Writing Diaries #17: How Our Dreams Reveal Us and Uncover Hidden Truths

In the 1970s and 1980s, I was in my prime. The economy flourished, I had a good education, and jobs were easy to find.

If I'd known what I wanted to do, I could have made a plan and grabbed everything life had to offer with both hands.

But I had no idea what path to take. I floated from job to job. None of my starter jobs suited me. They bored me to distraction. If only I'd had the wisdom and the patience to stay at one or two of them and work my way up. veal deep emtions,help us Our

Our dreams reveal painful emotions; help us process them

Back then, I didn’t understand why I failed while others succeeded.

It took me decades to figure it out: my father's violence during my formative years had produced an emotionally misshapen adult.

That damage didn't show up as bruises or broken bones. It showed up as fear--specifically, the fear of being controlled by bosses, by friends, or by family members. I worked hard to hide it and failed. The smell of my fear seeped out of my pores like sweat and affected every relationship I valued. I mistrusted men the most.

When I grew tired of wrestling with it, I made a virtue of withdrawal. "Better that way," I told myself. But it wasn't better to live a lonely life.

Even after my brutal father was long out of my life, the fear remained. And when I couldn't name it while awake, my dreams named it for me.

In my diaries at the time, I recorded the following dreams:

Our dreams reveal enduring fears

I wrote a letter to the man at work with whom I was secretly in love. I longed to tell him how I felt about him.

I placed the letter on his desk but soon regretted it. For one thing, it occurred to me I'd addressed him by the wrong name. Secondly, what if he reciprocated my feelings and wanted to start a relationship?

Would he try to take control of my life? Would he break my heart?

I decided to retrieve the letter before he could read it, but I was too late. The sheet of paper on which I'd written it lay unfurled at the centre of my would-be love's desk.

I cringed, thinking of my embarrassment when we'd meet. What had possessed me to open myself up to ridicule?

Far from ridiculing me, however, he was all smiles. He glowed with pleasure. But he didn't mention the letter, let alone that I 'd gotten his name wrong.

He left the next step up to me.

But I couldn’t bring myself to take it. I turned away, and we continued working alongside each other as though I'd never written that letter and he'd never read it.

Our dreams also reveal how we manage them

The second dream drops me somewhere else entirely: a creepy, damp basement grocery store. An empty, cloth shopping bag hangs from the crook of my arm.

I put it on the floor at my feet while I pick up and examine some fruits and vegetables. The store's offerings are either bruised or going bad, and I decide to leave.

I bend down and pick up my shopping bag. It had been empty but, to my shock, it's now heavy. Worse still, whatever is in there is alive and struggling to get out.

Why did I come to this grim, horrible place? Is it a rat? Those ugly beasts terrify me.

My screams bring the proprietor running.

I thrust the bag at him. He takes it and his large hand reaches into the bag. In a surreal dream shift, he pulls out a rat--a stiff, dead rat.

He shows it to me, trying to reassure me.

How could it be dead when only seconds earlier the animal was alive and kicking?

I flee the store with my shopping bag now empty again, only to face more rodents--mice--this time. They're everywhere. How will I get home?

My skin crawls as I step gingerly, trying to avoid them. That's when I realize they're all dead. They can't hurt me.

But how do I overcome the disgust I feel?

What my dreams revealed

Seen together, the dreams spelled out what I couldn't admit in daylight. In the first, love was offered without punishment, yet I still couldn't step forward. I'd learned to treat tenderness as a trap and silence as safety.

In the second, I walked into a place that felt like my past--damp, grim and contaminated--and discovered the terror in my bag wasn't invincible after all. The rats and mice were already dead. The danger I kept bracing for was over, but my body hadn't caught up with the truth, and disgust had taken the place of fear.

Even then, some part of me was trying to teach me the same lesson: I was no longer trapped--only convinced that I was.