Ish, read any Kafka? Your dream about being executed for the murder of a girl that even the executioners admitted was actually alive is very Kafkaesque.
I used to have dreams similar to the one you describe in your post, but they were even worse than yours.
Thay all started out the same way. I have committed a murder. That is, when the dream opens, I am already a murderer. I don't know the victim. I have no memory of having killed him/her; I have no idea of the motive for the killing. But there the dead body is, and I have to dispose of it, so as not to be "found out." Sometimes I try to saw up the body and put it into a suitcase (as the hero in a Lena Wertmuller film I once saw did). Sometimes I drag it off, looking for a furnace to burn it in. Sometimes I just dig a hole in the ground, pop the body in, and try to cover it over.
I am sweating all the time this is going on, of course. And the worst thing is the psychological state I am in: I feel irrevocably cut off from the human race. I have stepped "over the barrier," and I can never step back to the other side again. I have lost my innocence, my soul, forever. And I know that even if I succeed in hiding the body, spiritually I will remain in hell. It's horrible!
And then I wake up. It takes me about five minutes to realize that I have not killed anybody, that I am still on the "right" side of the barrier. And when I finally realize it, you can't imagine the feeling of relief that comes over me!
It has actually been years since I've dreamed those dreams. But I still remember them.
Pure guilt dreams, of course. There is nothing like a Puritan background, combined with early intense exposure to Irish Catholic nuns, to give birth to an overactive sense of guilt.
Yours is a guilt dream, too. Now, what on earth do you have to feel guilty about??
Joan |
