I wish you could understand half of what I feel, and this is best way I can tell you. . . .
Once the breeze comes and snuffs out the candle, there is no hope of relighting it. Candles are meant to burn to their ends, but my candle had no shelter from the storm. The rain has been falling for quite some time, and in the end it will find a way to wash everything away. The storm has been sheltering the sun until a great typhoon lifts me from these feelings inside; and then all at once, I can feel it crush me. If tonight should be the night that I decide to drown, then that means the time we have borrowed has to be given back.
From the start I have been cursed by a dream. My only friend is a hollow shadow on the pavement. I have ran as far and fast as I could from the things that kept me down, but a shadow always has a way of finding you. I tried to find some light to shine on this dream, but I fear today is the day that it all seems to fade. When the dream finally rests and everything stills, a nightmare breaks free and takes away all hope. In this nightmare when I feel that I’m lost, I can always look back and find my shadow, my companion. Sometimes the nightmare is better than real life. This is my life and it’s not all that it seems.
As I run down the street looking for hope, I fear that no one is listening. A sinking feeling fills my stomach as pain enters me until I rip apart. I know that there is no other way out, and I know that I am not strong enough, but today is the day that we wake up and it all gets torn away. This is my chance to save myself.
I don’t think I was ever right. I know I could have tried harder to devote more time to us and the family, but it was hard enough keeping me stable. I appreciate all the sacrifices you made, and now it’s my turn. This is your new chance to get what you deserve without any hindrances. Let me explain: You know how women like to stand in the mirror and fix their hair and makeup for hours. Well imagine looking into a shattered mirror and loosing hope that you will ever be able to get you hair and makeup right. Out of desperation you finally leave the house hoping that it is good enough. Well that’s how I feel every day. I look into a shattered mirror, trying to collect my thoughts and pain, and after years and years I have to leave and hope that it is good enough.
I don’t think about this as taking the coward’s way out, I look at it as someone who could not hold on to the rope any longer; someone whose hands have been burned by the rope for the struggle of just one more day. Sometimes no matter how deep you shove the soldering iron into your brain, the grief, anxiety, pain and failure can just not be erased.
4 comments
Interesting dream.
Did you know in Jungian Physiology the shadow represents both the worst and best aspects of ourselves that we tend to repress into our unconscious?
Unconscious we will likely project our shadow onto others. (What you fear in others is also in you, what you admire in others is also in. Work with the shadow leads to compassion for others and yourself. )
That your shadow is a friend would indicate that you are repressing a better part of yourself and that your true self wants to shine a light on it and bring it forth.
Did you know that many people fear success more than they do failure?
You run down the street looking for hope as if hope is something you find and not something you have.
Something you appeal to, the hope of finding hope…
If only I had hope I would live is the hope of a dog chasing its tail.
The ***** goddess hope laughs
Hope is not passive, eyes closed; hope is active, eyes open!
Do not appeal to hope.
Hope is a sword that cuts both ways, to wield it well requires skill and training, Most people are not skilled, you are not skilled, but the good news is, you don’t need hope!
In a dream all characters and elements are part of the dreamer
When you say no one is listing, the dream is suggesting that you are not listening.
Your fear of your shadow and your appeal to hope is getting in your way.
Your soul self is telling you that these attitudes have to die but your ego self fears that the death of these attitudes will be the death of itself, so you are “torn and ripped apartâ€. But that is a good thing! To become we must also un-become.
You “Know†( Gnosis – your soul knows) that there is no other way; you must integrate your shadow.
Its time!
The paradox of life is that to live well one must learn to die well, to let the moments arrive and pass on.
To be individuated, to be transparent to the transcendent, to become one must work at taking back ones projections and shadow and that taking back requires a kind of dying.
The good news is that your dream is telling you that within this shadow you will find a friend!
You will find a part of yourself you haven’t yet experienced, a part that will let your soul self sing!
First post in a long while to seize my attention… I’ll print it and keep it in my notebook… I hope you don’t mind…
Tonight is a disaster waiting to happen.
It was more of a poetry attempt at frustration. I see where you are coming from psychologically, but I have only had one real dream my entire life. I know people have dreams, but I have never remembered one, ever, except the one I had when I was 8. The word play could in fact have a deeper meaning like you express, but that was not my intentions. The shadow being my only friend is an analogy to the fact, that besides my wife, I have no friends. It was meant to show that no matter how bad things get, you always have yourself. The inner turmoil and thought processes that invoke your mind when you are your own company is exhausting and overwhelming.
The first part goes to show that a “disaster” has struck. No matter how hard I try things tend to fall apart, over and over. The storm has all but consumed me, and no matter how hard I try, things will never be the way they were. Change is scary, but for someone like me, who obviously has a mental illness, it is the scariest thing in the world.
The fourth and fifth parts go on to explain how hard I have tried. I heard the phrase one time about people that want to commit suicide. It went something like, “It doesn’t show how weak you are, it shows how long you have been strong.” That’s the main point behind the ending of it.
Thanks for clarifying
When is a dream a dream?
Active imagination, poetry, art, dreams they are all used by in inner soul self to express itself.
I don’t believe the words you used to express yourself were coincidence.
Like Umbra your post has seized my attention – your true self crying out.
Pain and Art
“No matter how hard I try, things will never be the way they wereâ€
That is true and suggests you are stuck in hope past which is regret – grasping at the past is like grasping at air and so is unhelpful. As Heraclitus wrote:
“You cannot step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.â€
I can’t tell you things will never be the way you would like. But neither can you know that “things will neverâ€
Our lives literally change with every breath we take. Oxygen is burned, cells die and are replaced – Everything is on its way to becoming something else, giving itself up in the service of another.
I can’t tell you things will never be the way you would like but can tell you that words matter and “all or nothing†thinking purpose is to create pain. You’re not required to go around all day thinking happy thoughts and crap like that but that when you catch yourself thinking in absolutes to stop. No need fill in the gap, not need to seek out hope, no need for justifications, just stop.
Grief, anxiety, pain and failure are not erased… but always transform… change, stagnation, inspiration, hopelessness, call to life, a call to death, nothing remains what it was.
“Change is scary“
True – And the next moment arrives regardless if we feared it or not, so no reason to hold on to fear taking it along as part of our baggage. Fear is a tool to get our attention once we are aware it has served its purpose.
He who does not expect the unexpected will not find it out – Heraclitus
We are “little lights; sparks flying upward in dark places, trying to stay alight compiled toward ash. Nearly extinguished one movement, than orange and luminous the next.†– Ayana Mathis
Thoughts of suicide are nothing to fear, just a tool to make us aware that we are holding on to tightly to life as expectation instead of with expectation, grasping what can’t be grasped, time to learn how to “unclench your fingersâ€