Dreams, Reflections and Clarity…

*Personal Blog*

 

Last night I had a dream, I don’t usually recall my dreams, but this was vivid and frightening. In my dream I had a total breakdown, as I write the details are swiftly scattering from my thoughts. Yet my Mother was still alive in the dream, she was harsh and unsympathetic, disregarding my breakdown and walking away. I was a wreck, utterly immobile, my physical form trapped by my raging mind. Blocked from activity, screaming silently… Always screaming in my thoughts…

I sought help, walking down the yellow lines in the road until I found a house that would give me shelter and hope… Yet I was early, I was sent away while they took someone else into the property, escorted them to the guest room where they would be staying, I walked away towards a park, which was part of a park from my youth.

Upon awakening, I could hear the rain on my roof, that was soothing. Cats wanted feeding and the morning gave me little time for reflection.

***

It is no lie that I have been battling my own little mental monsters recently, a lot of this has to do with some painful truths which have emerged after my Mother’s death… The prominent pondering is whether or not she really loved me at all?

Six months on, I’m still awaiting grief counselling, initially this is something I snubbed and rejected but as the year dwindles by I am left considering that this maybe a good idea… Especially when dreams like this haunt my mind.

I am grateful that I have this blog, besides my silly little tale, I can freely express myself and pour all my thoughts onto the screen. Which I have done over and over again throughout 2017. I keep returning to this theme, I keep finding myself so close to breaking point and each time I turn to writing. I write until my demons subside and I can regain clarity.

I am calm as I write this morning, despite my lingering nightmare, despite feeling like I’ve failed in life throughout the first half of the year… I wonder if it is too easy to blame my failings on having to deal with Mum’s loss… I wonder if it is other little niggling facts that are a painful reality I have to deal with – externally I am almost dismissive in regards to some details (forgive me if I can not explain) Internally, I know that if I dwell, I will snap.

This I can not afford to allow, in my dreams maybe I crack, broken, rejected and cast aside. In reality, I write.

Writing gives me focus, even if it makes for dreadful blog reading… I would apologise, but why beg forgiveness for something which ultimately helps. I feel like I freedom, my mind is clear, I feel lighter, more focused. Like blogging gives me the ability to unravel my tangled thoughts and find direction.

I can face my day with a clear head and let the dream fade from my thoughts… One day, maybe I will find the words to go into the detail I need to cry.

Today is not that day.

Thank you for being there for me x

 

Love, Anne Harrison 27.06.17

Returning to Writing

*Some personal thoughts*

 

I’ve not written since before Christmas, I had decided to give myself a little time out to reflect on recent events and focus on coming to terms with my current loss. I tried to write, but my words had become fuddled in my mind, they wouldn’t translate to paper/screen and the pictures in my mind vanished with frustration. The longer I tried to hold a scene, to describe events the swifter events slipped by… My muse had left me… *strike dramatic pose*

Truth was a lot simpler, I just had too much of ‘normality’ that needed my attention and the inner realm was not in fact  beyond my grasp, but pushed back to the far recess of my mind so I could deal with what laid before me. My stories starting to play out in my dreams instead, this helped resolve my insomnia, I was dreaming and I was sleeping. These factors also aided my ability to deal with shit.

I have dreams which follow on from one another, like my own personal soap opera in my mind, I replay last nights events in my thoughts as I lay my head down to sleep and somehow the little characters in my dreams can pick up the threads of a tale and run with it.

So if I can think it, see it in my mind and even dream events, why can I not find the words I need to describe my inner world to my small circle of readers? I have new characters to introduce you too, new plots and plans, I decided that I would introduce mythological creatures when a Phoenix entered the Kings realm and stole the stone (spoiler?) my imagination was working overtime, but my pen laid dormant.

Maybe the answer was with the appearance of the Phoenix? For these creatures arise from the ashes, they are life after death, resurrection, reincarnation… Personally they have a family connection lingering there deeply…

I needed time and I needed to accept the fact that I also had to take a break from writing, because forcing writing just turns into nonsense. So I rested, my story rested, my dreams lead my plot and in life I could focus on the harsh reality I was going through. Sometimes the answer is not to escape, but to give reality the attention it required…

I am ready to start to write again – yet I’m still not ready to cry… But I am back!

 

Love Anne, 09.01.17

 

 

The Two Year Gap

So… I found something I posted from 2014,  which I have already shared with you all recently…

Wow! I have changed, or at least I feel as though I have changed… I read through my old words and I see the old me as I was, tubby,  insecure,  anxious,  fragile,  dependent…

I still have issues with anxiety,  but I have developed independently enough to understand that the ‘what if’ situations I play inside my head are all figments of an over active imagination.

