I had a dream when I was sleeping in the afternoon. (No, it was not a nap. I stayed up late, and only slept in the afternoon.)
About my mother wanting to have* suicide. (*note: I don't like the word 'commit'. It's too loaded.)
!
I was both confused and frightened as the dream was unfolding.
There was my "mother" who's exhibiting this strong urge to take its own life, me in the dream who was a confused, distanced spectator of the drama, and me on bed who could see the dream and was frightened.
There was one scene when father in the dream questioned my mother's suicidal intentions(*2) and my mother insisted on suicide because it's her plan. And my father gave a rather comical response. Basically he was like, "wtf, if I had known you would want to commit suicide at 50 years old then I wouldn't have married you." And then I woke up.
[*2note: The me-on-bed actually experience the emotion of my "mother" in the dream, whereas father is just him. His character is convincing, but I was not able to read his mind in the dream.]
Throughout the dream, my mother did not do anything immediately dangerous. The tension of the dream was controlled by the strength of my mother's intention to end its life and its open expression about it. Obviously I am the person who experienced the tension as I am the one who had the dream, but the reason I was able to link the tension to my mother's intent or emotional state was that I, the person who had the dream, experience the SAME thought of my "mother"-in-dream.
There are two possible inferences from that:
1. The suicidal "mother" in the dream was me. She played out my thoughts, expressed by feelings, but assumed the identity of my mother.
2. I projected myself onto my mother. (This sentence doesn't really make any sense, does it?)
And there's another "me" in the dream - the third-person "me" who was just confused about what's happening. He's a third-person, because I, the real-life me, cannot read his thoughts. But I know he's pretty distanced from the drama.
And that I started to think more deeply about the dream as I write, I don't know which "angle of view" did I use to observe the dream. First I was the "mother"- her emotion are largely the emotion I went through in the dream, but the story was not told in the "mother"'s view. It was like watching opera, scenes after scenes, "mother" solo-ing on how she wanted to die. And the in the next scene father confronted "mother". Then the camera focused on the third-person "boy"(me as a character of the drama) about how he feels, how he's confused about the scenario. Actually his presence is quite annoying now. WTF is he doing there? Who am "I" in the dream? The "mother" or the "boy" who's just watching and frightened? The presence of the "boy" annoys me because I couldn't decide on what he felt about his "mother"'s death. When I felt frightened, did that feeling come from the "boy" or the objective, real-life "me" who was lying on the bed? Because at some point of the dream I can tell that the "boy" was just "whatever-I-don't-care"!
Are you familiar with the story line of the Harry Potter series? In Book5, Order of the Phoenix, when Harry had a dream and saw Nagini (the snake) bit Mr Weasley? He was also confused by the dream wasn't he, because first he saw the event from the eyes of the snake, but later when he recounted the dream to Dumbledore he talked about it as if he was watching the dream from a television.
http://www.leakylounge.com/index.php?showtopic=61702
So at this moment I guessed that there were 3 personas whom I played in this dream.
1. The "mother" who expressed my suicidal thoughts.
2. The "boy", who was confused and indifferent about what was going to happen.
3. Me. The real-life me. Omniscient about everybody's thought. (But I still don't understand! Why the "boy" was there when I already AM both the "mother" and "me" (real-life me).
To a certain extent, everyone in the dream was me! Even my "father" was me! He was expressing anger about the "mother" thinking about killing himself. Outraged at how things did not go the way he wanted etc.
And to a certain extent again, the dream exposes the interaction dynamics of me and my parents. My father, as represented in the dream, is the parent who gave a stronger impression to me. In the dream he expressed anger and frustration, and I could see a clear image of him in the dream. In real life, I usually think that I know him better than mother, because I feel that I could more easily sympathize with him. Whereas my mother, over the years my teenage temper has made her cautious of the words she speak to me. And I really never felt what I understand she was thinking. Her life is mundane - she cooks, she sweeps, she stitches my clothes; all the stuff I don't really care - I don't have to care. I understand this sounds ungrateful but it is what it is. I understand so little of her, that she felt so.....hollow. Empty. And was her character so empty that I could already fill up thoughts and actions in her shell as happened in my dream?!
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*My mother had better not read this.
