I just had a terrifying dream.

I tend to dream vividly, and, fortunately, I tend to demonstrate no hint of a gift for prophecy in my dreaming. Which is comforting when you have the dream I just woke up from.

Bear with me...it may be hard to follow...

I dreamt that I was on a gameshow. I don't remember much about the gameshow, other than at the very end, it was possible to run up a giant ramp and grab a big TV and slide down with it. (Your prize was that you got to keep the TV). My brothers and I were competing as a team on this show, and I was the last to go. I ran as fast as I could, I grabbed the TV, and I got it back before the buzzer. (This is not the bad part of the dream). I handed it to my older brother and we all celebrated.

Then, something happened. I don't remember precisely what, but something. Somebody criticized me for not doing it fast enough, I think. I was hurt, and yelled back. Fine, no big deal. But the conversation escalated into a full-blown argument, which escalated into a full-blown fight. Once again, I don't remember why, and I don't think it matters much why. All I know, is I felt a rage boiling up in me, and I'm pretty sure that's why I had the dream in the first place...to address that feeling. Our verbal fight soon became a physical confrontation, and my twin brother, at this point, was smart enough to walk away. That left me and my older brother. I felt like he painted me into a corner...he had called me irresponsible and foolish, and had threatened to prove it to everyone I knew. The only thing I had left was my weight to push around, so I did. I attacked him, and I did so viciously. It was a good fight, and it should have been a fair fight...it was on paper, anyway. I did not significantly out-strength or out-skill him...it's just that I was so angry, I went nuts on him...and really hurt him. And I was glad.

...I wish the story ended there. I love my brother very much, and that was bad enough. But it didn't end there....

...On the way out the door, as my brother lay beaten on the floor behind me, I ran into a friend of mine. My friend is a she and she is a good friend and a good person. She asked what was going on, and I tried to explain why what had happened was totally reasonable and how I was pushed to it. She became frightened and angry and...worst of all...disappointed in me. She began to yell at me and even worse, I could see in her eyes that she didn't trust me. (BTW, I'm fairly sure she represented Stacy...because while I like this friend and all, I don't have the sort of heart investment in her that would make this dream as scary as it was. My guess is that my subconscious couldn't handle the thought of this being Stacy, so it made the nightmare more bearable by making it someone else). She saw me as a different person, and despite all of the relationship equity that we had built up over the years, it was all forgotten because of one bad choice. She threatened to tell everyone what a monster I was. I felt painted into a corner. I was angry, hurt, and felt trapped. (Are you seeing a pattern yet?) She tried to leave...so I hit her.

...I couldn't believe it. This strange gameshow dream had turned into a horrible nightmare...and it wasn't a nightmare where I'm chased by a knife-weilding psycho or confronted by an armed mugger on a dark street. In this dream, the psycho was me, the mugger was me...and that was even more terrifying.

I hit her twice. She fell to the ground, bruised and a little bloody, and yelled for help. Nobody came. As soon as I had done it, I knew it was wrong, and I immediately begun to apologize. I tried to help her up, but it was too late...she wouldn't let me come near her (and with good reason). She called the police from her cell phone. My she called my twin brother, and my parents, and even a couple of friends of mine who are much, much bigger than I am...just to protect her from me. They showed up, they comforted her, and they told me how despicable and disgusting I am. They stared at me with disappointed and hateful eyes. A couple of the men threatened to kill me if they ever heard that I did this again. In short, they did what I would do if I heard this about someone I knew.

The last thing I remember is my twin brother looking at me with a hurt, anger and disappointment and saying, "you're disgusting." That's when I woke up, and that's when I started to write this blog entry.



...please bear in mind, I have NEVER hit my wife. Nor any other woman. I haven't even been in a fight with another man for years. I am, for the most part, a gentle person who keeps his fists reserved to the punching bag, not for hurting others. I have never hit a woman, and that's part of why this bothered me so much. Why would I have a dream like this? Am I secretly a wife-beating husband? Am I harboring some deep resentment I don't know about? Am I truly dangerous?

This was a horrible dream. I woke up sweating and scared. I want to dismiss it and forget it, but my mind doesn't work that way. The best way to deal with it, for me, was to write it down. So I have.

I scared myself this morning.

Peace,
Justin