What a dream

Sleep and me, it's complicated. I crave it. I think about it with such longing that I can feel my desire. The images obsess me. Visions of pillows, plump and encased in eyelet trimmed white linen, cool, soft sheets tousled around me, a fluffy comforter carelessly kicked to the foot of a bed fill my mind. (The ones I imagine are, of course, not the ones I own.) I can see myself, one arm tucked to my chest, the other sprawled out, my hair tousled and my eyelids flickering as I dream. I feel like a teenager who has a crush on a totally hot boy who doesn't know she's alive.

For weeks now, I've been sleeping in snatches, an hour or two at a time at the best. The last few nights though, that totally hot boy and I actually held hands. I haven't been able to get to sleep until very late. This morning, I actually saw the sky begin to pale before true sunrise before I got to sleep. When my eyes finally closed though, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Not only did I sleep, but I dreamed, wild, fun, happy, and bizarre dreams. Best of all, there are snatches that have hung in my memory.

In one, I met a man at my work place. It was love at first sight, and we married. Then we moved to Tonga, yes, Tonga. We lived in a small house, and I distinctly remember a couch upholstered in a bright green and white stripes. I can see light pouring in through windows adorned only with long, sheer white drapes, pulled aside to let in the sun. We were happy, and I had many friends. I remember one woman in particular, plump, brown with long, straight black hair and a huge smile. I remember us laughing on a beach with children playing around us. Other than being set in Tonga, it was normal, day to day life, and it was wonderful. It also felt exceptionally real. We were there, for a clearly, specified time of five years.

Of course, the best dreams always have their touch of the bizarre. I worked in a small, run down hospital. There were rodents, small cute, fuzzy rodents who lived in the walls. One doctor, a wise old man, balding, with a gray beard and glasses, let them play under his desk. I felt tremendous affection for him, but his tolerance of these fluff balls, in a medical environment bothered me. Rodents weren't the only animals there. Behind pipes, in corners, closets and other places, I'd find snakes. It was always one snake at a time. They were different types and colors. I wasn't afraid, in my normal yelp and goosebump way, but deeply respectful of their space. They were snakes, after all. The largest snake was found in the darkest corner, and it was pure white. I remember, the texture of its skin, its black eyes, and its flickering tongue very clearly.

At some point, I woke up from this dream and was at work, telling my co-workers about the convincing reality of the dream. I was cautioned about flirting at work. It's important to remember that I work in a bridal boutique that does not handle men's wear, not exactly a rocking place to meet single men. About the only men who do come in are grooms to be (young enough to be my child) or the occasional father of the bride, torn between the beauty of his little girl and the size of the check he's about to write. The idea of me flirting with any of them is ludicrous. I also told them that the man in my dream and his fiancee' were on our appointment book for the day. That's when I woke up for real.

I always have to analyze a dream when I remember it. What surprised me the most was Tonga. Why did a specific place I know nothing about pop into my dream? The name was vaguely familiar, but I had to Google it. It did look like the paradise of my dream, but the only snakes they have there are sea snakes. I could definitely use some beach time, and I have been craving something different from the numbing sameness of my days now. From Tennessee to Tonga, well, that's definitely a change. Love, marriage and happiness... the happiness I definitely want. Yes, I'd welcome more love in my life, but I'm not actively searching for it. Marriage, don't think so. More friendship and laughter, yes, oh yes. I love the dream within a dream here and hate that I automatically thought of Inception when I realized the layers of my dream.

I had to look up the symbolism of the most specific images. One dream dictionary said that beaches represent the spiritual approach to life, since the beach is the approach to the ocean, the source of life. The clearest image of the beach was of me and my friend sitting, watching over and enjoying children playing there. It was both peaceful and joyful. Hospitals were said to symbolize your state of mind and how it affects your health and healing. This is a good time to point out again that the hospital where I worked was small, shabby, in need of repair and infested with rodents and snakes, both of which can symbolize cancer. Well, I'm working on the state of mind, and I will get that hysterectomy sometime this summer. Snakes can also be symbols of re-birth, power, wisdom, the ability to counsel and cunning. That white snake is not an image I'll forget any time soon. This isn't the only dream I've had featuring snakes lately. I also keep running into them in real life, four times in the last couple of months. The sunlight was a constant in the dream, and it is supposed to represent healing. I'll take that. Two colors dominated my dream, green and white. They showed up in the furniture, the beach, the ocean, the leaves of trees, mats woven from those leaves. They were everywhere. Sticking to the same dictionary, it said that green, as the color of the heart chakra, symbolized healing of the heart. White, of course, is the color of purity, but it also represents faith, hope, confidence, enlightenment and perfection.

If my feelings on waking weren't proof enough, I'd say this was a very positive dream. Even more hopeful is the movement from dream to reality within the structure of the dream itself. It makes me anticipate my waking hours, but right now, I'm going to try to go to sleep.