This entry isn't about any particular dream about my mother - just most of them.
First of all, I want to make it clear that I have no desire to hurt my mother. I have put up with her my entire life and I love her. When I hear a voice in my head telling me I can't achieve or succeed - it is always her voice I hear. Her constant ridicule of myself (and others) shaped me into the criticizing, sarcastic, glass half empty kind of person that I am trying not to be today, and yet I still love her and try to do right by her. So when I recall these dreams, please remember they are just dreams of frustration and possibly enlightenment. But I love her...
Since the death of my father, most dreams of my mother consist of her talking nonstop and me hitting her square in the face or strangling her while screaming, "JUST SHUT UP!"
In some of these dreams, my anger comes out of no where. In others, my mother is badgering me about something and I just go nuts on her.
The first time I had one of these dreams - probably about 3 years ago - I was so ashamed. I hated myself for the day. I wanted to talk about it but who are you going to tell that you dream about pounding your fist against the side of your elderly mother's head? I mean, seriously? There were a few times during the day that I would approach my husband then when I thought about saying the words out loud I just couldn't even speak them. I couldn't even write it in my journal - a place for your dreams. Was I going to tell my mom?
"Hey, Mom...how's it going?"
"Fine, and you?"
"Oh, same as usual. I had the weirdest dream last night. You were talking about something and I kept going 'shh! shh!' and you wouldn't shut up so I just hauled off and smacked you one...when that didn't work I shook you until your head lolled back and forth..."
It's not much easier to blog about, for that matter.
I have had these dreams many times. Enough times to know that this a reoccurring theme. I had one a few days ago and I am still unsettled by it. They haunt me for days.
I don't know how many I had before I finally broke down and told the husband. I was hoping that maybe by recalling it out loud something would go PING and I would put together why I was so violent in my dreams. He sort of made the "ooooh!" sound and face when I told him - and nothing went PING.
Tonight I was talking to my oldest sister. We were comparing notes about our childhoods. There is a massive age gap between us and we have never been close. The last time I talked to her was when my dad died. She told me a few things tonight that I didn't know, some things that I suspected and other things that sort of filled in some gaps about my dad, mom and family. We both decided that after all these years of thinking our dad was the stingy one - we were wrong. And we laughed about it.
Somehow we started talking about dreams and she said that she had a dream about dad awhile back and that he was stooped over a sewing machine sewing her a pair of bell bottoms. She thought this was funny because she never wore bell bottoms - even when they were popular. She said he was singing while he sewed. He did know how to sew - so there was nothing mysterious about that part. She said she walked out of the room into another and I was there. She said to me something about Dad being in the other room sewing and singing - but that he was dead. And I said that I knew this.
I told her that I had had some similar dreams - that I always seem to know he is dead in my dreams - then I just blurted out, "I dream about mom sometimes and...ugh, I hate to say it out loud...I always end up hitting or shaking her."
I think I was hoping she would say, "WOW! Me too!"
She didn't. She said she never dreamed about mom.
I have a few ideas why these dreams started after my dad died. I think it is mostly because without my father's presence I can see who my mother really is. The mean, the thoughtless and the petty...the true colors. Maybe I am angry for all the years I fell for my mother's vilifying of my father and how she tried every way possible to destroy any relationship he could have had with his children. Her jealousy was not going to allow us to know him as anything more than the monster she married and stayed with because of us. She did not want us to like him. Which was odd, because when it came down to it - she didn't really want us in the first place. She made that clear on several occasions and her early indoctrination against having children is a voice that has played heavy in my head over the years. Now, I am sort of long in the tooth to be planning a family...
Maybe my subconscious just can't hold it all in anymore.
