Emotions and Dreams

Last night I had the most amazing dream.  Let me begin with a few facts.  I'm not a father, nor have I ever come close to being one.  I don't consider myself to be a father-figure to anyone nor am I ready to become one.  I do love, however, helping and protecting so I guess that's somewhat fatherly.  Also, I'm not religious.  I consider myself to be agnostic.  I don't particularly believe God has anything to do with our daily lives, He probably has better things to do.  I do believe in God, I don't believe in religion.  Let's move on.

The circumstances are shady.  For some reason I have two children and the mother isn't in this dream, it seems.  I'm in a synagogue/church.  I'm apparently here to affiliate my children with a religion.  My oldest, a boy no older than 8 will be Jewish and my little girl will be Catholic.

My son appears to be quite happy about the whole thing and my daughter seems to be almost too young to care.  He's asking questions and as we get closer to the "room" in which he's to officially accept his religion he no longer wants to go through with it.  He begins to cry and tell me he doesn't want to do it.  Immediately I begin to console him.  The exact words I don't remember but it's basically "You don't have to, this is YOUR day and if you don't want to that's okay".  He's sobbing and you can see it's just so heartfelt and he genuinely doesn't want this at all.  I get down on the floor sitting Indian-style and he kneels down and I just hold him as he cries.  I try my best to console him and make him understand that it's entirely okay.

As he's calming down the Rabbi approaches me and, again the exact words aren't clear to me but here's the general idea, he says something along the lines of "We're here for a reason and he's just wasing my time".  I don't take kindly to this.  My son and I are now standing, I'm still hugging him, holding his head with one arm as he sobs and my other arm outstretched pointing at the Rabbi with a me yelling something the lines of "Nobody yells at my son that way and you're here because it's your job".  We go back and forth and I end with "I don't need to take this from you.  I don't want to listen to anymore of your nonsense", and I appeal to another Rabbi to get him away from my family.

My daughter doesn't appear to play much of a role in this.  I'm not sure what happens between the Rabbi thing and now but I simply bring her to another "room" and that's where she becomes Catholic.

I wake up feeling such anger at the Rabbi, such love and a need to protect my son.  And within minutes it's all gone.  A wonderful dream but sadly it was only a dream.  I can only hope that in the future I have a little boy of my own, one to love and protect; to show him the world - someone that I mean the world to.  I'm not ready now, but one day I will be.

I find it amazing that dreams can bring out such emotion; emotions we've never felt before and yet they feel so real.  Just writing this post made me feel some of that again, though I'm sure even that will begin to fade.  It's too bad, it was such a great feeling.  Also, keep in mind that the dream does not, in any way, express how I feel about one religion over the other.  Take it as just a backdrop, what's important is the what, not the why.  The emotion and the characters are the focus.

Seeing somebody die

I had the most fucked up dream I've EVER had last night. Only once have I felt emotion so strong in a dream and it was horrific.

Last night I went to sleep and I don't remember much about the bulk of my dreams except for the fact that I know I had more than one but only one sticks out in my mind. I'm in what appears to be a mall, in a store. In this store is my boss and with her are her husband and my old boss (we all work together). Suddenly we see the sewers (in the middle of the main hallway of this mall as if it were a street) start to explode upwards with a rush of water and a fireball engulfing the column of water. One by one they do this down the "street". It seems that in this dream my boss' husband is a firefighter and he's going to go rush off to solve this problem. We tell him a few times that he needn't worry (odd), possibly because nobody's hurt or walking there...and it's a dream so stuff doesn't make sense. Around the 3rd-4th explosion it reaches a central section, kind of like an intersection. This intersection simply explodes and collapses. Now we have a problem.

Water starts gushing out onto the "street" in all directions. It seems that this "street" is on the 3rd floor of this "mall" though. There are 2 girls at the edge of the street when the water starts gushing and it starts to cover one of the girls and push her. After a few tense moments it seems she's ok...but the other girl jumps for some reason. I quickly take off a layer of clothing, my jacket I think, and jump after her but land only one floor down. I'm sure she went further. I run around to the side she was on when she jumped and hurdle a wall that appears lead down another floor. At the top of this wall I realize it's a fountain. It's shallow. I look to my right and see the little girl crushed. She landed in this shallow fountain. Her mother comes running behind me a few moments later and scoops up her dead child. I'm in shock. Somebody yells to get her camera. She had a camera around her neck when she jumped. For some reason getting the camera seemed important. I run to get the camera and see it's completely smashed in but not shattered. This camera was symbolic of the girl and her state. My boss comes up behind me to give me a hug. I run and curl up in a corner facing the wall as I hold the camera, whimpering. I wake up whimpering. I've never felt so much loss.