I am in bed with a very cute, loving, blond man. We are best friends and he is cuddly and sweet and only wants to be with me. He has light colored eyes, a bit of light blond facial hair and a medium build. I tried to leave our apartment or hotel room to run an errand and get lost trying to find my way back. I feel bad that he had to wait for me, and I don’t want to keep him waiting, especially since he has no idea where I went.

Right before waking at 2am and unable to go back to sleep for nearly an hour, I dreamed there were insects under the skin of my right calf. I would push down and some would be pushed out but others quickly appeared. I was frustrated and didn’t know how to get rid of them for good. They were disgusting.

A different woman comes into the room. It is her office, not the woman’s I thought it was. I erase the marker writing from the board and go to the open office next door.

Next, I am with two girls who work wherever this place is, and we go outside to a vast grass-covered hilly area. I sit down and begin reading. When I look up I see a gigantic rare black elephant running down th hill and through a field. A dark skinned man is smiling and chasing it. The sun is making the grass glow yellow and I am so happy I decided to look up. This creature is amazing and we all know it.

Then, a man becomes serious and says to me, “Be careful, Jenny. Watch out for that one.”

Two elephants are coming toward me and the person standing next to me. I back away from the elephant as quickly as I can, but it is nearly impossible to move, and definitely impossible to move as quickly as I’d like. Somehow, I am able to get out of the tall grasses, but the girl I am standing next to does not and gets sucked into the trunk of the other elephant. I am horrified, as I believe we just witnessed a woman being eaten alive.

She gets up a few minutes later and I realize nothing terrible at all happened. In fact, the elephant helped her heal.

Next, it is Christmastime and there are tons of family memebers around me, almost all of the family I can think of. I go out with two friends to get a beer but leave immediately because I prefer to be with my family at home. They are warm and good and loving and accpeting.

As I’m walking down the town street, away from the bar and toward my family’s house, I am carrying a ukelele and my back is exposed, tan and strong. Some guys are sitting on the sidewalk, playing instruments and one says to me “You know how to play the ukelele?” I say “Yes” even though I do not and I also say I sing, play guitar and djembe. I say “I would stop and play with you, but I have dinner plans.”

He says “That’s awesome you know how to play that, how are you single?”

I say “I don’t know.”

I approach my friends who are sitting in a booth, and see he is there – with her. He is stroking her back and neck carefully and lovingly. I pretend to ignore the sight, and the jealousy and sadness that rages within me.

All the girls decide to walk to the next place where we’re all supposed to hang out.

We stop by my house, which is my parents current house. I make sure I’m still invited to join by asking my oldest friend if I can come. She pauses and says something like, “I don’t think they want you to.” Then his girl chimes in, “Yeah, he and I decided to not let our ex’s be part of the time we hang out together.”

She is shorter than me, with dark hair, a doll-like complexion and her face is covered in a tattoo pattern. She is artistic and odd. Of course he would like her. She is standing in my own house telling me that I am unwelcome. I become furious and scream like I am releasing all of the anger I’ve ever felt in one outburst.

“ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?!! IT DOESN’T EVEN MATTER TO ME, WHY DOES IT MATTER TO YOU?!”

We start fighting in some way. There may be broken glass involved. A guy friend of mine tells me “Yeah, everyone knows that you are intense and crazy, and that’s why she wanted to provoke you.” (Or something to that affect.)

I leave my house but do not go with them.

I wake up feeling so angry that after the first date I’ve been on in years, I dream of him. Inconvenient, unavailable, emotionally torturious HIM. And it’s to see him happily with someone who is perfect for him, while I have disappeared into oblivion, still missing, still unmoved, still unheard.

Fighting represents change. The unique tattoo this girl had, and that I would never have or even think to have, speaks to my knowing I will never be the elusive type of perfection he seeks. Her existence could be a relfection of how bland I feel in comparison to what I imagine is happening for him now that I am out of the picture.

I am sitting with my friends along the wall on a cushioned seat and at the end is a perpendicular bench of seating. My friend Jena, is counseling Casey and Molly is sitting on the other side of Casey. Chris is watching Jena counsel Casey and in my mind is impressed with her. But when he turns around he has the same annoyed, almost lifeless expression on his face that I remember seeing last time we ran into each other.

We all get up to leave. I have had it. I ask him in front of everyone if there could be peace with us. I ask if he’d rather I just leave him alone, and he said ‘Yes’ right away. I insist though, we have some common friends and would run into each other, could we try to be friends? He gets flustered and I can see he feels overwhelmed.

With a nervous, twisted face, he says, “You don’t understand, I’m working on so much right now, there are songs and music going through my head and I have to keep them in focus and all together.”

Offended, I say, “You think I’m not doing the same thing?! I am.”

