Five in the air

Have you ever realised something from a dream that seemed absolutely meaningless? I had one of those awful dreams last night that feels totally real. Sort of an extension of your innermost fears. You know the ones?

I lay there, after waking up, and slowly tried to shake the remnants of the feelings it had given me. The dream basically involved Steve having made the decision to leave me. I felt stripped bare and very exposed and rejected. Big sorrow, that's what I felt. And shock that I'd apparently been so wrong all this time about how he felt about me.

In the dream, he had become a cold character who laughed at me snidely when I tried to ask why. "Why are you going, why are you leaving me?" I think - well, I know - it's actually quite a deep-seated fear of mine, that people will/might leave me, and probably lends itself to the reason why I have been such an agreeable person (growing up). Losing Ella was the beginning of the understanding of this. After all, there's not much worse than your baby leaving you and if you fear being "left" and then that happens... well, you can either go right under or you can grow from it. Apparently, it's still lurking in my subconscious so it's been very interesting to be given a dream that's shaken me.

When I heard him stir next to me and wake up, I told Steve somewhat woundedly that he'd been in the process of leaving me without reason in the dream I'd just had. It was horrible, I told him.

He: I had a dream the other night too. Dreams are weird, they make no sense.
Me: You don't dream. When did you dream? What happened?! Tell me about it!
He: I was in my car. And there were other people in it...
Me: Were they passengers?
He: ...Yeah...
Me: Where were you taking them?
He: Nowhere. I don't know. That's not the point. They started singing a Hi-5 song so I got the video camera out and starting recording them 'cause I thought, Lolly would like this. See? Dreams are dumb. They don't mean anything.

I know he was trying to comfort me. But really, my dream was significant to me. And his dream was actually, thinking about it later, very telling. On the surface, yeah sure, it's a dream about a grown man entertaining people in his car who break into spontaneous singing of cheesy children's songs. I didn't think he'd paid much attention to my retelling of the dream I had had. He was only interested to know if his laugh had been an evil one. And each time I tried to explain the laugh was mean, he kept asking, "Yes but was it eeeevil?" like he really had hoped it might have been.

And at first, I didn't think there was any meaning in his dream about bloody Hi-5. But there is. Of course there is. The happiness of his family equals his own satisfaction and wellbeing and sense of self, even in his dreams he's thinking of us and what might make us happy. Here's me doing what I do best (huffing and worrying in self-pitying paranoia) and there's him in his dream, also doing what comes naturally to him. Oops.

Yep. I got all that from Hi-5.