Wandering with the Wind...

Sunday, July 4, 2010

A runaway dream...

Literally. This dream I had didn't feel nice or anything, instead it had felt downright depressing and hopeless, but somehow there were things within it that I had cherished, and experiences which I had never thought of having before. Here goes:

It began with me being on the highway connecting SG and M'sia, at midnight, when suddenly the highway began slanting downwards (I dunno how that's possible, it was as if part of the land beneath one of the ends began sinking or something) into the ocean. So logically I slid down with it, but before I dropped down the highway fell onto...land? Uh yeah, but it was still very steep, and I found myself crawling back upwards with a lot of difficulty. There were a lot of cars around me, they just zoomed by...and I almost got knocked by this car that came from the back, but didn't, and I stayed close to the pillars.

I think my condition then was that...I was a runaway, or a wanderer, or just some wretched thing who doesn't have a place to go back to. >.>

Somehow I made it (back?) to the M'sia customs (erm don't ask me why "back", I live in SG and have no idea why I would be "going back" to M'sia). But the people there were seriously something. Not only did they absolutely not care a heck about my condition, which was like, worn out, tired, shaken, er, just downright pathetic...ahem...they had taken a damn long time getting me through the customs. There was this woman who said they needed to take a photo of me (huh?). I complied and stared at the camera, but it just wouldn't work. And I was exhausted.

Then this guy working there suddenly said something about it being very late and that they should go home. I was like thinking "Hey but you can't just leave me here! At least get me through the customs!" and for some VERY weird reason I called out to him in Japanese, "daisan dankai!" which practically means "it's already the third stage (of the customs)!" Then he was like "daisan dankai ka...?" and then decided to stay a little longer till I was through. Yeah, funny huh.

Scene change.

It was still the same night, and I'm still the same person. This time round I was in some kind of orphanage-like place, or rather...like a home for juvenile delinquents, or runaways in this case, kind of like a prison but in a very unrealistically free and easy way. I was in the elevator with two guys who were both wearing gray hoodies and drinking from cans - probably fizzy drinks or something. They were damn quiet and had the hoodies drawn up, like classical emos. Erm so yea we reached the ground floor and managed to get out of the place into a grayish parade-square like place...with a platform that held the flagpoles and stuff.

We had planned to run away together. It was weird, I didn't have any horrendously negative feelings towards that place, but somehow in the dream I needed, no, wanted to leave it. I had a choice to stay. I had things in that place for which I had wanted to stay. And yet something compelled me to leave...

Anyway, I climbed up (with difficulty?) to the flagpole platform (which was really wth since it was such a conspicuous place) after the two guys, and noticed the fat old guard with a white beard holding a flashlight and talking to someone in the square. Somehow he didn't notice us. Right.

Then when the other two guys were going to make a (stealthy) run for it, I held one of them back and whispered, "Are you sure you want to leave this place? If you go out into the rest of the world you wouldn't be able to survive, they wouldn't want us. This place provides us with the basic stuff. At least we get to live here. Outside there there is no future for us."

When I said that I felt kind of weak and helpless. I had really contemplated that said "future" before that. I had really felt, no, seen darkness wherever I looked, and the only place where I could ever be relatively safe and accepted was that not-home I had been stuck in. I was a runaway in the dream, remember? A runaway who was going to leave the only place she could survive in. Throw it behind and heading for death for unknown reasons, even though I knew that going out beyond was going to kill me. But my decision was...it was there. I felt a pressing depression wherever I looked, back and forth, between that "home", and the darkness outside that forewarns future-less years.

Well, the guy stared at me disapprovingly, but then the guard noticed us, came over and shone his torchlight into my face. o_0 He was surprisingly friendly. Brought us back to the place, in time for breakfast (btw the signboard said that breakfast started at 2am something and ended at 8.30am???). The weirdest, and yet also the best part of this dream is that...when he brought us back, I felt a small sense of warmth.

It was kind of like the sense of warmth when you're finally accepted. Finally belonged. Finally loved after years of not being so.

I know it's really funny that I'm saying all these, had this kind of dream and experience in the dreamlife, when my real life provides me with majority of what I need and want. In real life I have a home. That's the basic, foremost, and most important place to begin with. I have parents who, despite not being the most ideal, are doing a pretty good job at least in the materialistic ways and most of the psychological side. I am allowed to develop my passions, even though it clashed sometimes with my parents' orders. I had friends. I was safe. I know I belonged somewhere.

But in the dream? I didn't have a family. I didn't have parents. I didn't have anything but the basic needs for survival provided by a not-home in which I had not felt acceptance and warmth (except the little bit at the end of dream). I didn't have friends. I was in danger, and everyday was a survival exam (be it mentally or physically). I did not belong. I had no future.

They were such polar opposites. It was really weird that I would have such a dream experience at all. The helplessness...everything...it felt so real. It wasn't like I had lost everything. In this dream I did not even have anything at all.

Even weirder is the fact that this dream is the first in which I was running away from a "home". Usually in my dreams, most of the time I did not have a home (as in, I was just a single person, with no familial ties, no blood relationships, and did not care about the notion of home) or had a home that was the one I had in real life and had fit in nicely. And in one dream I visited the "home" and parents from a supposed "past life". But this dream....this dream is different. This time round I was running away from "home". And it wasn't even a real home. It was just kind of like the only place where I could ever have the chance of surviving.

The question this dream left me with was...home as a place where you get what you need for survival, or home as a place where you truly feel accepted and actually belonged?

Now that I think about it, I think this dream may have been evoked by recent situations in my real life. My parents have been mad over my results lately. They've arrived home everyday, been around me everyday, talking about nothing else other than results and future. They wanted me to draw up an "action plan" to improve my physics and chem, made me quit saturday art lesson, taking up physics and probably chem tuition instead. And threatened to confiscate all my art stuff if I ever get bad results again. Told me it was for my own good.

And I suppose the worst thing they said was, "what's the point of raising you up if you don't get back good results? Our family has never had any failures before. If this continues we wouldn't even have the face to go back to see your grandparents. If you grow up and become an utterly useless person our family might even disown you." - said in a harsher way, and in Chinese. Which makes it even harsher. >.>

So you raise me up so I can get back good results. Like you keep a pet dog so he can fetch you the stick. Heh. I see. At least I'm pretty sure they weren't serious about the "disowning" part.

"I'm going to kill off the passion you live for. It's for your own good."

I have a lot to think about.

***

~~~*Played with the winds at 11.56pm*~~~

Aurinya blogged at 11:57 PM

Roaming the Winds