Don't throw knives at me
This morning, I woke up in tears. I’d already been crying in my dream.
In the dream, I was sitting across from my family at a long table, lined with crisp white linen. Me on one side, them on the other side. It felt like me against them. We were in a dining car on a train. The train was running along the coast. Outside the train was a beautiful, peaceful scene. Inside the train, my family was shouting at me. They were saying harsh, heartless things to me, just as they sometimes used to do in the waking life. They took out hefty cooking knives. One by one, they started throwing them at me. “You are crazy!” I shouted at them as I kept dodging the knives in the air. They continued to throw more knives at me. I begged them to stop, but they weren’t listening. They were too busy throwing knives at me.
When I woke up, I felt just… incredibly sad. I was coming to terms with the hurt I felt all my life. I carried their emotional burden on my shoulders. I tolerated their projected pain and anger. These are the things I kept brushing off growing up because I didn’t want to see my family as villains, and I somehow thought I deserved such treatment.
The other day, I heard someone say that most of us don’t hurt each other on purpose. I felt that. My family didn’t intend to hurt me, I’m sure, or I hope. But the damage was made in me. Words were said to me. The dream forced me to relive and feel all those difficult emotions that I didn’t get to accept and feel when I first experienced them. This time, I knew I wasn’t responsible for their emotions. This time, I wasn’t going to protect their feelings over my own.
I stayed in bed for a while to process the dream. I felt more tears in my eyes. I cried a bit more.