Stabbing the past in the eye

The best movies seem to be about violence and sex, in my experience, the most striking dreams do too.

As the protagonist explains in Inception, you never really remember the beginning of a dream, you just find yourself in the midst of it. In my dream, I had been sleeping with a sultry older woman. She was a lot of trouble and drama though and it was time to break things off.

My home was a fancy high-rise apartment located above a rowdy bar or nightclub. The troublesome older woman was coming over to see me. At first, I hoped to avoid her or at least sit down and talk with her in private about breaking up. I looked down off my balcony and saw her below in the bar, she smiled, waved to me, and indicated that she was coming up.

She burst into my apartment with another friend, another older woman with an unattractive short boyish haircut. Oh crap! I thought. I was hoping for some privacy to do this…
It was time just to be direct, I told her, "Look I’m married, we need to break up" and drama ensued, it’s hard to remember the specific details but she cried and got angry. Then some others, maybe her friends started confronting and attacking me. I pushed them back, locked the door, and retreated into my apartment. Then they were trying to get me through another door in my apartment — a glass door, I slammed it shut and struggled with the crappy lock on the glass door to get it locked and secure myself. I retreated again into my apartment.

But I heard them again breaking in, in the kitchen I found a large, scary-looking knife, I figured I might be able to use it to ward them off. I grabbed it and rushed back. The situation had escalated, now a group of assailants had barged in and one of them, a black guy, also had a large knife and was holding a woman hostage — I think it was my ex-lover in the dream. I lunged forward and stabbed him in the eye, driving my knife all the way in to kill him!

The adrenalin of the fight woke me up, I was relieved to be safe in bed next to my wife.

I’m not sure if I believe in dream analysis, I think a lot of dreams are just the entropy of our unconscious minds and don’t serve much purpose beyond being threat simulations. But I did marry recently, this dream could be my unconscious processing this life change, leaving behind a life of causal sex with sultry women that I met in bars.

The fact that I stabbed the guy in the eye is interesting considering that I’m working on a book about my eyes, How to Be Cross Eyed: Thriving Despite Your Physical Imperfection — a mémoire and lifehacking manifesto.

How to Be Cross Eyed

 

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Category: Book