"There's more of gravy than of grave about you"

I fought myself awake this morning. Literally. I have the skinned elbow and knuckles from decking/back-'bowing the wall to prove it. The subject matter is a familiar one to me. Apparently my subconscious isn't fed enough complaint material by J's kindness in my waking life, so it feels the need to compensate for this diligent lack of abuse with horrible nightmare scenarios where he's nothing but a dirty bastard whose sole purpose is to hurt and upset me. Dream Jason is a full on git who loves to see Dream Sheila crying and wounded by horrific words and underhanded actions. In essence, he's the culmination of the ungood characteristics of every selfish, scabby cockknocker I dated before I met him.

Dream Jason doesn't get lonely, though. One of my best friends lived with me for a while with my godson for about year while she pulled herself back on her feet after a divorce. We're very much like sisters in that we share everything and trust each other completely. Well, that just wasn't good enough for my dream generator gnome because that cranky fella turned Dream T into the most hurtful, conniving wench it could unleash in my dreams. I would wake up bitter and confused that I'd missed a key clue when I was awake that informed my dreams before anyone bothered to let my waking self in on the scoop. As I do with J, I tell her right away when it happens so that they could give me a little space to still the need to put together non-existent clues into a John Nash-style masterpiece of angsty delusion.

The only other person I've met who shared this flippy floppy phenomenon of creating alter-egos for their best friends was my old roommate/life brother Ron. And while it is true that he played host to a dream terrorist shaped like a confidante, the only person he manifested in this way was...me. He even named my evil dream doppelganger Esther so that we would have a reference point for his dreams.

I can't help but feel a little bothered by the fact that my psyche won't accept pure kindness, love and trust without exercising the need to use it against me by employing the face of the people with whom I've unquestionably bonded and then stuffing them full of cruelty like some sort of profane, grotesque animated scarecrow. It's also troublesome that in some way, a friend who only encouraged positivity in our friendship was plagued by angry Esther through no fault of his own.

The meaning is hidden to me. I do believe dreams mean something, but I don't know what, short of some sort of strange compensation. Maybe it's a reminder of what life could have been if I'd made different choices. Maybe it's part of the collective unconscious that demands balance. Or perhaps it's just a chemical process that will remain unknowable to me. Whatever it is, I'll continue to fight myself awake and thank God when I wake up that the negative compensation had to make itself known that way, instead of being forced to create an atmosphere of nurturing out of whole cloth only to be awakened not by my own violence, but by that of another.