The Unconscious Boy, the unstuffed suitcase and the hissing boot

The Unconscious Boy, the unstuffed suitcase and the hissing boot

A woman is driving around calling for her son, a boy about seven years old. He is lying unconscious on the floor in our livingroom. Graham wants to stuff him in a suitcase and leave him for Keith, but I say no. The boy has special boots that blow up to form an insulating seal around the feet. One of them has fallen off and it hisses and hisses. I pick it up and listen to it hiss, a very upsetting sound, and look for a switch to turn it off. When I don’t find one, I open the front door, stick the hissing boot in the barren windowbox (painted white, bare dirt) and look up and down the street for the car with the woman so I can signal to her that we have her son. Friday, February 11, 2011

Ø I don’t know why the boy is unconscious. He is not dead.

Ø I don’t know why I didn’t signal the mother sooner. She is out of sight now. I seem to be moving in slow motion, sort of frozen in place for a while.

Ø I don’t know why the boy is at “our house”

Ø the boy I call Graham seems to be my stepson, but is not clearly Graham

Ø the father I call Keith seems to be my husband and the stepson’s father, but is not clearly Keith

Ø I don’t know why the stepson (Graham?) wants to stuff a live but unconscious boy in a suitcase and leave him for his father. We—Graham and I—seem to be leaving on a trip.

Ø I think there was more to the dream before this.

Ø I wake up very disturbed. The image of the boy in the suitcase and the hissing boot seem very ominous.

What does this remind me of?

Ø The bare window box where I stick the hissing boot makes me think of my mother’s house—the front porch and window box were just like hers. My mother, however, was not present in the dream, unless “I” was her, which I didn’t seem to be. The house reminds me not of the house I grew up in, but the house where my mother and father lived for many years after I left home. It was the last house my mother lived in, and I lived in it only briefly twice, once when Sara was a baby, and then briefly after my mother died while I was sorting through her things and taking care of her will etc.

Ø The unconscious boy reminds me of Graham, who seems to go through life not conscious of much of his surroundings, needs, commitments, other people, their needs etc.

Ø Graham’s wanting to stuff the boy in the suitcase reminds me of Graham’s violent video games

Ø Graham’s wanting to stuff the boy in the suitcase also reminds me of things I hide and have hidden throughout my life. And things I hide from myself or others or refuse to look at. Eg: extra eating. I stick to my diet sometimes, and sometimes, I grab a handful of potato chips or something worse (eg chocolate.) I am also “hiding” my past by not really revealing all of it. This is in part because I’ve been told not to—that is Blake and various other people told me not to tell all about my “sordid” past, but just to go on cheerfully (yeah right) as if it never happened. I used to want to “come clean” and tell people things that had happened or that I had done so there would be no secrets. Secrets, large and small. I’m mostly not unwilling to tell Keith, for example, anything that happened, I just don’t want to burden him. I feel somewhat less willing to tell Brian. I feel as if Keith loves me, I feel safe with him in that respect. I still feel somewhat like a “bad” person with Brian.

Ø I’d like to stuff everything bad in a suitcase and heave it off the back of a boat into the water. BUT the boy in the dream who is unconscious did not seem bad. Just his one boot. The left boot.

Ø Even though the unconscious child is a boy, he could represent my own lost inner child. (I was a tomboy who always wished I was a boy.) Perhaps I have stuffed my own unconscious (or memories or inner child) into a suitcase.

Ø The hissing boot reminds me of sounds I don’t like such as the vacuum cleaner, the exhaust fan in the kitchen and fireworks (etc). It is very ominous and frightening in some way.

Ø I often think I need to give myself a good boot—to get myself going or to punish myself.

Ø It could also represent death and dying (unconsciousness, being stuffed in a suitcase (grave).)