Dream Interpretation

I have had a lot of very vivid dreams lately (anyone else can relate?)

I wonder if it’s because of the new medication (Effexor) or because..of who I am? I generally have vivid dreams, and often have the same symbols or themes.

Horses, packing, suitcase, airports, horse riding, airplanes. These things are repeated over and over and over again in my nighttime thoughts!

Horses and traveling. Well, I do love both a LOT, so it kind of makes sense. Although, they can be interpreted in ways that also make sense.

Path towards life goals, wanting to escape life’s routines, and the horse symbolizing strength and power. Sounds about right.

I have a lot of cheating dreams too, hiding from things, escape nightmares, violence.

Then there are weird little symbols that are really odd. I once had a pear in my dream, a really vivid large pear. I also have had pigs, trains, buses, eskimos, snow, stabbing, weddings, flowers, beaches, malls, lots of hair dreams, exes, kissing, some sex.

Anyway. I guess subconsciously I am trying to figure out what my path in this life is, and sort out my weird issues.

I think it would be interesting to jot the dreams down, but I’ve never quite gotten to it. Well, once I had a dream so vivid and cool that it kind of made movie sense, and I started writing a fictional book based on the dream! I should post the beginning here one day..But yes, as per usual, I come up with something, get really excited, do nothing but that for a little bit, get exhausted and stop and never touch the topic again.

Which leads me to my next blog post – anti-suicide and anti-crisis mobile phone app……!!

xx

 

 

Dreams Dreams Dreams

I might have mentioned before but I have for long had very vivid and strong dreams with lots of symbolism and strange things that I remember the next day. 

I used to think this was because I’m on citalopram – one of the side effects includes vivid dreams – but now I am not so sure anymore, yet enjoy the fact that my dreams are telling me so much about my subconsciousness; it’s like, they’re a way of getting in touch with the unknown state of my mind.

Last night again I had a vivid scary dream where the house that I was somehow living in was being demolished bit by bit, and then I found a stash of old stuff of mine and someone else’s and in one pouch I found amazing rings and put them on, and then later I was canoeing away from the destruction.

Interpreting my dreams:

Canoe 
To see a canoe in your dream represents serenity, simplicity, and independence. It is also a reflection of your emotional balance. You are moving ahead via your own power and determination.

 

Demolition 
To dream of a demolition suggests that you are undergoing major changes in your life. You may feel out of control. Alternatively, to watch a demolition in your dream indicates a final end to some situation or relationship.

 

Ring 
To see or receive a ring in your dream symbolizes emotional wholeness, continuity, commitments and honour. If the ring is on your finger, then it signifies your commitment to a relationship or to a new endeavour. You are loyal to your ideals, responsibilities, or beliefs.

Feels like my mind is trying to tell me something…..! 

Have a beautiful day xxx

 

 

It is so hard..life

Oh boy…I have never ever before in my life been this anxious and stressed out in my entire life!!

I’m homeless.

I moved out of my last rented place because we were being evicted anyway, and the case in court had been going on for a year and a half (long story!!) and I was going to travel for three weeks and didnt wanna live in that situation anymore.

Downside is that when I arrived back in London I had nowhere real to go.

So I am crashing on a friend’s living room floor, on an inflatable mattress that deflates all the time,…I can only stay for a week more so I have NO clue what I will do next!

I got sick, sore throat, fever, cough…can’t do anything but sleep. Been in bed for days now and I don’t know if I ever will get better, or if I even want to get better!

I wanna leave. I wanna quit my job and just go…leave. But what am I gonna do with my life?! I can’t be unemployed and homeless forever!

I talk to my ex a lot. I do love him and I love how he cares about me. Just too many bad memories and I have tried to move on, but I am afraid of making a huge mistake. I hate endings! I get so upset, I would rather take bad situations than let go and be alone forever.

I guess that what my mom was like with my dad who abused her and me and my brother, so I have it easy, we just had incompatibility issues and arguments.

I get vivid dreams. This is what Dreammoods.com told me:

“To see muddy or dirty water in your dream indicates that you are wallowing in your negative emotions. You may need to take some time to cleanse your mind and find internal peace. Alternatively, the dream suggests that your thinking/judgment is unclear and clouded. If you are immersed in muddy water, then it indicates that you are in over your head in a situation and are overwhelmed by your emotions. To dream that water is rising up in your house suggests that you are becoming overwhelmed by your emotions”

I wanna take a break. I can’t take this. On Monday I will hand in my notice and crash at friends for a few weeks and…leave.

I am SCARED. Scared of the unknown. Scared of making bad decisions. Scared of realising I had made a mistake. But I cannot take this anymore!!

I miss my therapist, I wish I still had him! He was my rock, someone I could honestly tell anything! Anything and everything. And I lost it, it’s no more, ever.

