Night Dream Believer

At the beginning of the year I wrote a short piece about a vivid dream I had. Whilst sleeping I experienced guilt for not being available to join in political campaigning and celebration with like-minded others.  https://www.abctales.com/story/gletherby/dream-anxieties-and-aspirations

The last month or so I’ve been dreaming again and although not overtly connected to politics in any way I think, as I did about my dream in January, that these dreams are linked to my (and others’) anxieties about the state of the UK (and indeed the wider world) and my responsibilities within and to our society and the world more generally. Lately an increasing number of my dreams have been emotionally and physically violent. In them I (and sometimes others close to me) are experiencing attack – most often verbal, but occasionally physical – sometimes by unknown others, sometimes by people I know (folk who would never, ever treat me this way in ‘real’ life). In one particularly horrid dream I was both peed on and shouted at. Upsetting as these have been the most recent in the series was perhaps the most disturbing to me. It is I was heavily pregnant (eight months at least). I’m 59 years old and my one and only (to my knowledge) pregnancy ended in miscarriage over 30 years ago. And yet the pregnancy was no surprise to my sleeping self. The dream was complicated with lots going on with the pregnancy being just one aspect, rather than the focal point, of it. Towards the end the pregnancy became more significant and just before I woke I realised that the baby in my womb had stopped moving and the anxiety I experienced was intense.

There’s no need, I suggest, for dream analysis here. If pregnancy in a dream represents (I did look this up, I admit, but it’s obvious I think) looking forward to, or worrying about, new beginnings of some kind (a new project, a new relationship and such like) concern over the status of a pregnancy/ pregnancy loss must surely indicate fear that what one desires will not happen. So as I said, it feels appropriate to reflect on the political significance of these dreams. The need for change, the fear of it not happening, leads to much anxiety in my day-time hours as well as when I’m sleeping.

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For an extended (more overtly political) version of this piece see http://arwenackcerebrals.blogspot.com/2018/06/night-dream-believer-foodpoverty.html