Alright amateur Freudians, analyze my recurring dream...
I'm in the garden at my parents house. It's an English garden, with towering rose bushes, complete with gates and a crushed-glass topped brick wall. Usually, there's a creak at the bottom of the garden, sometimes a brick wall or a fence.
Sometimes, I climb over the wall, sometimes I wade through the creek, and sometimes I ride my pony (Ted) dressage-style over the wall.
On the other side is the sea.
Not your pretty California-sunshine seaside. Your gloomy, rocky, about 15 degrees and the wind blowing with heavy cloud English kind of beach. I walk down to the waves, wade in and start swimming. Way out of my depth. Past the breakers. Then I start to dive. Deeper and deeper on each successive dive. Until my chest is burning, my head is buzzing and I can taste blood in my mouth.
But I don't stop. I dive even deeper. Until there's no hope of being able to surface for air. In desperation, I suck water into my lungs -- and I can breathe the water! I can breathe water!!!
I swim out even further, dive even deeper, and even touch the sea-floor.
I meet whales. Big ones. And they're really happy to see me. They want to sing me their whale-songs and tell me their whale-stories. (Which turn out to be really long, really serious, and full of tales of whale-courage and honour. Sort of like Viking sagas, I guess.)
I swim with the whales for dream-hours. The whales swim all around me. They give my rides if I hang onto their fins, and they blow bubbles all around me to make me laugh.
The bubbles lift me back up to surface. I take a breath of air, and I can't breathe water any more. I find myself on a distant shore, and set about finding my way home.
Over and over I have this dream. Since I was a kid, even. I've never had a pony in my life, and I don't think I'd name him Ted even if I did.
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