Kind of disturbing dream imagery.

[sunken_standard]

So I've finally kicked the worst of the black plague I've had for the last week (now just my face hurts from sinus pressure, but at least I can breathe), and I haven't taken any kind of medicine (side note: I'm insanely sensitive to all kinds of chemicals, especially considering my body mass. Seriously, two drinks and I'm on the floor, and this is the tolerance level I've built up.  If I have a headache, I take one Advil, cut in half), so my head is clearer than it has been in at least a week.  And so my subconscious decides that now's a good time for horrific dream imagery.  I haven't even watched any horror movies.

On with the dream:
I'm at this party or something, one of those dream-gatherings where people you know from all the different parts of your life are there.  My childhood best friend was there (we still see each other sometimes, but she lives on the other side of the country and our lives have diverged to the point where the only reason we're still friends is shared history), sans children and husband.  We were arguing about something, and I remember looking down at my palm and seeing a scar that doesn't exist running kind of diagonal from pinky to thumb.  It was a thin scar, with tiny little stitch marks across it.  In the dream I remembered it had been there for ten years or so, but how I got it wasn't important.

So for whatever reason, the scar split open and started oozing pus.  Lovely.  I looked down and saw something in there.  IRL, debris in a wound freaks me out (the thought of it healing up inside me and being there is ick) and I have this phobia of maggots and blowflies and any other kind of buggy thing that literally gets under your skin.  So dream me started to freak out, but wanted to get it out of there (real me has done enough self-surgeries to know that these things never go well).  I picked at it, and a loop of yarn came out.  It wasn't a big piece, only maybe 3 inches.  But then there was another piece that I had to kind of dig for.  And more after that.  So I ended up with my skin peeled back like cold pizza cheese (and that was the texture of it, the underside all bumpy and with bits of blood and tissue clinging to it like sauce) and hardly anything left to the inside of my hand except these frayed scraps of yarn that aren't coming out clean but leaving tiny fibers behind.  My dream hand didn't have bone or muscle or anything.  Inside it looked like clumps of cheek skin (or pizza crust after removing the cheese) and pus.

It was totally OCD after that, just a bunch of freaking out and nausea, trying to pick out all the fibers with my clumsy, dirty fingers, knowing I needed tweezers at the very least, knowing I should wash it out, but being afraid that the water would make it start to hurt.  There was no pain at all, but fear of pain.  I remember thinking over and over that it would never heal and I'd lose the use of my dominant hand and kept wondering why it suddenly split open now, when it had been there for ten years and why it hadn't killed me or spread.  The yarn didn't dissolve because it was synthetic (which is an oddly specific detail, like all my dreams have).  

Then I was trying to get through a bunch of drunk and stupid party-goers to get to the kitchen sink, trying not to let anyone touch my hand or jostle it because I was afraid I'd start to feel it.  I ran the water in the sink, but couldn't decide on what temperature to use.  I should also mention that I hate the feeling of water over a deep a cut.  It makes me gag.  Not pain, I'm ok with pain (not that I've ever really had a huge and insanely painful injury to go by), but I hate the weird signals the edges of a cut send to my brain (like no-no-no-not-right-not-right-does-not-compute).

By then, most of the skin had dissolved into like...  strings.  Like how Freddy Krueger's face looks.  I woke up thinking that I knew I had to go to the hospital, but it would be expensive and put me in debt forever because I have no health insurance.

And now, because there's something fundamentally wrong with my brain, my hand and arm are weak.  I'd be concerned that I had a stroke or something, but I get like this when I remember an injury to a specific body part (my foot goes numb when I remember my broken toe and my fingers get weak when I remember cutting the tip off my middle finger with a meat slicer 14 years ago).  It's like PTSD.

tl;dr: My arm feels like jelly, I'm nauseous, and I'm put off of pizza indefinitely.  Thanks for that, subconscious.  I know you were trying to help me work through whatever it is you think I need to work through, but you're still a dick. 

Comments

[madder-badder.livejournal.com]

OMG! ACK!

You might have slept on your arm wrong (which is why it's bothering you now) and your brain got confused trying to signal it (sleeping brains are easily confused) but OH GOD! That must have been so horrible. I feel grossed out and really disturbed for you and I wasn't even there.

[sunken-standard.livejournal.com]

I've had that happen, usually though it's like an amputation dream (still disturbing, but I usually wake up quicker from those), or being grabbed and wrenched by that arm, some kind of injury.

