Dream analysis 101

I attended a dream analysis workshop with my mom and her boss last night. The lady who holds these seminars is amazing and lovely. I've been analyzing my own dreams for years as a hobby, and I realized after attending this workshop that I really have a lot to learn. She has an office across town from my house, and I'm looking forward to attending more of her workshops and seminars.

I've been somewhat lax about recording my own dreams lately; in truth, I've rather ignored them. I'm approaching the seven year 'anniversary' of Colin's death and it's hard this year. He died just after our 2nd wedding anniversary, and I'm about to celebrate my two year wedding anniversary with Jeff. That sounds way more complicated than it really is.

I feel stupid having anxiety over this - I know Jeff isn't going to do the same thing. It's such a non-possibility that it doesn't even seem worth mentioning, but that isn't changing the fact that I'm filled with dread. I feel as though I'll be fine once our 2nd anniversary passes. In the meantime, I feel weighted down by the looming notion that everything I love will be destroyed again.

The closer Colin's death-day gets, the worse my dreams get; they're vividly graphic and it's the same series I started having just after he died. Colin, ruined from the gun-shot, running away from me. Beckoning me to follow him, then losing himself in the crowd; always checking to be sure I'm following after him, but staying just out of my range. He keeps his wounded side away from me, so I can't see it properly but I know what it looks like. It's like the monster I saw as a child - it wasn't there if I looked straight at it but I could see it out of the corner of my eye, taking shape and overwhelming me. That's how I see his wound - barely out of the corner of my eye, which is worse. I feel like if I could see it clearly, I could scream out my horror and be done with it, but my cries are locked in stasis.

The other dream is me and my friends in a circle - the original group of guy-friends I had back then: me, Colin, Jeff, Ross, Mark, and Rudy. We're sitting in a circle passing a joint among us. Colin takes the joint, takes a hit and passes it on. Then he shoots himself. Jeff hits the joint, passes it on, then he shoots himself. I realize then they all have guns in their hands. And they are systematically hitting this joint, passing it on, then shooting themselves in my circle. I'm the last one left. I have the joint, but no gun. And all my friends are dead in a circle around me and there's no one there to help me.

I wake up from these dreams screaming and sick to my stomach, feeling as though I'll throw up. Every year around the date of his death I feel like this - I have more dreams about him, I have anxiety and mild panic, I experience depression. Since I know why it's happening I can just ride it out but it seems more pronounced each year.

Last nights' dream workshop with Gabi re-motivated me to focus on my dreams again, and I'm hoping that if I spend some energy analyzing them and maybe gaining some insight (besides the obvious) about what I can do to alleviate this awful feeling I have, it won't be as bad.

In everything else that's going on, I'd almost forgotten that today would have been our nine year wedding anniversary. I don't know why I still think of our wedding anniversary after all this time, but I think it will always be with me.