The energy feels hostile and tight, like he is intimidated or feels bullied by me. To me he feels slippery in that I can never get him to fully be present and have a real conversation with me, and I am squirmming to try and get his attention and affection. It was there once, could it be again? Everything feels misplaced, misunderstood, misconstrued. I don’t know how to solve this problem.

We end up walking outside together to an opening on top of the hill. There are beautiful palm trees everywhere, acting as an umbrella to the town.

Then I wake up.

Walking away, I am heading into a large yellow field and it seems as though I’m walking in an cepia photograph that was taken long ago. I am with a friend, though I do not recognize this person as someone I’ve met in waking life. As we walk we begin to notice the clouds gathering into tightly twisted whips, orienting themselves around one spot in the sky. Each puff looks like an individual arrow pointing to a quickly forming funnel cloud. The storm moves and bulids incredibly fast, almost too fast for a mind to keep up with. I am very much out of town now and alone again, and all I see is open fields, a barn and a stack of hay where 3 men in overalls are working on something to save their cattle or horses from the storm. I think of ducking into the shed but it looks unstable so I decide against it. There, near the farmers or cowboys, I find a cafe/bar and decide to go in. It is packed with people who I am unsure whether know about the approaching tornado or not. I think to myself to get downstairs in the basement.

Then, I am standing above a toilet that is clean and I go to flush it and it overflows. I know it’s going to overflow but I do it anyway. I plunge a little bit and that seems to temporarily make it worse and I wonder if that was a mistake, but then the water seems to go down.

When I wake up I lay frozen in my bed, like a child who had a nightmare, but I do not feel the terror of a childish nightmare, I only feel uneasy. I do not move for minutes as my mind feels tight and body paralyzed.

Using the help of dream symbolism, a tornado can be associated with temper, trouble, energy, and stress. Dreaming about one can be speaking to the need to ride out an emotional crisis or hunker down and get through an emotional crisis. To dream you’re in one suggests a feeling of being overwhelmed or out of control. The toilet represents a release of emotions, while seeing one overflow may suggest a desire to fully express or release emotions.

This dream occured 3 days after feeling “overwhelemed” as I wrote in my journal and after having broken up with a guy who I really care about but, for my own good I cannot be with.

Somehow I ended up on the porch of an outdoor bar. It was nighttime and there was music playing outside. There were many men around me who liked me. In fact, everyone there liked me for me and thought I was funny and dark and just like them in a way. I remember thinking in the dream that I was in Boston. Or Brooklyn. I wanted to move there because it seemed like the place where I fit in without really having to try.

19th -
I’m with a man and he is sure the wolverine who lives underground is of no threat to us. the wolverine is big and has an ugly menacing face and huge fangs. I am walking on a grassy hillside and claws poke through, trying to grab at me. I am able to escape his grasp.

20th -
I am driving up into the hills. I pass by the lake where my car had gone into the water weeks before. I remember it fondly and tell others the story. Then I went to an indoor arena to hear some music. The musicians were timid and quiet as though this was there first performance they were unsure of themselves. The man I was with saw someone he knew a long time ago and got re-acquainted with her and ended up sitting next to her. I looked a few rows in front of me and saw the guy I had a crush on in high school and who took me to my senior prom even though he lived in another state.

I was so detached from the whole situation – the music, the people, all of my surroundings that were supposed to make this night fit for fun.

She is in his bedroom looking for evidence of his existing relationship, which does not include her. She finds the proof she needs – opens his dresser drawer to see her underwear, notices notes on his desktop of their travel reservations and other notes. There is girl stuff on top of the dresser – hairbrush, lipgloss. Clearly, she is there in his life. He comes down the hall and she can hear this so ducks into the bathroom to make it look like that was her destination all along. He believed her when he saw she was only using the bathroom.

Then, she began caring for a tiny baby. It was no larger than a cricket and about as thin and fragile. She laid the baby on the heater, wrapped in swaddling cloth, and was careful not to burn it. A group of people were expecting her to watch over this baby, and no one included her in any other activities.

Then, I find myself driving a car and I somehow lose control and crash into a body of water. I escape the car and feel I might drown – something is wrapped around my ankle and even though an acquaintance is nearby I know I have to help myself. I unravel the tangle and find relief as I recognize the feeling of having “returned to the sea.”

My backpack has sunk and I think about the wallet and other possessions it contains, so decide to dive underwater to retrieve it.

As I lift my body upwards to dive, the water in front of me separates to reveal a small vile, which is like a tiny Grecian urn, and next to it, a similarly shaped and sized solid mass. The urn is filled with a liquid substance. I pick up both pieces and take them with me.

Next, I am walking back to a group of people, with the urn and the solid matter in hand, wondering if maybe I shouldn’t be taking them after all. The people on the horizon are taking group photographs, which I will never be a part of for all of history. My separation from them feels absolute.

I woke up with absolute clarity about a situation that I toiled over for far too many weeks of my life.