I am sad. Upset. Anxious. Sick. Stressed out.

I had flashbacks while I was on my holiday in the US. to the abuse and my childhood. I cried a lot, it was very emotional. I am determined to make it, but it for sure is not easy!!

I also started talking to my brother. He is still in Finland and at one point we didnt talk for years…I just decided to open up and make a connection, might as well as I don’t have very many people in my life that I am completely honest with.

It turned out to be a very positive conversation. On Facebook you can not see the other person, but words come out easier, at least for me. I told him about my situation and things and problems and he told me about his. He gave me advice. He listened to me. I really felt emotional and got so angry that is is wht we hadn’t had for 20 years, that my father ruined it all for us and we weren’t there for each other in forever…maybe now we can take small steps and repair it??

He told me he knew I had been scared of him. I said I used to think he wanted to kill me. He was shocked, but I said I was being serious. We sorted out a lot of feelings…I wish one day I can live him as a brother that I really didnt have for so many years….

I have a,so opened up to my mother a bit. I think I have a long way to go, but now I am at the bottom of the pit and I need as much support as possible! I really do….I cannot do this on my own!

I also miss my host family. So as I have said before, I went on exchange to the US when I was sixteen, and was placed in a local host family. I had just recovered from a bad case of anorexia (or was still recovering, to be honest) and I had been suicidal and miserable and had told my therapists that if they didnt let me go on exchange I would kill myself.

So I arrived in Wisconsin and changed my entire life. I decided to be something else. A that point I didn’t yet remember the abuse, but I was determined not to be what I had been thus far. My family unknowingly saved me.

And this time that I was back I told them they saved my life. Even after the year I kept coming back all the time and never really even wanted to moved to England, I had wanted to stay in the US because that country saved me. And no one knew it!

So this time I told my parents everything. I was so honest, I cried, I laughed, I hugged and told them they had saved me. I told them about the abuse, the therapy, my problems. My relationship, things I have struggled with. They told me they were proud of me and my mom said that she thinks I should know that the abuse will forever be with me, that it can’t be taken away.

I said I know. And she is right, I will forever til the day I die be a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, no matter where I live, who I’m with, what I’m doing. It’s up to me how I live that identity out, though.

I’d like to say I am trying to honor the little girl in me who is hurting, but…sometimes I forget about her. I blame her. It was her fault. I look at her standing all alone in the rain longingly wishing someone loved her for who she is, but my biggest fear is no one will, and she will forever be alone.

Xx

Dream Interpretation

I am slightly addicted to interpreting my dreams – mainly because I have such vivid dreams or at least vivid imagery in the dreams that I clearly remember in the morning.

I also have a few specific themes that are present in most of my dreams, even though the surroundings, situations and people change.

One is guns. I have a lot of dreams with firearms, guns, shooting and getting shot at.

Another is hiding and running away. Someone chasing me, having to try to not be seen or found out, being scared of being found.

I also have a lot of murder and killing dreams – sometimes it’s me doing the killing, but often I am running away from people who want to kill me. It’s usually that they are shooting at me, or that I shoot people.

And finally, I dream about horses a lot. A LOT. I’m often riding, in the forest usually, and I really trust the horse I’m on. A lot of times the horse dream coincides with being chased or running away – I do this on horseback and quite often manage to escape.

Last night I had one of those dreams that you remember in the morning but they fade away as you wake up and start your day, but one thing is really vividly in my mind about the dream: Hamster. I had a hamster in the dream and it lived in a cage and I was cleaning the hamster cage at one point (and the poor little creature was shaking with cold outside :O)

I got to work and I had to check out online what hamster dream meant, and I got this from DreamMoods:

Hamster

To see a hamster in your dream represents underdeveloped emotions. 

You are distancing yourself from others so that you won’t end up getting hurt. It may also indicate that issues of sexuality are trivial to you. You are able to separate sex and love.

Wow. It’s like….someone was reading my soul out loud when they wrote this. I guess it is interesting to find out what dreams mean to be able to analyze yourself, it’s kind of like being in therapy without being in therapy, and being able to take a glimpse into your subconsciousness and kind of get that ahaa moment about your own feelings.

Have a lovely day!

L.G.

Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired

I am so bored at work. Yes, I said it. I feel like I am wasting my talents sitting at this desk every day doing pretty pointless stuff.

The only thing that keeps me going is the promise of a paycheck. With my money I can pay rent, I can treat myself to nice things like clothes and shoes, and I can save for the rainy day.

I would like to be elsewhere. My dreams have varied during my lifetime, but usually they’ve had something to do with performing; my first dream job was to become a model, but I never grew tall and skinny and pretty.

