This morning I awoke from another dream, a dream where I left two young children alone, sleeping, and I was at a lake enjoying the water, the air, the sunshine, and when I realized what I had done, I began going back to help them.
In the dream, it takes a really really long time and the whole while I am worried about what trouble they have gotten into, if they are safe, could I be lucky enough to get there in time, and how did I forget and how could I be so irresponsible, who will know, will I be in trouble, berating myself for not doing better, and in sheer panic will they be lost.
Now, just like the ‘Affair’ dreams, these child dreams pop up often a couple of times a week.
Different scenario, but same theme; children and me being irresponsible leaving them in a precarious state or children out of control and me being responsible, either way I am losing.
I wondered why I was dreaming so much about young children, little kids that couldn’t take care of themselves, needy children, really needy children and their parents would be off to the side oblivious. Or I would find myself babysitting way too many kids and not know how that happened, the dream just starts with me in charge of way too many little kids, so many I can’t keep track.
The feelings of these dreams are what strike me; how they depict feelings I had when I was such a young girl, feelings of being in control but irresponsible or responsible and not in control.
No matter which way you look at it, it was never right.
Saying it was never right, is right. I was too young to be expected to be responsible for the things I was left being responsible for.
It is the feelings that are trying to be expressed. In my dreams I am expressing my lacks, my efforts up against the odds that were stacked high against me, the moments of being free, to only realize I was left in charge and I left, which plummets me into panic.
My mother used to say I was a second mother, which maybe I was, but what I really was was a little girl who couldn’t be a mother.
I was too little to be doing what I was asked to do, for I was still a little girl, one who had to put aside little girl dreams, little girl play, little girl life, and try flopping around in mother shoes.
The mother shoes were too big, held too much responsibility and no matter how hard I tried, I never was able to pull it off. I failed at being a mother, and while trying so hard to mother, my little girl life slipped away.
This is the catch 22 that I have lived. Not a mother and not a child, sitting in the nowhere land between.
Expressing myself in my dreams, recognizing the awful place I stood upon in my childhood, I don’t believe at the time, while resentful sure, I still didn’t fully comprehend the states I was left in, the age of myself and the ages of the children around me, and the absence of the mother.
In the years I should have been a carefree child, I was burdened with a heavy load, add to that load the horrendous incest from my father, it is no wonder I didn’t skip along in patent leather shoes.
My childhood shoes and the feelings attached to them are the strings that are being undone.
I feel like now I can take off those floppy ill-fitting mother shoes, and find a pair that suits me.
The little girl shoes will no longer fit, the time has passed for those, you really can’t go back.
It is time for me to find my own pair of shoes, ones that are perfect for me, ones that will fit my age, my soul and my journey, shoes custom made for me!
