The most surprising thing about the dream, really, may be that it happened at all. I generally don’t remember dreams these days — something I put down to sleeping well, although perhaps it’s just being forgetful — so to have this as fresh in my mind as it was when I woke up was entirely unexpected. (That I awoke at 4:30am with it in my head, equally so.)
Earlier in the week, my therapist had asked about the most recent act of cruelty by my ex-wife, and said essentially, why aren’t you more angry? There was a reason of sorts, I told her; the very day after I’d found out about it, my health nosedived for a week and that acted as a pretty effective distraction from everything else — I was too busy feeling worried about how sick I was, and being kind of delirious in the process. I didn’t have a chance to get beyond being sad, I explained, and by now it felt as if I’d had the opportunity to talk myself out of being mad.
My dream suggests otherwise. I won’t go into too much detail, but it’s enough to say that it was a dream in which I visited the old house again as she was in the process of moving out, and got to see her express the latent cruelty of her actions in full flame, like some melodramatic movie villain.
The overall effect of it was… disturbing, I guess, would be the right word. Not because of anything this dream manifestation said or did, because she was cartoonishly drawn and more than slightly pitiful in just how callous she came across; instead, I’m shaken because the dream made it clear to me just how much pain and anger is in my head about her behavior.
It’s not unwarranted, I should add; I don’t feel shaken because that attitude feels unreasonable or too much on my part. Rather, I’m disturbed because it came out in that manner as opposed to any other way, and I don’t like the idea that my subconscious has this trapped inside it, while the rest of me can’t quite access it or process it properly. I’d say I need therapy, but even my therapist is probably wondering about this one.