color=navy]The dream began with me with my family and their friends. I felt very much the odd one out. Didn't belong. I also didn't want to be with them at all but felt sort of stuck, forced to endure the encounter until they decided to leave. A position I know well and have been in before. Also, in the dream I was wrapped up in my pajamas and a big thick fluffy bathrobe during the whole interaction while everyone else was dressed appropriately for the social occasion. But I didn't care in the dream. It was like I'd had enough and was not willing to make the effort for "appearances" anymore. In real life of course I'd be profoundly embarrassed if anyone saw me in such a state. But in the dream I'm hanging out in my bathrobe, not caring what they'll think of me. Or perhaps more accurately I realilzed it didn't matter what I did or how I appeared or what effort I gave; they would always have me be the odd one out. So why bother. Might as well be as comfortable as is possible while I endure this unpleasant situation.
After the party, the next scene is me with my father, mother, and sister. Again, this is not a good place for me, I don't really want to be with them like this. But its always been me submitting to their wills, their versions, their dictates. They want to go somewhere so I have to go whether I want to or not. I don't know exactly where the goal of their destination is, I just know I have to follow, and also be the scapegoat, the lowest one on the pecking order, whom they need with them in order to dump everything that's wrong with them onto, so that the rest of this toxic family can maintain its "normal" public image. I am about as free as a slaughter house cow, being prodded along for the owner's purposes, never really free. My father, mother, and sister are walking uphill a road from my childhood. Going backwards. I don't know where we're going I just follow behind them. Along the way I stop to notice and comment upon a wonderous tree trunk who's roots appear to be showing above ground (but the tree remains firmly planted in the ground at the same time. Its like its roots were so vast that they stood 20 feet above ground but there was also lots of roots unseen underground. The tree was in no danger. Very sturdy in the soil. I found it unusual/unique and commented on it. My family didn't pay any attention. I looked closer and saw that someone had made this tree's trunk parts into a house! "Look, what a lovely wooden house!" I exclaimed. "They made a house into this tree." The tree and the house integrated together and neither harmed. The tree was still alive and thriving. It was not killed or damaged by having a human fashioning a living space within its roots/trunk. Both aspects lived together coehesively. I loved the idea that you could go inside a tree to live. What a lovely way to live! With this gorgeous healthy tree reaching up to the sky above where you rested and took shelter. My family ignored me and we continued on walking up the hill of this road. When we got to a town we had to pass through an indoor area (it wasn't a barn though it felt more like the entranceway to a large upscale mall) that was like a passageway or intermediary from countryside to civilization, town/city life. So our first step indoors is into this area we have to pass to get to where my parents are going (turns out to be a fancy restaurant) and as we walk through it I see this amazingly beautiful white horse. Only it doesn't look like any real life horse. It's like an otherworldly mystical creature you'd see in a fairy tale. Its body is definitely that of a horse, yet its face was like a combination of llama and horse and angel. It was such a beautiful un-horse like face, with enourmous beautiful expressive eyes. And it was slender faced, it was such a cute, beautiful face and otherworldly. I stopped to remark on the horse. No one else did. I wanted so badly to linger and visit with it. (I do have an affinity for horses). But because my family wasn't interested, I had to continue on with them. We entered a fancy restaurant. My father's favorite thing to do is eat and talk so he lights up in his element here. Grinning from ear to ear and talking with excessive eagerness. A public place to dazzle people with his tales and present his best side. My mother loves this too. It is in the public where they light up and put on a play, performing their very best, social, civilizized, humourous, lighthearted. In public is the one place they aren't bitter, violent, abusive, immature. Inside I feel sick. I really, really don't want to keep doing this. I don't have it in me to put myself through one more event where I hold their secrets and their abuses a secret and play along socially as if everything's hunky dory. Its a nauseating charade. But what choice do I have? They are so believable and powerful. I see my father sit down at a table, all lit up and beaming and gabbing away happily. Then I see a handsome gray haired man (made me think he was a doctor because he seemed so distringuished and professional) stand up from another table across the room to greet my mother. She lights up and I see her public persona beaming out and broadcasting like a beacon of light. Their public facades are so good. Always have been. No one would ever believe me. If I ever spoke up or asked for help or revealed what really goes on, I'd get it worse, and conditions were bad enough already. I've always known I must always keep their secrets. I can never reveal the truth or seek help. No without putting their public images at risk. And thus my own life. I could never win against them. Their public images being unbreakably pristine. Their ability to lie and act so vast. Yet. I didn't want to dine with them. To submit to the false show of lighthearted chatter and boasting. To be the scapegoat so they can socialize and dine and appear perfectly respectable and carefree. So I never sat down with them. I turned on my heels without a word and started to walk away. As I do so I hear my mother calling after me. She repeatedly calls after me and doesn't stop until she throws something at me from across the room. It turns out to be the keys to the house. She thinks I am going back home, without them, so I would need the keys that they hold to gain access. I hold the keys in my hand. I don't know where I am going. I just know I am not socializing in public with them for this false display. I walk back the way we came. It appears I'm walking through a crowded mall. As I walk back I see a former classmate and friend of my brothers walking in the opposite direction. She spots me and gives me a knowing little half smile as we pass each other. I pick up my pace. I don't like that she recognized me. That means I still resemble the girl she used to know; shy, scared, mute, in short weird. I'm sure she also saw in me whatever my brother told her about me too (he was always recruiting others to bully me, calling me names, encouraging them to degrade me to my face). So its not a good feeling for me when she recognizes me with that closed lipped smile. It means my reputation and image is still shaped by my family.
When I make it back to the room with the dainty white horse I walk over to her and pet her and talk to her. Can't resist. Such a cute magical little beauty. Pure white. Big pretty eyes and facial expressions that are not horse-like at all. What is this creature? She is drawn to me too because she starts toward me, stretching out from behind the confines of the wire/rope which fenced her into the stall. Now her whole front body and front legs and face are completely outside of the wire fence and on my side. She is straining to come out of the stall to get to me. But her hind legs, particularly her hoofed feet and dainty ankles are still stuck in the fence. Stuck hanging in the air suspended by the fence made of rope. I am very concerned for the horses safetly. I don't want her to hurt herself trying to get out. Her hind feet are just dangling up in the air in the ropes. If she moves any further toward me or moves at all, she could twist the ropes around her feet and get binded up in a precarious position, even breaking her legs (which is a death sentence for a horse). I sense people with me who are also concerned. I don't know who they are, I don't see them, only sense their presence. They weren't with me before. I only look at the horse. I convey with them my worries. What should we do? Should we tell the authorities? There is a stand over to our left where the "authorities" are. People who own this white horse or own the large facility that houses her. I debate with the peers beside me whether or not to summom their help. But as I look at the precarious position the horse is dangling in, I say "No. Don't tell the authorities." I was afraid they'd man-handle her in their attempts to get her back in the stable and she could get nervous in the struggle and twist up her hind legs in the rope. Too dangerous. Their only concern would be stuffing her back in the stable and they wouldn't take care of her welfare. I could just see her limbs snapping with their involvement. I envisioned her legs getting bound up in the rope and twisting her dainty legs until they break. She was so far out of the fence, putting her back in at this point would be dangerous to her limbs. They were just hanging in the air behind her. Better to just free her hind feet from the fence and let her out completely. No, I say to the people around me, I'll do it myself. Or we'll do it ourselves. And I carefully put my hands on her feet and gently swung them over the rope so that now she had all four feet on the ground. And she was on my side of the fence. Out of stable. Dream ended there. [/color]
