him off" and so I say "you know, I would love to speak with you, but only if you want that too. Shall we go for a walk together and chat, would you like that? No pressure of course ..."

Really inside I am hoping and praying he will say yes, but somehow I know I must not push him.

He does say yes, my heart leaps inside and we start walking round the corner together leaving behind the two mean women. I am so relieved to have an opportunity to talk with him alone. I walk behind him and can tell from his body language he is feeling angry and dejected. His body twitches discharging trauma - he walks ahead his fists clenched and shoulders braced not looking at me, he slightly staggers even - I am pained to see all this.

Walking along behind I wonder "how can I reach him ..." - I feel so sad for him and desperately want to help him yet he might not let me in - I walk along silently wondering what is the best thing to say.

I awaken and feel sad all day.

A tarot reading

The dream was so stirring that I did a tarot spread to try to better understand it. I pulled the following cards (Rider Waite major arcana only):

1. The overall true meaning - Hierophant
2. What the dream means - The Fool
3. What the dream doesn't mean - The Magician
4. The direction of events - Justice

the corn king

The dream commences with preparing for a holiday, for some kind of journey.

I am in a car (with a family?) - driving them along a long straight 'highway' (it seems that we are in America). I am accelerating, my passengers are getting scared, "don't look back" I am telling them - and we accelerate faster, faster - the dream is all rushing road, revving engine and cornfields passing by in a blur.

Next I am up above the scene watching from the sky. Other cars are accelerating too, some are swerving, crashing, out of control. A tidal wave of 'something' is coming down the road. There is a lady in a jeep (a black lady) and I realise she is my friend. I will her to drive faster but she is slowing down, letting people by. "No don't stop" I want to scream (only I am 'out of my body'!) but she pulls into a lay by...

Then to my relief I see what she is doing as she swings round and throws her car up the embankment opposite; pitching over the top the vehicle lands on it's side but she climbs out unscathed. With a family she stands at the top of the embankment watching - I look down the road expecting a wave or some natural disaster, some kind of weather phenomenon...

But instead I see that the corn either side of the road is gathering up into a dusty a wave and has formed into a giant corn monster! It is almost comical, like some awful B movie, but it is terrifying too - the ground shakes as he walks down the road roaring like Godzilla!

There is a family scrambling up the bank from a nearby farm, he reaches over and scoops them all up in one dry, scratchy corn hand. They are all screaming and one by one he plucks them out of his hand and hurls them to certain death across the corn fields. It is sickening watching them, especially the women, screaming as they await their 'turn'.

Then he is down to the children, I don't see the little girl go (maybe I have looked away by this time)...

Next there is a little boy, about 7, he shouts heroically (again like some poor American B movie) "You big beast I'll huff and I'll puff..." but we don't hear what else he has to say as he too is hurled into the air.

Here the dream (nightmare) sinks to depths far beyond even B movies as I hear the boy shouting at the monster still as he flies through the air; then the thud as he hits the ground - a choking sound as he fights for his last few breaths...

My attention focuses in on the farm house that they all ran from (though in the back of my mind I am concerned for the safety of the black lady standing on the bank watching all of this). I see an old fashioned wooden fold up chair (of the kind used in village halls or a small parish church). The seat has two words cut with a pocket knife on it's underside, which is revealed as it is folded up.

It says simply "thankyou" and then a name. The name begins with "K" and maybe has an "S" in it too - I can't remember more but I have the feeling it was an old Pagan name. I sense that this simple carved gesture (which may have been done by the boy?) is what has enraged the corn king.

Either the boy has thanked some God that he shouldn't have been consorting with, or the family has forgotten to thank the corn King and this is why he is angry (I sense all of this somehow as I watch the scene).

(the name may have been 'Kreysws' though this is not quite right, I think there was some 'old' or unusual lettering in the name - perhaps though some early version of 'Christus'?)

naughty girl

I am in the countryside, I am looking after a little girl about 6 or 7 years old. She has been left with me by her family who are now going off for a countryside walk, they have a little toddler toddling after them who is the sibling of the girl with me.

The toddler keeps looking back over his shoulder to us and looks distressed in some way, then I notice that it is his dummy he is looking for and the naughty little girl with me has stolen it. I run after the family and give them the dummy.

I am heading back to the camp away from the family and the little girl is with me, she wants to go with the family and to be honest, so do I! I am quite peed off that I have been left to look after this truculent little monster and I am feeling sulky and not at all up to the task!

She climbs up a tree to see the family walking off over the horizon and says she wants to go with them. I am really angry by now and shout that she can't because she is too naughty, which is why she has been left behind.

I am embarrassed by my anger with such a young child and look around to see if anyone has seen me shouting so cruelly at her....

but she really is so very naughty!

The school and the ocean

I am with a former art teacher of mine and we are in a school. A dignitary is soon to be visiting (OFSTED maybe?) and we are doing the placed up.

