Dreams, Perhaps not so Sweet

Within the last few days I’ve had several dreams, vivid dreams, disturbing dreams, dreams that leave me lying in bed in the morning still thinking about them and what they mean.

Twice I have dreamed specifically about taking off my wedding ring and putting it away. I’m very clear on the meaning of that one. I want to make that final break from my marriage, and I want to get it over with. In one of the dreams the focal point was the putting away of the wedding ring. I didn’t just take it off and set it aside. I took it off, carefully placed it in a box and put it away on a high shelf. That is absolutely all I remember about the dream, but it felt very important to me both in the dream and upon waking. In the other dream I took off my wedding ring, but that was not the focal point of the dream. The focal point of that dream was W and me talking about the end of the marriage and working through many of the finer details, one of which, the primary one in fact, being money. When he worked out his expenses vs. his income he would be spending more on a monthly basis than he was receiving, and this naturally was going to be a problem. I was exasperated that once again I was going to have to work out the solution which seemed fairly obvious to me, but which he couldn’t figure out for himself. At that point, the alarm rang and ended the dream but left me with the realization that I am concerned about how he will manage financially on his own. He should be fine by my reckoning, but I wonder if he’ll see it the same.

The other really vivid, and quite disturbing, dream revolved around work. I was at work at my new job, but strangely enough, my old, old, old, old employer (the company that went bankrupt on the west coast) was just across the building, a fairly short walk through the cubicle maze. So I’m trying to work on my new job and am feeling some pressure to get things done a little more quickly than I’m currently managing, when along comes an old coworker, let’s call her Mary, asking if I can come and assist them. First of all, Mary is a woman who in real life just died a few months ago after a short struggle with pancreatic cancer. The second strange thing is that the overwhelming crisis they needed to resolve was the $200 in petty cash. They didn’t know where it was, and they needed me to tell them where it was and how to get to it. It didn’t seem like that big of a deal to me and I said I would stop by as soon as I could and kept working on the new job. Also, I had a cold and was wrapped in a blanket trying to keep warm and wishing I could use a sick day and go home, but had so much to do that I felt the need to stay and do it. I kept working on the new job and finally got to a point where I felt like I could go back to the old job to help out for just a bit. All bundled in my blanket I go over to my old desk. Because nobody else was using my old desk they’d placed an old table on the other side of the aisle from the desk so that it was a really tight squeeze to get in there causing my claustrophobia to act up a bit and further agitate me, not to mention it reminded me of all the weight I've regained that I had worked so hard to lose. I opened the drawer and took out the two keys that would be needed to get the petty cash. The keys were not hidden in any way, and I know I told someone where they were before I left the job. I explained to Mary that the petty cash box was in the safe, and that I no longer remembered the combination to the safe so they would have to wait until another old coworker, let’s call him Joe, was around as he was the only one that knew the combination. Joe was already gone for the day because he worked early hours and it was already a few minutes after 5:00. However, I went ahead and explained to Mary how the first key would be used to get into the specific area of the safe where the lockbox was held, and that the second key opened the lockbox itself. I figured I was finished at that point, but Mary was concerned about how the entry would be made to reflect the transaction. She was trying to describe some multi-step complicated entry, and I said no it is quite simple, just a debit to the bank account and credit to petty cash. I couldn’t figure out why she wanted to make it so complicated when it was really such a simple thing, and I just wanted to go home because of my cold. I also felt overwhelmingly that I wanted to be finished with the old job and just move on with the new one. I awoke absolutely agitated by this dream even though it doesn’t seem that big a deal as I type it out here. It haunted my thoughts much of yesterday though.

I don’t know for sure what all of these dreams mean although I can take pretty good guesses in most instances. I’m hoping that just by addressing them in the light of day, in my conscious mind, that I can release them from the need of filling my nights.