2016 has not been kind to me and my family, but I strongly believe the old me, the one who wrote those words,  would have struggled with all this shit…
Trust me,  it is a struggle,  but I know I need to be strong for others now and not my old selfish insecurities… Me, me, me…I, I, I… Can you really escape that personal torment and focus on others…  Was I really that unbearable?

I realise that what I wrote was so close to the point where everything changed,  that I really was on the path to where I am now… I also know I still have a way to go yet.

I have come so far in two short years…  That I’m looking forward to next Monday!!

 

Love Anne 02.11.16

Part 5 – Irregular Conversation

 

There was very little conversation as night fell and rations were shared. My guardian chose to keep guard, to watch over our slumber, one dog by his side. I couldn’t sleep and so went to join him, sat just above the trees – the sky vast and dark, cloudless with a sprinkling of twinkling stars…

…

“Now what happens?” He spoke without turning to face me.

“What do you mean?” I had no choice but to answer his question with a question of my own, a little taken aback by his bluntness…

“What happens next?”

“I don’t know?”

He shrugged “Well if you don’t know what happens next, I guess we’re all stuck in limbo.”

I nod my head with a long resigned sigh… “I don’t know what to write next.”

There was the truth, my honestly he was seeking, with judgement in his eyes, he turned to face me, I could see him clearly in the nights dull light, because I knew what he looked like, with fine detail. But I had yet to describe him in my story, I hadn’t even given him a name yet. It was all very vague and I sighed once again.

He glanced back over his shoulder to those slumbering in the cave. “Do they know?”

“Know what?” I followed his gaze… “That they are not real, that they are mere figments of my imagination, their torment, their tragedy nothing more than words on a page. Hara, who wears the image of a lady on my bus route?” I thought of the Number 5 bus, the silver haired Asian lady that got on board at the Melton Turn, the way she looked over her round glasses seeking the illusive free seat, how she reminded me of a wise old owl.

“No, I guess they don’t know. I mean, they will continue to lay sleeping until I write the next line.”

“But you can see me, hear me, you know my voice, how I look, my clothes, even my smell… Yet none of this, none of my details exist beyond your mind?”

I simply nodded. “I’m at a loss my friend.”

I don’t even know where we are? Fantasy? Dystopian? A weird Avatar forest like world? In the past, the future… Nothing more than a war, a forest and a handful of characters…

The story had started well enough, a work-shopping story in University class, I had included two endings, one that I have already shared with you all here on WordPress. The second ending, I liked personally, but everyone in class concluded my words should be scrapped… I think I would like to share them again for you, while we sit here under the stars contemplating our future together. I still like them, but they serve no purpose other than to be destined to be scrapped once more…

 

The Soldier

– Trojan – Centurion – Viking – Samurai – Knight – Cavalier – Confederate – Nazi –

Saved the Child

– Messiah – Mother – Innocence – Prophet – Purity – Saviour – Hope –

That saved the Soldier

A frail hope for humanity – a story spiraling throughout time…

 

Anne Harrison 20.10.16

Dreamscape

My dreams, when I can remember them are surreal to say the least. Though I find them all very similar, the settings, the scenes, the people and the colours… It is as though I somehow reach into the same world inside my mind each time I dream.

My Dreamscape is quite dystopian, rugged landscapes and ruined cities, I always feel this urge to ‘clean’ my dreams… But cleaning is the last ting I have time for in my head. These sepia dreams are usually very action packed, the people are sometimes those from reality, but mostly they are not real people at all, some aren’t even people. Yet these archetypes appear time and time again in my nighttime realm. I know them, I live an entire different life with them.

The colours are always muted, or it’s dark, dusk, dawn? That surreal half light tinged with an over wash of brown, like when you leave your shades on too long and forget you are wearing them, though it is the colour of the sky… Buildings are ruined, yet technology has advanced, there is no where to live, just holes to rest between fighting.

I have even been known to dream within my dream… and when I dream within my dream, my dreams are set here in reality… the normal world outside my window… and I will wake, usually violently, within the dream to find myself having to fight for my life!

Sometimes I’m not always so active in the war like dreams, sometimes there are vast lengths of conversation in a language I don’t understand, yet speak perfectly … Plots drawn up again a faceless enemy.

I never feel distressed upon awakening, I can sometimes grasp lingering fragments of the dreams as they dash quickly from my thoughts, replaced by mundane needs to fall into an early morning routine. Sometimes I find myself feel exhilarated, especially if there has been a battle… But this never lasts long into the waking world and then the dystopian realm within my mind is forgotten until the next dream…

Sometimes, if I am really tired, or just slip from concentration, I have these little slips, like visions or flashbacks into the dreamscape, even when awake…

I expect a dream analysis, would be quite fascinating (if I believed in such things) but this isn’t a recurring dream, it’s just that all my dreams are in the same world, that realm within my mind, where I can only find, at times, this overlaps reality…

… But they’re just dreams, right?

 

Anne Harrison 19.07.16