We are in the sports hall moving out old furniture, broken shelves, and painting the space blue, silver and pearl metallic (like the inside of a mollusc). I notice that some if the painting is shoddy, it has been done too quickly, the paint applied too thickly and without sensitivity. I point this out to my teacher who quickly rectifies it without pause or fuss.

We are being helped by school girls, one of them has gone out on top of the building to look for something and is reporting back to us via video camera. She is on the roof of a skyscraper and close to the edge, she seems oblivious to the danger and I fear for her.

Back in the sports hall I am playing a word game now with some of the girls. We have little blue and red foam 'pellets' (like little pills) and they open out to reveal words within. We open our pills, deep red, deep blue, deep red, deep blue...

the girls are all childish teenage excitement - of the kind that comes about with the opening first flush of puberty - climbing all over me, I find I am annoyed with their exuberance.

The words in the pellets are all related to the sea, or seafood - "mollsuc", "starfish", "mussel", "sea shell" - each word as it is opened seems to release with it the essence of the sea and I find myself lost and overwhelmed once again in the beauty of the Ocean Goddess.

The Wave

I am on holiday by the sea, watching a girl playing on the beach. I know this girl is really I - younger and more vulnerable - I am my own guardian angel looking compassionately on.

She rides the waves allowing them to pick her up from behind, carry her forward and deposit her a few metres down the beach. She is like an aquatic mammal equally at home on land and in the water, slinking back and forth across the shores boundary.

I glance to the horizon and see that a larger wave is approaching. I want to warn her but realise I have no words and am confined to gesture alone. I begin to wave my arms and instinctively she looks to me: through some private sign language I manage to convey to her the danger.

She begins to run for her life - the wave is carrying mud and debris that will smash her small body to a pulp if it catches her. But she is young, fit, her pace and luck is good - she reaches safe ground on some rocks just as the wave crashes in.

The scale of the wave is utterly awe inspiring; energy and form, the pliant watery creature is forced upright into a towering wall.

The Seatbelt

I am in a car; someone who resembles my mother (but isn’t) is driving. There are two children in the back and someone who resembles my father (but isn’t).

The step mother (I will call her this for convenience) seems agitated. She says “At the next stop I will pull over and put some shoes on those children, their feet are cold.” I am furious with her for slighting my ability to care for my children (I realise when provoked that those children are mine). “Look” I shout “if you don’t think I am looking after them then just say”.

“OK then, I don’t think you look after them.”

Infuriated I grab the children from the back, a baby and toddler. I put socks and shoes first on the baby, then on the toddler. But the socks are too thick and the shoes too small and the baby leads me to believe that she is perfectly warm and would rather not wear these awkward encumbrances (she communicates this telepathically with a smile).

I put them back in the rear of the car, the toddler stands next to the amiable but weak step father who is playing with the baby. As I look at them I realise that now they really are in danger: the stepmother who drives this car is senile (I start to tell her so but then chicken out) and now my children are travelling in the back without their safety belts: I picture them travelling at speed towards the windscreen.

I become horribly aware that an emergency stop is imminent; having wrapped them against false fears of cold I wonder if they will survive the real threat.

Little Girl 2

I settle down to sleep knowing that the little girl is now safe.

Gradually I become aware of voices in our room. As my eyes become accustomed to the grey light I realise that there is also a middle-aged couple in a double bed on the other side of the room near some large windows.

The woman seems larger and more forward than her husband who sounds as if he is hen pecked. She is complaining too loudly to him about other people being in the same room as them and it is obvious that she is not happy.

Eventually I can bear it no longer: I sit up in bed and angrily shout “Look, if you don’t want us here just say and we will leave – OK!”

“Oh no, no, no we didn’t mean you, it’s ok we don’t want you to leave” says the woman as she comes over to the bed and sweeps me up in her arms (much as I did with the little girl).

She sits on my bed hugging and rocking me gently back and forth. She keeps on holding and holding, I want to break free and say “OK! ENOUGH!” but I find that I do not have the will to break free of her grasp.

All of my energy departs, I hang limp and inert within her arms: I remain locked in that eternal, copious embrace.

Little Girl

I am at someone else’s house: a rich house with expensive pale carpets and flock wallpaper. I am walking down a hall wondering about the owners when I come across a little girl playing on her own. She comes towards me and I realise that she is tired and needs to go to bed. I sweep her up in my arms feeling so much love as I wonder how her parents could not have noticed her need.

I tell her I will put her to bed and head to a bedroom as she enfolds me with lanky legs and tired arms. In the bedroom I try to put her down and for the first time notice that her bottom half is naked. As I try to prise apart her limpet embrace I find that her flesh has stuck to mine and I cannot remove her. I have to peel us apart and feel rising disgust as I recognise the smell of the stale urine that has glued us together.

I notice a bath filled with hot water and bubbles so I bathe her all over with white soap and dry her with soft white towels that swallow her up. I tuck her into a bed of white cotton sheets and stroke her to sleep in her newly sweet scented, soft and fluffy body.

I climb into a bed in the same room…