[Zenobia]

What a night. It is bad enough that I am not sleeping well to begin with but then to throw in a nightmare or two just isn't fair. How's this dream for creepy?

I am with a couple of friends when a fight breaks out between us and I kill one of them. My other friend decides that I need to die for it so she tricks me back to her house by saying she is going to help me escape from the police. Her place is like an auto repair shop where she lives with her brother. She tries to get me into a car where she will trap me and kill me somehow (I don't remember the details here) and I shoot her. Her bother and his friends see this happens and come after me. I run out side, slide down an embankment to a river and am running along in the sand. As I run I flash back to all the people I have killed. Everyone I have ever come in close contact with has died because of me. I don't want to live with this burden anymore so I turn to face her brother and tell him to kill me. " I deserve to die please kill me." Now for some reason there is a bulldozer next the the river he climbs in and I stand there and wait for him to run me over. Well he can't. His friends are all around me, but none of them will kill me so I take my knife and and slit my wrists. As I bleed I tell him to get as far away from me as they can so that when I die whatever is in my doesn't get into them. The brother says he wants to see me die to make sure I am gone. I tell him to stay until I pass out then get away before I die. Then come back and burn me. I tell him this because I know I will not die...or should I say that I will come back. My only hope is if he burns me. I die, but am concious and he starts piling wood on top of me and his friends get gas and I burn. There is no pain. I watch them go, they are satisfied. I get up, charred and brittle and walk away knowing that I will be fine a little while.
Carrie

[Rapunzel]

Carrie,

That really is some nightmare! Were the people in the dream people you know in real life? Do you have any ideas about what it might mean? Or what your unconscious might be trying to tell you?

[Zenobia]

The last friend I killed (in the dream of course, ha ha) was my best friend from highschool. I lost her as a friend when I got totally wasted and kissed the guy she was on a date with. He is now my husband of 16 years but I still miss her dearly. She says she has forgiven me but it was quite traumatic for me, losing my best childhood friend. Sigh.

I have been trying to think about the dream as if all parts are parts of me. If I think of it that way it is actually a good dream. For the past 4 years I have been killing off parts of me, all the maladaptive coping "friends" that I once depended on. Would it not make sense that I would kill off my best friend last of all before surrendering the fight and allowing the old me to die and be reborn? That leaves the brother and all his friends. What are they? If we think of my self injuring as my best friend, the one coping skill that calmed me when nothing else would, then it makes sense that when she dies I would be set upon by many different pyschosis, surrounded by all the things that I kept at bay by using SI. But by surrendering to them, I find that they can not kill me. They do not have that power. I however can kill myself, and do so knowing that I will come back battered and hurt but eventually well again.

What continues to scare me about the dream is the draining of me and the burning of me. It is so dramatic. Will this process send me to the hospital? In the dream I am frightened as i run from them but when I turn and face them the fear fades to acceptance of their pain and sorrow for what has been done to them. My dying will bring them peace. It ends with them walking from the fire then me rising and walking in the opposite direction. This is a hopeful sign.
Carrie

[Rapunzel]

You have so much better insight in to what your dream means than anyone else would who might try to interpret it for you. I commend you for being able to analyze it the way you did. There are a lot of hopeful things in this, such as that you knew that you would be okay. So you are like a phoenix which dies and burns, but is reborn from the ashes. You are also being reborn and starting a new, healthier life.