Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree of Freedom .
It’s amazing what the subconscious will dredge up when you least expect it. Whether dreams are a blender mix of the day’s events, your deepest fears, or actual prophecy, they’re worth listening to. I like to think of them as trying to tell me something, whether it’s something I already know that hasn’t otherwise surfaced or something.
I need to recognize and work through. I can go weeks without remembering a single dream, and then in two days’ time, have three dreams about the same person wake me with a holy-crap-what-was-that?
My shaman friends tell me our souls visit each other in the Dreamtime and cherish there the way we accept each other and treasure each other to be who we are. I think that’s a beautiful thought—because visiting is not an option in our busy daily lives.
In one dream, I stand with him in someone else’s kitchen and we talk discreetly, letting no one know our feelings for the other and denying them to ourselves as well. It ends with a promise to follow through on all the things he’d promised to do that I had never expected from him and yet all he can do for now is tell me it isn’t time yet and all I can do is understand. I don’t like it, but I understand.
The next day, in another dream, he comes again, this time in his car and offers me a ride. I don’t remember most of the dream, later. It fades, but I remember the end. He is on his way to see a friend about a project. I’m not going there, have no business going there, don’t expect to go there, but he asks if I want to ride along and suddenly we are half-way there before I can tell him I need him to drop me off at my house. But I don’t say anything. It isn’t important. We are having too much fun talking for me to ask him to stop, to go back, to let me go back to what I was doing.
As we travel together, he tells me all about his current project and I share his excitement. We speak of music, both in song and of the spheres. He is trying to tune in to Nature, to record and emulate the exact sound of the Summer crickets. We are laughing and smiling and joking and saying, “yeah, yeah, yeah” to each other and nodding and I lose all track of time and where I am. I am in the moment, something I’m often not.
Then as we near his destination, many miles from my home, I realize I should have told him to drop me off at my house. I doubt I’ll end up at the same destination. I’d only been along for the ride and gotten caught up in his energy. I didn’t mean to be here, don’t expect to be here.
I expect he’ll drop me at the house of a former friend and I don’t want to go there but I haven’t had time to tell him what had happened with this friend. We pass her house and don’t even slow. Maybe he knows? I am still riding with him. I didn’t expect to be, but I am.
Then we slow at another turn, and a woman I know, a mutual acquaintance, waves him down to say hello. My heart sinks because I worry that he is about to put me out with her, to leave me here with someone I don’t want to be with, but I fully expect it. After all, I never expected to accompany him to his destination. I’d never asked to. He’d never asked. And this is the last stop.
But he doesn’t stop or pull over. He doesn’t hide the fact that I shared the car ride with him. He doesn’t make our friendship obvious to this woman or to anyone else, but he does nothing to hide it either. He acknowledges the woman and drives on, passing her, taking me with him.
We arrive together at his destination and I am still surprised. And as I exit his car and follow him to meet his friends and see his newest project, I realize that he brought me along to enjoy what he’s created out of nothing and to create even more out of nothing with him.
I wake with a gasp and wonder why it is that I had simply been along for the ride, for whatever was there, and that I’d been so sure I’d end up somewhere I didn’t want to be instead of exactly where I loved to be.
The next night, in another dream, he comes again. But not at first.
I’m in this house. It’s not mine or one I’ve ever physically been in, but I’m comfortable enough there. I don’t know whose it is. It’s more like a B&B I’m in while traveling. Older, very spacious, nice bedrooms with older furniture but not necessarily elegant. Comfortable. Pleasant. The place is empty except that a female friend is here with me. She’s alone but she doesn’t talk about it. She’s just close by, sitting on the bed in one of the rooms I’m in and she’s fretting with the clothes or whatever is in an open suitcase on the bed. Sitting there sort of touching the items in the suitcase and rearranging them. She’s somber and non-excitable.
I’m excited, though. He is coming. He’s meeting me here…shortly. At the house. We’re going to spend time alone together there. She knows this and she’s still sorta lah-di-dah, just messing with the stuff in her suitcase. I don’t necessarily expect her to leave, but I expect her to be out of our way when he arrives. Whatever’s going on with him or about to go on with him is between us and she knows it. Her close proximity is not going to be welcome by either of us.
It’s not like she’s putting me down that he is coming, but she’s downplaying it. She’s telling me he has no affection for me except as a sister. So it doesn’t matter that she’s here. She tells me she’s above this kind of relationship. She doesn’t see his allure.
He arrives and there’s no public affection between us, but it’s warm and lovely, and this time, we’re not just talking but looking into each other’s eyes. We’re excited to see each other. We’re standing in a bedroom, a different one than she was in, I think, and talking and maybe holding both sets of hands and we face each other. We’re very excited. I think we both traveled to this place. Hours on the road to get here. We want to be together and be alone together. There’s much to talk about. We both look at her, but she’s not leaving. She’s hanging close to us. She doesn’t want to be alone, but she’s not showing it. When he goes to another room to get something, I tell her we need our privacy and she blows me off. She knows how long I’ve waited to talk to him like this. I don’t understand.
She doesn’t leave. She doesn’t move except to recline on the bed. She doesn’t want him, but she’s alone and doesn’t want me with him either. I ask her why she won’t give me some privacy after all the trouble I’ve gone to to get to this place in my life and for him to get to this place in his life and for us to actually meet and talk about everything.
She leans back and looks up at me and says, “Think of all the things I’ve told you about him and all the things I haven’t. As long as you let me tell you whatever I want to about him, I control your access to him.”
As I wake, the light is just dawning.
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