Hello...The second half of this dream had some interesting images, the meaning of which eludes me. The first half is basically about the current situation I'm in and my feelings about it, as well as the attitudes of the other players involved. Basically, I have been helping run my father's business along with another female co-worker for a decade. For little pay. It has been stressful, highly detail oriented, high pressure work but it has been all I've ever known. Now that my father is about to retire and has been talking about how much the business is worth, suddenly my brother, who has never worked in this business, knows nothing about the field, and never expressed any interest in it before, suddenly wants to take over and run the business. Not join it, not work with me as equals, but own it outright. He's been courting my father and appealing to his ego by having "the family business becoming a family legacy" appealing to the notion of having his son carry on his business. Well, I have no interest supporting the emperor with no clothes, especially one who has shunned and degraded me my whole life. I've already been doing all the work for my father with no credit for years. I'm not about to repeat it with my brother. I can't believe that we're on the verge of renewing the whole same process (only worse, my brother is so disrespectful he doesn't even look at me let alone speak to me) where I do all the work and the emperor with no skills/knowledge gets all the reward and credit and respect for a position that I work my tail off so he can have. In the dream we are all in the office. My father hands me paperwork to fill out to help my brother become licensed and set up for his new position in his business. My brother doesn't even look at me, let alone acknowledge me, as I do this paperwork for him. Inside, I feel this is so unfair, and wonder how far I will be able to go along with this. How can I work with someone who is so disrespectful? Who feels so entitled to his position (not just to taking over a business at the last hour of which he is clueless about, but to his attitude toward me..I am just a slave, a bug to be squashed, in the way, unless I'm doing all the work unquestioningly in the background). In the beginning of the dream my co-worker and I are aligned. We literally have our heads together, while my father brings in my brother and his wife. I'm tasked with setting things up for him, and I know the future holds me continuing to do all his work for him in the background, while he does nothing but reap in the money and basks in the image and power his new title gives him. I do what my father tells me to do. Silently struggling, however. By the end of the office visit, my co-worker is chummy with my brother's wife. I sense where this is going. Foreseeing a shift in alliances. The power shifting into even worse inequity if that is even possible. When my father leaves the office, I follow him down the hallway. I decide to express my concerns; that it is unfair to give his business over to his son with zero experience the day he retires, when I have been loyal and running his business for a decade with no credit and humiliating pay. I have all the skill and knowledge. I'd be doing all the work but his son would be getting all the power. How can you do this to me? But when I look at my father in the hallway, I suppress this. I just can't bring myself to say it to him because I know how he will react. He is too full of emotional and egoistic crap to hear any of this. In the dream my father is standing in front of the bathroom, and I realize he's just too full of (emotional, psychological) crap to hear any of this. So I say nothing about my brother or the outrageous inequity, not to mention the irresponsibility of it all, and leave him to go to the bathroom. Right then I decide, I can NOT go back to work the way things are. I can NOT speak to my father or expect anything from him. Nothing but more of the same. So I start running. I am running out of this big crowded facility. As I make my way dodging through stairs, corners, people, I notice I am running barefoot, but more interestingly, I notice there are small green sprouts or new growth growing in the stairs. Like spring is sprouting under my feet even through concrete, hallways, and stairs. I notice, and just keep on running. When I get outside I notice other young people are running too. It's like a marathon. A race. I am really striding past people, past obstacles. It feels good to run. To move. Freedom of movement. I quickly dodge past more and more people. Whoever or whatever is in my way, I simply glide around them. A former physical education coach looks at me and makes a comment about my lack of shoes. He seems surprised. Not only am I barefoot but my other attire is inadequate for support of this kind of race. I realize I'm totally not prepared or dressed right for this, but I don't really feel held back by it. I've been really moving. I took his comment to be a reflection on my not having proper (or any) support for this endeavor. As in support from people or resources. Oh, well, I keep running. Not slowing down. Only leaping and bounding faster. It feels great, like I'm a deer or a child with that sense of expanding freedom and limitlessness. My feet barely touch the ground. Hop, hop, leap, zipping past people, changing landscapes, rocks, boulders. I am really doing well for someone with no shoes! I'm outbounding everyone!
The marathon begins to trace along a river now. I run through it, so fast I barely notice until another runner lets out a yelp "Look out!" I almost ran right up a boulder in the river (the highest point) where a giant tusked walrus sat beached. I catch a glimpse of it and in a millisecond I divert my direction away so I turn away from the boulder and stay below it, instead of leaping up to it like I'd originally intended. That was close. Moving forward I now see I have a choice; go headfirst into deeper, more aggressive water OR take the high ground with that tusked male walrus sitting there. Since I can't swim and fear getting swept up in the current and carried away to a point where I'd drown...My instinct initially wanted me to go up the rocky boulder and avoid the deep current. Yet. Unfortunately I can't due to that humongous walrus. Its tusks could spear me. Long white thick heavy tusks. Worse, its heavy body could crush me or suffocate me to a slow death. That is what I fear most. Getting stuck up there with the animal's enormity slowing crushing me to death. I love animals, but I don't want to risk that kind of consequence. This was a large male walrus and I sensed an unpredictable aggressiveness, territorial combativeness innate in the male of this species. I couldn't go up there. There's is no room for me up on that boulder, that high point, the walrus takes up the whole space. Clearly, not an option. So I stop. I look ahead at the deeper, more aggressive water cascading in front of me. Knowing I never learned how to swim. Knowing if I choose to move forward the odds would not be in my favor. It would be irresponsible, since I can't swim, am not properly attired or prepared or supported. Am alone. I just stop and look and weigh the reality before me. The dream ends here. I wake up. It feels like the dream is telling me that yes, I'm in a bad place (work/family/life) but I can't run away from it and I have no ability to get beyond it. It doesn't matter what my efforts or abilities are; I'm stuck.