Dream of: 08 December 1997 "Mental Patient"
I had decided to visit Myers (a former female classmate from high school). With my mother and a girl who apparently was my sister (not my actual sister), I walked down Third Street in Portsmouth, to the house where I thought Myers lived (actually it was the house where Williams, another former schoolmate, used to live). My mother looked as if she were only about 40 years old and the young girl was only about 10 years old. When we reached the front door of the white two-story frame house, I began having doubts about what I was doing. I didn't know Myers that well and I had never simply shown up at her house like this. Nevertheless, I went ahead and knocked.
A woman opened the door, and I looked up at her. I seemed rather small and she was towering over me. I asked her if the Myers still lived in this house and she told me they did. I told her I used to go to school with Myers and I asked her if Myers was there. I told her my name and I said that I had just happened to be in the neighborhood and that I had decided to stop by. Several other women crowded around just inside the door, but I didn't see Myers among them. The woman seemed to hesitate at first, but then she told me Myers wasn't able to come to the door at the moment. It was unclear whether Myers was asleep, or whether she might be ill.
Just as I was about to turn to leave, I saw Myers walk out of a back room toward the front door. She looked as if she might be in her mid 20s and had a broad smile on her face. She was wearing a long white heavy-cloth nightgown. I heard her mention my name and give instructions that I should be invited in. Although she was smiling all the while, and she seemed happy to know I had come to visit her, she never once looked at me.
It hadn't been my original intention to go inside, but since we had been invited, my mother, my sister and I stepped over the threshold, while Myers disappeared again into one of the back rooms. As we walked through the living room, I noticed a bed in the corner, and I had the impression somebody in the house might be ill, perhaps even Myers. My mother and sister sat next to each other on a couch, while I sat in an arm chair. The other women in the room also took seats.
Myers's father walked in and sat down next to me in a chair. He was middle-aged and had black hair. I tried to make conversation with him, commenting that he had lived in the house for a long time. I asked him if he had a dog, and he said he did. He asked me if I had a dog and I told him I had two Dalmatians.
I became self-conscious of what I was wearing. At first I thought I was wearing blue jeans, but then I began to think I was actually wearing pajamas. I also began to realize something else: I was currently a patient at a mental hospital. I also was beginning to remember I had seen Myers at the mental hospital just a few days earlier. I didn't think that she was a patient at the mental hospital, rather that she had just come to visit. I myself had been a resident of the mental hospital for about a month.
Apparently Myers's father knew I was a patient at the mental hospital; he mentioned that I had been through a lot in my life. Clearly he wouldn't consider it appropriate for me to date Myers, considering my condition. I didn't have any intention of dating her anyway; I just wanted to see her. Nevertheless I didn't want Myers's father to think that I had been in the hospital because I was insane -- rather, that I had only gone to the hospital because I needed a rest. Although I needed to recuperate from some stress, I wasn't crazy.
However the more I thought about it, the more I thought Myers also might be having some problems. After all, I had seen her at the mental hospital, she was still wearing her night gown in the middle of the day, and there was a bed sitting in the living room. Perhaps she wasn't that much different from me.
Copyright 2008 by luciddreamer2k@gmail.com
