writing to survive
Oh god I can completely relate to this! You've read about my relationship with my childhood sweetheart on my blog, and I'm in the same situation now; she's suddenly decided to let me back into her life but I'm not sure I want that anymore. For sure I don't feel the same need for her love as I used to. Every now and then a dream will try to pull me back in to the complex maze of emotions though.
~Shiv
I am forever and always betrayed by my own mind by dreams. When you describe the hospital, how chilling... I have been trapped in buildings like that before, in dreams.
The longing upon waking is the worst.
@Shiv -- I remember reading about your childhood sweetheart. It can be hard to let someone like that back in your life, without expectations or leftover feelings. The past doesn't just disappear.
Almost all of my serious past love interests show up in my dreams periodically (except my ex-husband. hmmm), probably because I have unresolved feelings about them or because they represent something. It's amazing how dreams can bring those feelings back.
@Karen - I have a lot of dreams involving houses and weird buildings. (Just looked at a dream interpretation site: http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamt...hemes/
house.htm, not sure if it's useful). And lots of dreams where I wake up with that longing, unresolved feeling. It's tough when no resolution is possible.
Same thing here - past loves come back in dreams, and I wake up feeling as if I didn't get to finish something. I wake up with either a renewed crush, or a heartache.
That sad and/or bittersweet feeling after a dream: why do our subconscious minds do that to us?
Thanks for stopping by, Cassy -- I really enjoy reading your blog. It's a nice mix of poetry and essay, inspiration and thoughtfulness.
You brought back so vividly a kind of suffering and obsession that I went through for so many years. Those were ultimately important in leading to smashup times when I had to wake up in a hurry and readjust to real life. It's a great recognition when you can say he was pure symbol, out of reach, impossible to know. The other person doesn't really matter so much in building up that kind of hope. It's your need crying out for someone. So hard, and you've captured it beautifully as usual.
John D
Jenn, thanks for sharing. As usual, Great Read! - Nards
@John -- Chasing the universe of the possible makes it easy to ignore what's going on in real life, be it depression, or tamped-down emotions, or the complexities of actual relationships. It took me a while to think of this person as a symbol -- it was quite a revelation.
@Nards -- Thank you for stopping by!
Hi Jennifer
This is an interesting subject to me. When I trained as a psychotherapist I struggled to understand the stuff around dreams. In practice what I found that was dream symbolism was usually a lot of hokum (The notion that the appearance of an X means Y) but that the feelings that accompanied the dream either during it or afterwards were often a reliable indicator of true or unresolved feelings. I'd resist the notion of symbolism and focus on your emotions around the dream. They will tell you much more.
Best wishes
Geoffrey
Hello, Geoffrey --
Yes, the emotional residue of these dreams does seem like the thing to focus on here. The person, however ... well, my "crush" is/was longstanding and really has to do with some idea I had about him, whatever he might represent (and that's changed over the years, I think). Of course, it's easier to focus on him than to focus on the ache that these dreams bring up. Think I'll have to do some dream notebooks and focus on those feelings. That would probably be revealing and helpful.
Thank you -- J
Hi Jennifer
I’ve had a whole load of ideas banging around inside me for a while now about “writing stories” that I’ve been meaning to try and render in some coherent form as a psychology post in my “Love’s Passage” blog. I have some questions for you.
There were about four strands to my thoughts, some based on personal history as well as conversations with others about stories as a means of discerning / understanding our feelings or “scripting” our lives, some around the idea that we have implicit unconscious stories that we seek to enact over and over that may have either positive or negative outcomes. Then there was the one about the therapeutic value of writing stories about which much has been written – stories as a means of healing, and finally about stories as a collaborative medium for exploring understandings within a relationship. I touched on one or two of these ideas in a post that I first wrote in October or November last year here.
There are a lot of questions! If you feel uncomfortable about answering them here, then do drop me a message on geoffrey@geoffreysplace.net. I would not cite or attribute anything you said, either way.
But what do you feel about what you write? You write about early life angst at great length. Do you feel that you find a release from painful experience through doing that? Is it helping you come to terms with what happened or does it simply hold you in the place of that unhappiness? You write very beautifully and very self-consciously about these experiences so as to share them with others. How does sharing these experiences feel? Does the identification of others with your feelings normalise them, that is to say that you feel okay about them having realised that others feel the same way, OR does that identification serve to hold you in a sad, unhappy place within yourself and provide reinforcement for that unhappiness? Would it be more helpful to smash the words out fast without regard for their value of interest to others and get through the pain more quickly? If you felt liberated by the stories you wrote, would you feel a sense of loss, bereft at having left the angst behind? Do you seek to leave the angst behind? In writing about your angst, do you have a sense that you are drawing it into your current life – of setting up what has happened in the past as a way of being in your life now?
I ask that last question because of some realisations I had about *me* not that long ago. I realised that I talked freely about failures in my past intimate relationships as I sought to come to terms with them. What I realised was that more frequently than not, I attracted others with similar types of difficulty who were largely unconscious of them. They were those who had been let down in some profound way in relationships but were unable to face those difficulties or work out how they had arisen. What happened next is obvious (at least it is to me now), as the other person frequently sought to re-enact by transference or simply unconscious association their past relationship difficulties onto my ready-made canvas of expectation, hence making my fear of repeating the past into a self-fulfilling prophecy!
Okay, a couple of more questions: Do you feel able to write stories (and I mean fictional stories) about how it might feel to be empowered to lead the life you wish to lead? Are you able to pick up your “pen” (metaphorically speaking!) and say “Okay, that was all my story then, but I have my own life and I’m going to move on with the script. What’s the next chapter?” By the way, if you did that would you feel you were letting yourself or others down, including your readers here? What and how would you like to exist beyond the mundane present?
That’s enough questions for now! I’m asking you because you are sensitive, aware and intelligent. I hope that’s okay, Jennifer.
Hugs and stuff!
Geoffrey -- Very interesting (and thought provoking!) questions. It will take a little time to answer them, which I will do via e-mail. They just happen to come at a good time, when I feel like I'm at a writing crossroads of sorts.
Excellent, Jennifer. Thank you so much for your help!
I sensed you might be at something of a crossroads now. I've been there too of late, not for the first time either. For a little while I wondered if I should focus my writing efforts on my own strange mix of humanistic psychology. I may be pushing the boundaries there further than I realised. I have been struggling with feelings and ideas about "stories and story telling" and the place of stories in developing self-understanding for about six months now. Longer really, since the novel I have almost finished started as a sort of self-exploration too. But I moved on. Needless to say I would be very happy to share any of my own discoveries, thoughts and feelings with you in e-mail privately. I would welcome that too as I respect your views.
I reflected earlier that this is not somewhere I arrived at in the last year. I first started inquiring about it around sixteen years ago, although I'm not sure if it made so much sense to me at the time!
I'm at a loss for words...you've said it all. I could have written this post almost down to the detail. (not kidding) Thank you.
Jessica -- thank you! It's a good feeling to know that I am not alone in experiencing these feelings.
I don’t need his acknowledgment to know I exist....
Dag, wish I could put into words why this made me cry...hate you in a loving way, Jenn lol 
!
I'm sorry, Ashe.Selah. If it makes you feel any better, I started to tear up when reading your comment. I think you "get it" on a deep level.
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