This dream I had

I'll have lots to talk about in therapy tomorrow...

The other character in the dream was my Ex. We were together. There was no acrimony. He wasn't being a pill or pissy. (Usually, when he shows up in my dreams, he's angry at me.)

In the dream, we heard about a house that had been buried by the sands at the beach. We set off to find a way into it. Under a flight of stairs at the board walk, we found a tunnel through the sand. We dug when we reached another stairway, the top of which was buried, and found a door. Inside the door was a pretty well preserved house, dating probably from the 1920s or '30s. We had his dog, Grace, with us. We spent time exploring the house. The electric seemed to be still connected, as we were able to turn on the lights. We realized that it was time to get back, found our way to the door through which we had entered. The tunnel we had used was now filled up with sea water from the rising tide. We would have to swim for it. The problem was Grace. Could Grace hold her breath under water? He swam through first, leaving me with Grace. I was afraid... I had no problem calming her and going into the water with her, and I'm a strong swimmer and I'd be able to make it, but what if she drowned before I could surface under the boardwalk? My Ex would be really really pissed. (Okay, so I guess he was angry with me, or potentially so, in this dream, too.) The dream wasn't resolved. I woke up.

Now what does that mean?

The dream brings to mind Adrienne Rich's poem, Diving Into the Wreck (which I believe was a Singletails selection for National Poetry Month). The poem literally describes going down down down into a submerged ship, in search of treasure. But it describes any process--such as a feminist reading of history, which is what Adrienne was probably thinking of--of delving into the past and trying to uncover things that had been buried. My therapist contends that when you dream of a house, you're dreaming about a relationship you're in. This holds true. Once while I was still with my Ex, I had a dream that we were visiting a pretty fabulous modernist house. Which was located in Antarctica. And which was built on a platform overlooking a lava filled crater. Pretty apt description of our relationship: looked great, located in a frozen zone, teetering on a precipice of deep and primal anger. Yup. That's what it was like.

So now, as I'm starting This Big Next Chapter Of My Life, I'm dreaming about diving down into the wreck of that seven year relationship I had, and examining things long buried. And there's risk involved: I may not be able to emerge from this examination with everything I care about intact.

Huh.

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