fear of falling
I had the most godawful dream this morning. It's fading now, so I don't remember most of it but while I was dreaming it was real in the most vivid, detailed sense. I believe what it began as was a visit from my family. We were all planning on going out to dinner and mom was, as is often the case, stressing everyone out. This time she seemed to be getting on my case in particular, criticizing the way Justin and I were living together, telling me how I looked ugly and dressed awfully. (She doesn't do this for real, except more "subtly" sometimes... and usually it doesn't have ANYTHING to do with personal appearance.) What was just a mounting annoyance at first turned into a shouting match in the middle of a restaurant with my sisters making snyde comments and my dad standing complacently by. Mom started threatening me because I was wearing low-rise jeans (yeah this part is stupid, I know) and telling me to at least, for god's sake, pull up my panties. At this point she starts tugging up my underwear until they're past my bellybutton and I look extremely, excruciatingly stupid. Now I'm beyond mad, I tear her hands off of me, slap her across the face, and tell her never to touch me again because what right does she have to change me. She tells me every right, and proceeds to take out her checkbook and decides to cut off my financial aid. Somehow in the dream, this amounted to ME writing HER a check for $849 (equivalent to all my living expenses) every month. So basically she wanted to take all my money unless I changed who I was.

Bear in mind, this of course sounds trite now, but was much more excruciating and detailed during... all I can remember is bearbones. Anyway, the awful part is yet to come. After mom tried to get me to take her money, I told her (in so many words) to fuck off at which point she left the restaurant. I can't remember what occurred right afterwards, except that I talked to my dad for a bit and he encouraged me to go outside where mom was and confront her about why I felt she was demanding unreasonable things from me. I left the restaurant and went outside, where mom was laying on the railing of the deck with her hands over her face. I thought I was willing to talk but when I saw her I was so angry and snyde that I decided I wanted to push her off the railing onto the ground (or sand, we might have been on a beach) about 5 feet below. I figured that would get her attention. So I walked over and shoved her off the edge. She opened her eyes and fell and as she fell I looked over the edge and realized that I hadn't just pushed her off the railing onto the beach but she was falling and falling off the edge of an overpass above countless hundreds of feet and layer upon layer of interlaced freeway overpasses. Then the sick feeling hit me that I'd killed my mother with that one little shove and I saw through veiled eyes as she fell with her arm outstretched and her mouth open until she hit the puddled cement a thousand feet below with a bloody thump.

At that moment, raw emotion overwhelmed sleep or my brain saw fit to end the dream and I woke sobbing into the pillow, listening to the sounds of Justin showering before work. What stayed with me, besides the absolute disgust and terror of the dream, were the thoughts that went through my brain as I realized what I'd done in a moment of rash action. The feeling that I would be forever unforgiven.

After a few minutes I calmed myself but went back to sleep to similarly disturbing dreams that involved cinema, petsitting a dead cat, and terrorist shootouts. Where is my mind?