At least i won't be ingesting as many empty calories scarfing pizza for a while....

[woe-in-a-hoodie.livejournal.com]

Man, I hate dreams like that, especially the residual creepy feeling after waking.

I don't know if you set any store by this kind of thing, but as someone who's basically a freelance therapist for everyone I know, I interpret dream symbols and try to find the psychological connections behind them. If you're interested I could slap down a little somethin' somethin' for you with my mad psychoanalysis skillz. XD

[sunken-standard.livejournal.com]

I've already kind of got a theory about parts of it. Mainly, the beginning, with the fight and the scar. Back when I was 19 (11 years ago now), my best friend met a guy on the internet and moved from PA to MT. I was fine with that, excited for her, she got the hell out when I couldn't (or wasn't willing/ was too afraid to). I even went with her when she moved, our last great adventure, that kind of thing. Before this, we'd just reconciled after a few months of frosty relations, mainly due to growing up and growing into different people and not knowing how to accept it in each other. After she moved, she kind of molded herself around her boyfriend's opinions, when for years she'd been doing that with mine. Then I found out from a friend of a friend of her family that she'd gotten married to the guy. That really stung, and instead of being happy for her I sent her a nasty email (not my finest moment). We didn't talk for like 2 years, until she came back to visit with her new baby in tow. We mended fences, but we've still grown apart to the point of just smalltalk and blather about kids and domestic stuff.

And that's about as far as I've gotten. I have no idea about the yarn (maybe symbolizing our bond? That's about all I can guess)- it was a specific yarn from my stash, a thicker weight purple/ turquoise/ lime variegated synthetic. I had scads of it, but just a few scraps now, since I sold a bunch of beanies made from it at a craft show like 3 years ago. I liked it, it was nice yarn, but nothing special.

I don't know why everything with the wound was so gory and detailed, or why I was fixating on the textures so much, or the later bit with the sink. Any ideas?

[woe-in-a-hoodie.livejournal.com]

Something to remember is that dreams are rarely about just one thing. The subconscious is trying to sort out the waking mind's input, so a lot of times a bunch of different concerns get jumbled together into a dream. It can make it a little difficult to discern potential meanings--but this is why picking things apart helps. I always find that the more I look at a distressing dream the more it makes sense, and I can connect it to what's happening in my life.

Yarn can mean a lot of things: your connection to creativity, being stuck in a pattern of behaviour, and if it's tangled at all it can mean emotional distress about a situation. Because you specified that you recognised the specific type of yarn as being something you own, that there used to be a lot of it but now there's only a few scraps, and that it was 'nothing special', this could be speaking of insecurities regarding your creative works. Do you feel like you've been in a rut creatively?

Hands usually indicate your connection to the world around you and your personal relationships. As it was your dominant hand, this could have a connection to the yarn in that you may feel that creativity, or the patterns you follow, are your strong point. Being afraid that you may not be able to use your hand could indicate a fear of losing your talents or relationships in some way.

Washing your hands can be guilt-related, or trying to change your ways and move on from some bad experience.

The whole gore aspect can be as simple as having been hurt and needing time to heal. Having a cut, specifically, can relate to feeling undermined or let down by someone, and it's also a symbol of female sexuality. The fact that you were distressed by the cut could mean that you're repressing yourself in some way, and the yarn inside the cut could point to you feeling violated or dampened/made to be silent in a relationship.

Hope this helps!

[sunken-standard.livejournal.com]

(I was trying to stop thinking about the dream for a bit, so I didn't read this until a little while ago)

The yarn thing- That makes a lot of sense. I was kind of floundering with something I'm writing, hitting dead ends, not feeling the characterization, all that good stuff.

When I write, I usually get into a zone and bang out a whole story in a short amount of time. This is my norm, and I've always felt that the whole frantic-obsessive thing (in any medium) is my strong suit when getting things done. I get nervous when I pick away at things, it gives me more time to pick them apart. So the hand? Makes total sense.

The hand-washing and wound- I've been sort of telling myself that this is a fresh start to my fandom writing. I just needed to be away for a while, and I think I kind of silenced myself during that time, pulled back for a number of reasons (vague person is being vague).

So yes, this all makes perfect sense and I should have read it two days ago because I wouldn't be thinking about skinned pizza hand every time I ate (although the nausea was a good appetite suppressant).

THANK YOU!!!!