Jack Rabbit

Dream:
My family and I were taking a long trip by RV. As we were packing up to leave, I found a baby Jack rabbit outside and begged my parents to let me keep him. We bought a cage and let him come along with us. I was so excited.

After driving for several hours, I started feeling bad for the rabbit and asked my dad to pull over. Off the side of the road was a huge field that I knew he would love to run around in for a while. But when I let him free, my dad said that maybe it would be a good idea to leave him there. Rabbits like that needed to be in the wild. But I was convinced that the rabbit needed us. Even though he ran really far away,  I knew he'd always come back.

This went on for a while. The rabbit would run out of eyesight and then come bounding back just when we were about to give up hope. My father finally said that if the rabbit stays away, we'd have to just let him be. So we agreed. If the rabbit didn't come back, I had to accept that he had found his real home.

Finally my dad said that it was time to go. It was late, pitch dark, and we needed to make it to our hotel before midnight. He said the rabbit had been gone for a while; he made his choice. I hung my head and slowly walked back to the RV. I wanted the rabbit with us, but clearly the rabbit found his real home. But just as we were all piled in, the rabbit came bolting through the door and back into the RV. He made a lap around the interior, and then raced back out again.

It was so fast and confusing. But to me, this meant that there was still hope. My dad had to put his foot down; we had to leave. Now. I reluctantly closed the door and my dad started driving. I stared out the window, knowing that at any minute I would see our rabbit again. I focused so hard that when I did see the rabbit, I wasn't sure if I just imagined him. I wanted him to appear so badly that I thought maybe I had made him materialize in my own subconscious. But I didn't. It was really him. He sprinted faster than I'd ever seen towards us and leaped up to hop into my lap. There was glass separating us. He fell back to the ground.

I begged my father to stop, but there was no way he could with all of the other cars in his way. The rabbit was gone now. Even if he wasn't ready, he was going to have to learn to live in the wild now. Without us. We started reassuring ourselves that this was for the best. Jack rabbits need to jump, which is impossible in a cage. Now he was without a cage and with endless space to explore.

Interpretation:
I'm not exactly sure how to interpret this one. My first instinct was that maybe the Jack rabbit was supposed to symbolize Blake. It makes sense, since he was going in and out of truly being mine. He wanted to be present in this life and in our relationship, but there was a force pulling him away. The strong pull of addiction didn't let him truly stay here in this world. At the end, he may have wanted to stay, but he couldn't. And now he's in heaven where he's free.

Or am I the Jack rabbit? Blake used to call me bunny, so that is an interesting coincidence. Maybe with this interpretation of me as the rabbit, my dream is telling me to let go, even if I don't feel like I'm ready. The rabbit coming in and out could symbolize my attachment to Blake and my feelings of still being in a relationship with him. Maybe I need to put my foot down, like my father did in the dream, and accept that he is really gone.

Half of My Heart (A Dream)

I just woke up from a terrible dream:

I was at the reception of my wedding. It was absolutely gorgeous and everyone I love was there. I spent the whole time going from table to table, making sure everyone was having fun, laughing, taking pictures with friends, and accepting congratulations. I didn't stop smiling for a second.

As the party was winding down, I went over to the corner where my father was standing. After I gave him a big hug and thanked him for such a beautiful day, he asked if I thought it was weird that I didn't spend any time with my husband tonight. ...I hadn't even realized.

I looked over and saw him standing with his back against a wall with the saddest look on his face. I rushed over and he immediately started crying and screaming at me. I begged him to stay quiet so we could talk somewhere else, but he kept saying everyone was already talking about it anyway. They were all saying, "Poor guy! What kind of life did he just get himself into? How can she love him with half of a heart?"

I wanted so badly to calm him down by telling him something reassuring. But I didn't. I couldn't. I just stared blankly. All I felt for him was pity.

And then I woke up.

Interpretation:
What scared me (and caused me to originally post this without an interpretation) was my first instinct upon waking up. I panicked, thinking that this nightmare must be foreshadowing my actual wedding day. It was telling me that I will live the rest of my life with only half a heart, unable to give any man the life and love he deserves. There I was, ruining this poor man's life by trying to trick him, our families, and myself into thinking I could commit to him. But deep down we both knew I would never fully be able to do that.

I've said many times that I know it's better for me to be alone for a long time because "I feel bad for any guy who tries to date me now." I think this is partially because I realize how broken I am at the moment, but also because it would be an unfair position for anyone to be in. He would be signing up to compete with a man that I'm still in love with and have no way to ever get real closure on our relationship. As far as I'm concerned, if Blake was alive we'd still be dating and very much in love right now. How can I begin to consider anyone else as a potential partner when I know that to be true?

But maybe this dream was more of a warning, rather than a peek into my future. Maybe it was to remind me that I can't be in a healthy, lasting relationship if I go into it only giving the man half of my heart. If I am still thinking of Blake and wishing he was the one next to me, then I'll spend the whole relationship ignoring the man in front of me, like I did at the wedding in my dream.

