I had a weird dream the other night that I was at my uncle’s house, hanging out with him and his son, my beloved cousin whom I fondly remember playing cops and robbers with and racing around on our bikes as youngsters before all the drama began with that side of my family. In the dream, one of my aunts was there, but I wasn’t really paying attention to her. And then suddenly, there was an alligator in the room. I guess in my dreams they aren’t elephants – it would only make sense that the Cajun girl has a giant gator as my metaphor. Then I put the gator in the tub in the bathroom and locked the door. Dream over.
Talking this over today, I started musing about the symbolism of this. This is of course on top of the fact that now that Dan has left, I’m back to not sleeping through the night, and having an increased amount of weird or bad dreams. I seem to be always running from someone or something in them, or hiding or fighting not to get hurt. Hmmm….
The ahas! are coming more lately. Not just with the dreams (and boy do those make a heckuva a lot more sense lately), but with why I have all the feelings I do, why I can be such a control freak, and why I chose someone like Dan as my significant other. Those self-help books DO make things come together, I assure you. In one sitting, I must say “that sounds just like me!” about a million times. It makes so many things connect and I don’t feel so bad about some of it.
My friend also went to an alligator farm in New Orleans recently, so maybe that was part of it. Although some of my family has had some not so friendly encounters with gators, I personally have only enjoyed the taste of their meat.
On a separate note, I have a question: If you made a major life change when you weren’t expecting to – career, relocation, etc – why did you do it? How did you decide? What triggered the change? Were you scared? Confused? Emotional?
Earlier this week, I saw the scale had gone up even more than I thought at the doctor. I was appalled. I was disappointed. I was pissed because I’ve been working out every day and eating so much produce I should start my own farm in my apartment. Then back at the office I was pissed when I saw an email that set off about 57 emotions, and fortunately, my amazing teammate let me ramble on for about 20 minutes about what direction I’m headed in. Sometimes we need that. I needed her to tell me it was okay to be confused and scared.
Aha moments, anyone? What did you do with it?
Jenna Sauber 