Inside Out

I dream from within others.

I've mentioned it before. I get a glimpse of their inner worlds, which says pretty much everything about who they really are as people or where they are currently at in those moments. All the stuff that people try to hide, I see. I don't always know who I am dreaming within, but sometimes it is obvious. 

It all has to do with whose energy I am connecting to at any given time. Last night's inner world I saw was vastly different from the inner world I saw on the previous night. Last night was filled with me trying to dodge catastrophe. An avalanche of stones were crumbling and falling on the population below. Everyone was running for cover. At times, it felt like some sort of race I was navigating and there were many points in which it felt like I wouldn't be able to get through, but did. Near the end, there was a small red room up high in which I am being told by the man with me that River used to live there but he was dead now. I remarked what a small room it was and how uncomfortable it must have been for him to live in such a small space. The man with me was carrying my baby, but loosely and there was danger of the baby falling from the heights we were at and dying. I got nervous and told him to hold onto the baby tighter so that he didn't fall. I told him if he let my baby die, I would kill him.

Illustration by Kay Nielsen, Words added by me.

The thing is, so often and with so many people I've been friends with, I have accepted that tiny room in their lives. Red is root chakra and often having to do with matters of survival. People often only come to me when they need me, they need my calm, they need me to lean on, they need a crutch and a supportive voice to cheer them on. When their world is falling apart, I'm the one people come to. 

The dream was showing someone who was experiencing chaos and crisis. There were repeated struggles and parts they didn't think they could get through. The "race" didn't have to be so difficult and, at times, it felt like the difficulty level was deliberate as a sort of testing. We have all experienced people who want to test us endlessly because of their own insecurities and trust issues.

Each of us as individuals are responsible for our own inner world. We are also responsible for who we invite into that inner space through connecting to their energy, so the wise person will be very discerning about who they connect with.

By KENXY (Kenji Takahashi) at DeviantArt

I'm guilty of allowing people to put me in a tiny red room like a fire alarm or axe labeled "in case of Emergency". I've allowed it because, in my warped sense of love, being needed felt like love. All being needed is is one half of codependency. I liked helping and taking care of people...to a fault, to a point it was detrimental to me and I am always in a loop of giving way more than I am receiving. I'm used to operating on emotional gas fumes, but it isn't a healthy place to be. When there wasn't someone needing me, I felt lost and without purpose. Being needed had become part of my identity.

Before I went to bed, I received a text from my ex BFF that said, "I miss you." I looked at the text without actually opening it and thought, "I can't respond to this right now." All kinds of thoughts were going through my head like, "You were the one who threw me away. You are always the one to end our friendship and I'm just supposed to accept you back like nothing happened." This has been the pattern.

In my mind, I believe the inner chaos I was seeing was hers because this is pretty much what she has been like during the 30 years I have known her. I don't hear from her for a long time and then, all of a sudden, she calls crying with a crisis. She also, like the first person POV in the dream, is the one to swiftly kill people off when they upset her, rather like they never meant anything to her. And people always accept her back, it's not just me she has this yo-yo pattern with. I guess that is her coping mechanism, which isn't very mature or healthy. If you actually love someone, wouldn't it be more productive to talk out the issues and work through them?

It's not that we shouldn't be there for people and care about each other. I think we should care about each other and want to give someone a boost when they are down. We all go through those low points. Thankfully, we don't all go through those low points at exactly the same time. We just need to be able to identify people who are vacuums, where the situation can easily become draining, codependent and unhealthy. We need to resist falling into those cycles...both of being the vacuum and being the over-giver kept in a tiny room up high in case of an emergency.

Art by Johfra Bosschart

The key is always balance, but becoming skilled at being able to recognize threats to our balance can also help us maintain it.