A few weeks ago I dreamed I was working on my laptop and someone who I knew from highschool and was apparently (in the dream) a good friend showed up, knocking at the door. Because I had work to do, I decided to pretend I wasn't home, but her and someone else climbed up the side of the building somehow and saw that not only were my lights on, but that I was very obviously home. So after letting them in, I allowed them to convince me to go out drinking with them, which I aquiesced to reluctantly, since not only was I busy, but the apartment was trashed, the laundry needed to be done, and I needed to take a shower. As I began hunting through a pile of dirty clothes, my friend suddenly stopped me and pointed to the corner of the room behind me. "What are you going to do with that?" she said, and I turned around to find a girl, about four or five years old, sitting in the corner. I was suddenly panicky and could not remember if the child was mine, or if not, whose it was, where it came from, how long I had been neglecting it since I didn't remember every having taken care of it before, or even reaalizing it was there.
Suddenly I was resentful at having to worry about its welfare, my own lack of freedom, angry at whoever had saddled me with the it. Suddenly I was doomed, anchored to that messy apartment forever and it's endless laundy and dishes. I was trying to convince my friend to allow the child to come along, but she insisted the car was already full of people and who wants to take a child into a bar? I responded by saying that my grandmother used to take me to bars all the time. (which she did, or did at least a few times). I was even trying to think up ways to ditch the child by leaving it in a parking lot or mall. Surely, if it wasn't mine, no one would hold me responsible for abandoming her. Then she pointed to the chair in the bedroom, which I suddenly realized harbored another child, an infant--and all of the sudden it was this sinking hopelessness that I'd ever be able to really do anything on my own again. The despair terrible enough to wake me...as well as trouble me for a few hours afterward...
Seems ripe for analysis, no? If the children are meant to be actual children, it definitely confirms my uspicion that I'd be a terrible mother and that my biological clock no doubt has a spring broken or two. What else could the children be? poetry? the press? the general feeling of suffocation when I think about things that are permanent, immutable...
Of course yesterday morning I dreamed of hotel rooms and zombies (this happens occasionally), and the care of two small kittens, who having bit me, we were trying to determine whether of not they were, in fact, zombie kittens...