I visited the UN building in New York at 16 and decided I wanted a career within this NGO. I dreamed of managing public health projects in small communities in Africa. I eventually went to university to study social sciences in the hopes of becoming a UN official.

Dream tattered after a semi-pointless degree that only took me as far as enabling me to get an admin role at an insurance company, I started re-thinking about what I could do. I realized I’d want to be a news anchor or a foreign correspondent, and enrolled on a Master’s course in Broadcasting.

A year of struggling through a tough course, and multiple bank loans later I found myself having to find yet another office job because I couldn’t even get an unpaid internship in TV. I labored for a year in a secretarial role until it made me sick to my stomach, and I left. I just quit my job and moved to Africa.

My four months in East Africa were unreal – I felt alive for the first time in my life; nature, work, people…everything was so … tangible and colorful and I could really feel that I was living inside my body.

I went jogging in the evening on the red hills and watched the sun set over the mountains, I partied like there was no tomorrow and danced my ass off every weekend at the local clubs, and I met so many people, did awesome things and saw a lot of that part of the world during my weekend excursions.

I remember sitting on a rocky beach in Kenya every evening for a week, watching the waves come in and enjoying the sight of pink clouds and setting sun against the backdrop of the Indian Ocean. The smell of the sea is intoxicating, and the slight breeze makes you feel alive. I will never ever forget the memories, and even today whenever I am really upset I try to go back to that moment, feeling the rocks with my hands and watching the crabs scatter whenever a bird flew by.

The moments that have been vividly painted into the canvas of my mind are few, but very powerful. Kenya for sure, but also Barbados, the US, and Finland.

I will never forget the moment when I was floating in the sea in Barbados in 2006 when the sun was shining, I felt warm and supported by the ocean water, and all I could hear was kids’ noises as they played in the sand. Or 2002, San Francisco, walking up and down the hilly streets in the spring sun, and ending up by the Golden Gate park where I sat on the bench and watched the world go by.

Or when I was young and I had a pony, and I would rush home from school and take him out for long rides in the woods around the house, and he’d gallop on an open field with me hanging on to his thick mane, screaming with joy.

I used to sing to him too. Talk even. We were best friends, and in his company I felt safe, like nothing could hurt me. He was my world and when he dies, so did a very big part of me. I am not quite sure I ever gained that part back, but sometimes when I walk on a dark quiet street I imagine hearing the faint sound clip clop behind me, and I think of my pony who must have gone to heaven and assigned as my guardian angel and now he watches over me when I walk alone in this world.

I think he’d want me to keep going. He’d want me to chase my dreams and keep smiling. I know this is so silly and childish, but I do think that he was sent to me to make my life a little bit better considering the circumstances, and no matter how many years go by from his death, the memory of his beautiful brown eyes makes me sad, but happy at the same time as knowing him was like knowing what unconditional love is like, and I’ll never forget that.

The memory of his love gives me hope. It is what keeps me grounded, and I am fairly certain now that I can do things I never thought I could. I just need to take that leap of faith and chase my dreams…Like R Kelly sang, “I believe I can fly, I believe I can touch the sky. I think about it every night and day…Spread my wings and fly away.”

 

Have a very blessed day xxx And don’t forget to dream.

Monday Morning

Mandatory morning coffee (brewed at home – can’t stand prices at Costa or Starbucks!), Monday morning therapy session, work.

Things are somehow settling back into place – if there has ever been such a thing as anything being in place in my life. As far as I can remember, everything has always been chaotic, messy and unstable; home, family, work, studying, relationships, friendships.

I don’t think there has ever been a time when I have felt completely safe and secure, or that I have belonged somewhere and have wanted to be right there at that exact moment; I have always felt yearning towards somewhere else, to be someone else, to have something else than that going on in my life.

I have dreamed of somehow being able to go back to the States, live among the friendlier people there, work and perhaps study again. I have amazing memories from the time I spent at a college in Wisconsin, and I think that if that was to continue I’d be happy.

I enjoyed my studies, felt like I was achieving something spectacular, I liked my roommate with whom we were super close, and I loved the stability of a tight schedule, hobbies, and living in a dorm.

Yet all dreams come to an end. I had to come back to Britain, had my first flashbacks to the abuse a few months later, graduated with a pointless degree (sociology) and ended up in a minimum-wage admin job. I think that was the point where I lost the ability to believe in my dreams – I had worked so hard to leave my country, study and attain a degree, make a life for myself abroad, all of which were meant to take me somewhere great in life…

And here I am. Working in an office in a menial IT role, living in a shared house in London, where we have mold on our walls and it’s sometimes so cold at night that I can see my breath against the ray of street light beaming in from the windows.

I feel like a failure. I always do. Unless I reach my goals of fame and fortune, I will feel like a failure.