I am going to take this as a gentle reminder to take care of myself. Since I still feel like I'm in a relationship with Blake, then that is my reality. To push myself to do anything that contradicts that reality would be harmful to everyone involved. I have faith that eventually I'll be in a different place, but for now I need to start figuring out how I can begin to carry both halves of my heart.

Meet Me in Between

I came across a quote that really resonated with me. "You know that place between sleep and awake? The place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I will always love you. That's where I will be waiting."

The final two sentences hit me especially hard,"That's where I will always love you. That's where I will be waiting."

Last night when I read this quote and reread those last two sentences again, and again, and again, I started to believe it was a direct message from Blake. My dreams are where he's always going to love me. That's where he's waiting for me.

I was so excited to drift off to sleep. I just knew he was going to be sitting on the clouds of my dreams saving a spot for me right next to him. Through my dreams I was going to be able to see his face, hear his voice, kiss him, be held by him. In that state between sleep and awake, we could be together.

When my alarm jolted me awake this morning I realized immediately that I didn't have my date with Blake. I felt defeated. Why hadn't he met me? I was waiting for him and he stood me up.

Why is he abandoning me?

The abnormally gloomy San Diego skies matched my mood. I let each grey cloud serve as a reflection of the storm brewing in my mind. He's gone. Thunder. He's never coming back. Lighting. He's slipping further away each day. Wind. And I have to accept it. Rain drops.

As I was ruminating, I decided to reread the quote again. Only this time, instead of concentrating on the last two sentences, the other two sentences popped out and shifted my focus. "You know that place between sleep and awake? The place where you can still remember dreaming?"

In my initial reading of this, I took it quite literally. I imagined myself in the state, lucid dreaming, right before I wake up and have some volition over and memory of my dreams. This made me believe that the rest of the quote meant that I would be connected to Blake and loved by him there. That's why I was so disappointed when I awoke this morning and discovered the he hadn't been waiting for me there after all.

But maybe I was wrong to interpret the message literally. The place between sleep and awake could mean something besides the obvious. It could be a space that exists between reality and unfathomable hope.

Maybe I can meet Blake in a meditative place within my heart that allows me to connect to real things not seen by the eye, felt by the skin, or understood by logic. In this place, unbound by the constraints of facts but not too outlandish to be possible, he will wait for me. That's where he'll always love me.

In Too Deep (A Dream)

I just woke up from a dream.

I'm not an expert, but I feel like the message of this dream was pretty clear. I'm going to explain what  it was and what my interpretation is.

Dream:
Blake and I were living at this apartment complex with a whole bunch of our friends. It almost seemed like we were on vacation because we were having so much fun every day. We didn't have to work, we constantly had people around, and there were always activities going on.

Then Blake's family showed up and were very concerned. Blake died. They wanted to get to the bottom of it, so they started looking up his medical records and asking everyone what he had been doing with whom. I, of course, started helping them try to figure it out. I was so shocked! I started getting angry at everyone. How could my friends be using with Blake right under my nose?

After we had all gathered evidence, we sat down in a room and started going over it. There were records of prescriptions, where they were filled and by which doctor. A couple of our friends came to speak to us, telling stories about times they used with us. With us?

I was only half paying attention at first, but after I really started to listen, I realized the intervention was not about Blake, but about ME. I started to panic. I grabbed the medical records they were going over a second ago and realized they weren't Blake's, they were MINE. I looked at the faces of the people and they weren't Blake's family, it was MY family. I was so confused. I wasn't the drug addict, why was this happening to me?

This was not our apartment complex, it was a rehab. Why was I there? What went wrong?

Then I woke up.

Interpretation:
Let me first preface this by saying I do not do drugs. At all.

After taking a second to get over the shock of waking up from such a crazy nightmare, I think I understand what it might have been trying to teach me.

My last blog post was about heroin. In the end I wondered a little bit about if your choices were even your own when you're an addict. I also was thinking a lot about the powerlessness one must feel when they are addicted to a drug. I said I'd never understand this feeling, so it was hard for me to understand Blake. I think this dream gave me the answers and the insight into what I was questioning before bed last night.

I think this dream/nightmare gave me the opportunity to feel how Blake might have felt either before going to rehab or at the end of his life. Clearly I had no idea in the dream I had a problem. Mine was even more extreme because I didn't even know I was doing drugs at all. When my family was trying to give me an intervention, I didn't even realize it was for me because I was so convinced in my head I was fine. I'm pretty sure even at the end of my dream before I woke up, I still hadn't really accepted that my family had any right to be concerned about me. I thought it must have been a mistake and was trying to think of other people that clearly were worse off than I was that I could divert the attention to.

Maybe I'm interpreting this wrong, but I feel like this dream was my first dive into putting myself in Blake's shoes for a moment. I have felt sorry for him and wondered why he did the things he did and made the choices he made, but I never tried to really understand how it was possible to not get help and not know how deep into his addiction he was.

So much to think about.