Castles Crashing and Other Random Thoughts

(Edinburgh Castle close-up)

 

So I had the most bizarre dream this morning.  In this dream, my hubby, son and I were all sight-seeing at this enormous castle that was mostly encased in a huge glacier.  Oh, and I was driving, which  made this CLEARLY a dream, because there’s no way that I would be in the driver’s seat anywhere near a castle or a glacier.  My hubby seems to think that I’m not as equipped of a driver as he is.  And he would be right in thinking that.

Anyway, I was driving, and I got us out on this narrow bridge, which I realized (halfway across) was actually a walking bridge covered in snow and ice.  So, I start to back out of this bridge, but the car is stuck,  and then the bridge starts collapsing on us, and we’re running for our lives back to the castle that has already starting collapsing upon itself, sending chunks of snow, ice and huge stones crashing in around us. 

Now this castle is actually in the heart of some European city, and as its enormous walls break down, they pummel other small buildings which then start to crash and tumble.  And the only way out is through the FRONT of the castle, which requires some sort of visa (like the traveling kind, not the credit card kind), and the European city policemen won’t let us leave that way because we don’t have the proper paperwork.

Did I ever mention that I have extremely vivid and plot-heavy dreams?  It’s like having Michael Creighton in my brain on a nightly basis.  Well, I awoke from this dream so happy to be in my nice little cozy bed.   And I started to think about this dumb dream and where the heck it came from.  See, I used to be pretty interested in dream interpretation.  Not literal interpretation (ie:  I’m worried about a castle falling on my family during our next European vacation), more like how our brain turns our current reality into symbols that play our wishes and worries as we sleep.

When I was in high school, I was plagued with the same nightmare at least a few times a week.  It always had to do with me desperately trying to escape from one or more thundering tornadoes chasing me down into some rickety shed or flimsy shelter.  And this was before  ‘Twister’ came out.  One day I told my ‘friend’ (more of an acquaintance of convenience) about these dreams, and she promised to ask her counselor about them (she was ridden with some sort of exotic and ‘mysterious’ emotional state, that made her both extremely interesting and altogether tragic at the same time).  So a few days later she come back and triumphantly announced that her counselor said that having tornado dreams probably meant that I was feeling out of control of something in my life.

Eureka.  That was friggin’ amazing to me.  And entirely true, I might add.  Was this counselor some sort of ‘wizard of dream interpretation’?   Um, no,  it makes sense that one must be feeling pretty stressed and overwhelmed to have an impending sense of tornadic doom whenever they closed their eyes.  Either that or I had a tornado phobia, and though I would PREFER not to have one knocking on my door, I’ve never been one to hide in the closet the moment the sky turns dark.

So what does that mean for my castle dream?  Well, it’s not a recurrent dream, so it’s quite possible it was just my mind’s DVR entertaining itself.   I’m not afraid of castles, or snow, or European policemen…so it’s not a literal worry, like dreaming that I’ve gotten a BFN.  Side note, the absolute worst dreams I have are where I actually get a BFP or joyously reach down to find a plump and beautiful pregnant belly.  The dream itself is always wonderful, it’s the waking up to an empty belly that’s horrible.  Anyway, it could be a fluke.

Oddly enough, I don’t often dream about my family together.  A lot of times I fly solo in my dreams.  So, that’s got  to be something about having them there, right?  And a castle?  What?  I DID get to see some fantastic castles last year when I went to visit my sister and her family in England.  It’s mandatory  that you visit castles while you’re there, you know.  And those castles were beautiful and grand, but not a one of them was covered in ice or embedded in a glacier.  That trip, by the way, I took because we were planning on getting pregnant soon after, and I won’t be allowed to travel with my pregnancy because of my history of pre-term labor.  That trip was near a YEAR ago.  What do they say about the best laid plans of mice and men?

Anyway back to the crumbling castles.  One could propose that those cracking and crashing walls are symbolic of my dreams for a bigger family that are potentially falling down around us.  Every little princess dreams of meeting her prince and riding off to some magical castle, right?  Not so much for me.  Oddly enough, one of my favorite ‘fantasy’ games to play with my best friend, Katie, was that we were but lonely orphaned children taken in a by a good-hearted and rich benefactor.  Now this may sound a bit like ‘Annie’, but I assure it was entirely our own creation, as the good-hearted adoptive father was always none-other-than Michael Jackson himself.  Before you get all spooked out, this was when ‘Thriller’ came out, before Jacko got all weirded out and when it was still cool to dance in your friend’s basement for HOURS on end to ‘Billy Jean’ and “Beat it’.

But I digress (don’t I always?), I’m not sure if this castle dream was a representation of me feeling like my world is crumbling around me.  I don’t think I do feel this way, I’m not thrilled about the recent course of events in the reproductive system department, but huge stones hurdling down to crush me?  I don’t buy it.  Maybe I’m  not being honest with myself, like minimizing the emotional impact of this POF stuff.  Denial ain’t just a river, but it’s a mighty handy tool.  Plus, I also can’t reconcile the part of the dream where we get outside the castle to the street (past the evil European police) and are met with aliens in bio-hazard suits with disproportionally short arms that self-regenerate when killed.  That part still stumps me.  So maybe this dream was nothing more than a sneak-peak into my bizarre inner-world.

Yeah, as good old Siggy (that’s Freud to you and me) once said:  Sometimes a cigar is JUST a cigar.

And sometimes an self-regenerating alien is JUST a self-regenerating alien.  

 And a castle JUST a castle…  

…at least that’s what I’m telling myself anyway.

 

 

Happy V-day girls. 

I hope you all get pampered and romanced by your hubby today.  You deserve it, especially after reading this ridiculously rambling post!