I will forever be destined to be a failure as I don’t even try to attain my goals. I have stopped working hard, I have stopped dreaming and scheming, and I have stopped believing. I wake up, go to work, come home, watch TV, and go sleep. My life is wasting away day by day and I just sit back and watch it float by. I do nothing, and I am so very afraid I will never do anything….

When I was a child I believed I was a Princess. At night I’d dream myself away to another place where I was loved and celebrated, admired and taken care of. This is the world I still want to escape to, but the adult me knows there is no such place.

Dreams shattered, goals unfulfilled, a boat load of Monday mornings to come where my void will be filled by inbox full of Groupon offers and a sugary mug of medium roast drank on my way to work on the overcrowded Underground.

What would the little Princess do? She probably would frown and tell me that it might take time to become a swan if you were born an ugly duckling. Change takes time, and also, you have to be able to recognize when you have become a swan, for if you concentrate on telling yourself you are an ugly duckling you won’t be able to tell when the gray fluff is gone and replaced by white silky feathers.

The pond might be the same, but the bird can change.

—–

Wishing you lots of fulfilled dreams, attained goals, and perseverance to continue on the path.

LittleGirl xx

Darkness

I can’t sleep. No, I don’t think I have insomnia, it’s just that a lot of the times my mind is too full of thoughts, anxiety, worries, and emotions that it is impossible to let go and fly off to la-la land.

It has been three days since I came back from my winter break in the Gambia, and I am finding it really hard to adjust to “real life”. London, my job (did I mention I hate my job?? It is nothing I ever imagined doing yet there I am, traipsing down the street to the Underground on my way to the office, every single week day of my life), my current housing situation (very bad landlord, trying to avoid renovating when I have mold growing on my walls)…

I have a very strong urge to let go of my past, it’s like…I’m turning 28 in a few weeks, and it really has hit me hard that I am only “here” – I have not accomplished the kinds of things I would have wanted to by now. Maybe I am harsh on myself as I have accomplished some things; I have traveled a lot, seen the world, I am in a committed long-term relationship, I have a job….BUT I don’t have the things that I yearn for, and I don’t know if I ever will be able to get those!

I dream of…financial stability. Lots of money. I wish I never had to work, I wish I could just write, blog, travel, dream, study and enjoy life. I wish I had a home, my own place. I wish that one day I had a child, a baby girl who’d have curly hair and caramel-color skin and who’d laugh and smile and make me realize that things can be changed, that the cycle of abuse can be broken.

I wish…I had an opportunity to work for the UN. Do something good and great. Wake up every morning knowing that that day I will do something good for the rest of the humanity. Film a documentary and change lives and thought patterns. Raise money for a good cause. Talk about my experiences and how I survived and how others can too. Laugh, smile, lie on the beach, swim in the ocean, trek in rain forests, become successful in my own right.

Yet…Here I still am. And I have no way out. I cannot focus on what it exactly would be that I’d want to do – my thoughts go from wanting to work in public health to becoming a travel guide to working in the financial industry to running away and renting a flat near a beach in Africa and blogging from there. I cannot decide and nothing is helping me decide.

Time is running. Time flies. The clock keeps ticking. I am not getting any younger, and decisions need to be made. I do not want to rent a shabby flat in London and work in admin when I’m 50! I would have wasted my talent, my dreams, my aspirations and my desires.

I type in the darkness. The light from the street lamps cast rays into my room and the last candle is about to burn out. I will try calm down, stop worrying at least for tonight, and put the laptop down. I can’t turn it off for I am scared of the darkness. I feel there are monsters waiting for me to be alone in the pitch black room so they can come haunt me, and I must keep at least a little source of light on every night that I spend alone.

I have a dream. I always have had a lot of them, actually. I have dreamed of becoming the first female Secretary General of the UN, I have dreamed of living in the Caribbean and working as a freelance journalist, I have dreamed of starting a charity where I’d own horse stables and would get underprivileged kids to come and learn to take care of these beautiful creatures (I believe in animal therapy, big time) and learn to have compassion through that, and I have dreamed of starting my own brand or a company, something that I could pour my heart into and which would make me successful and happy.

Yet all I can do for now is try sleep so I will have rested to be able to function at work tomorrow. Does it mean my big dreams have died? Can they still come true? Only God knows. I just feel that I was meant to be something, for I would not have survived it all just to become…this. I feel that I am more important than I really am – conceited, yes, but I can’t help it.

As Eleanor Roosevelt put it, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”. Dream big, work hard, stay grounded and allow yourself to soar for success and happiness are the only ways to show those who try to bring us down that we have refused to believe in their might, yet are able to fly high.

Sweet Dreams,

LittleGirl xxx