Dreaming of the Distances Between Us & Those We Love

---

I've never been one to over analyse my dreams - they are usually just really fun or interesting, or easily analysed because of their perfect simplicity, or reason that my mind is overworking - I'm worried about an argument I had with someone, or I ate too much cheese before bed (okay, that's a stretch, as I'd never do that, but you know what I mean!). My love laments that he only has dreams about drug dealers after him for money, or war - whereas I dream I'm surfing a perfect surf break with dolphins or writing a novel in French, which is really hard to do, because I only speak Australian.

---

The other night was different.

I dream I was in a galaxy, far, far away. How I got there, who knows. There'd been some disaster or another, and we were isolated on a lonely planet far, far from Earth, with no way of returning. I'd been sent there, or I was simply there, with a job to do that was important somehow. I had an important role there, something where people relied on me for survival. Given all the sci-fi films I've seen, I hope I was there to terra-form or was in charge of food production. You know, creating beautiful earth like jungles in desert places, or working out how to grow plants for natural medicines? Something important, and beautiful, and worthy. Leaving something for the generations to come.

Image Source

But all that's a moot point - at the moment the dream fully started, the sirens were sounding. Loud.

We (the we of dreams is slippery to describe sometimes, but I know I was there with a lot of other people, but no one I really knew closely) were gathering in an emergency area set aside for this purpose, and there was an immiment disaster where people were panicking and preparing to leave the planet in small crafts that would take them back to Earth. It was less about dying on the planet we were on, and more about never being able to leave it if they didn't go right then, as the sirens were sounding.

Image Source
And I was ready - I was about to board, when I stopped, realising that I couldn't go. There was work to be done where I was, and if I left, there was a good chance I'd also die. The sirens were sounding, really, really loud and the crafts were flimsy at best. At this point in the dream, they were more like the canvas planes of World War One - my brain was trying to tell me that if I got in one of those vehicles, I was going to die. They were never, ever going to make it where they were going and I was not meant to be on one. I was meant to stay right where I was, and everyone else was going, and I was never going to see any of them again, and I was never going to see my parents or my family again. Ever. We all know how big that distance is across the universe. It's measured in a scale we can barely comprehend, but it's often a scale of loss - if you've seen Interstellar, that's what I'm talking about.

Image Source

At this point I'm screaming out for anyone who might be headed to Melbourne. Does anyone live near Melbourne, I was yelling across the din. It seemed far fetched - it was a huge galaxy, after all, and these planes were going everywhere, but mainly just off-planet and far away from me. But I was in luck - a young woman with kind eyes said that yes, she lived there, and she'd take a letter home for me.

So I'm writing a letter in all this noise, with all this panic and running and crafts taking off everywhere, and things exploding, and lights and screaming, and I'm trying to write to my parents about what I remember about them, and how much I love them, and all the things I'm grateful for, but my pen runs out after a few words. I throw it across the floor in frustration, and grab another one from my bag (because somehow I'm carrying a bag of pens) and that runs out too. All I'm managing is chicken scratchings on the page - fading ink and indentations, and they are leaving, they are leaving, they are leaving.

And then I'm alone, in infinite silence, and infinite space.

---

As the dream faded, I lay in the cool of dawn with the birds singing and an ache in my heart, a deep sadness and loneliness that was the last of the dream leaving, as if I was still standing there looking at a distant planet I couldn't ever go to. The distance in my soul felt enormous, bereft, searing. But it wasn't grief so much, but deep, deep love. Kahlil Gibran said that 'ever has it been that love knows not it's own depth until the hour of separation'. I was grieving and loving all in one terrible moment, knowing I was to be forever separated from those I loved so much. But there was also a sense of realisation that although I'd be left behind, they would go on elsewhere. I was meant to be here, and they there, wherever that was, and that was just the way things were meant to be.

---

---

This post is for @elamental, whose post here about dreams really resonated with me because of it's deeply personal and reflective nature. Sometimes, dreams are ways of understanding ourselves and our place in the universe. How beautiful our minds are. How much we love those around us, even as we sleep. Our anxieties play out in dream fields, teaching what we need to know when we stop to listen to what we know deep within.

---

---

@naturalmedicine II Discord Invite II #naturalmedicine

Discord 🧘About