nightmare through a painting

[straygod]

Last night's dream open for interpretation if anyone feels like giving it a shot:

Third person POV, no direct involvement from myself, I took the role of the omnipresent observer. The subject was a girl in her twenties with achondroplasia (dwarfism), who had recently moved into a new house. On the walls of the stairwell hung a picture of a naked woman covered in white paint, wearing a horrified expression - in this picture her eyes were bulging with terror and her tongue was sticking out in a grotesque leer not unlike the faces pulled by maori or the All Blacks rugby team during the haka. The name Emily came up but I don't remember whether this was the name of the girl or the woman in the painting.

The girl started to become affected by the woman in this painting, who grew in strength and began haunting the house itself. At night she would press herself further into the wallpaper until body parts started to push through. Worn down by the events, the girl succumbed to her influences and was able to hear her voice, until she finally came through the wall completely and just hung there stuck to the stairwell, several feet off the ground, motionless except for her eyes, her expression fixed in this ugly protruding leer.

At this point the girl ran to her neighbour in hysterics. They put a blue blanket around her and offered her some peach tea. She then persuaded them to return with her to the house, and led them to the woman, who took them by the hand and pulled them and my POV through this sticky wall of black **** into the painting-world. At this point I was feeling complete and total terror and only saw a brief glimpse of this disjointed nightmare landscape - which was tinted a bizarre shade of dirty pale blue-grey-green, and the dimensions and angles of all the objects and inhabitants were misshapen and impossible to understand because they folded in on themselves and stretched to connect with limbs and joints that didn't make sense - before I woke up.

[Michelle11]

Third person perspective generally represents ideas that are being presented to us that we may not be aware of consciously. So a concept our subconscious wants us to know even if we don’t totally identify with what is happening. In this instance women were involved so the feeling emotional end of things. Dwarfism can be symbolic of low self worth or feeling small and insignificant in the world. Try as we might to stay out of such a house of horror sometimes our brains slip and we lose sight of our true nature. A picture has been painted for ourselves that we get very involved in. In this instance it seems as though there may be some negative self talk. A demeaning of the self on top of feeling insignificant in life. So an agreement that feeling small in the world is because there is something to ridicule about ourselves. Emily means admiring. This could indicate that there is a tendency to look at and focus on all the flaws and aspects that should be ridiculed in the self. This can lead to a lot of discomfort and pain about who we are as people in our core. This can be held inside sometimes where we are not even aware that it is there but your subconscious wants you to take a look at your self image. It seems it is a bit skewed in perspective seeing yourself as small and deserving of ridicule. You don’t but this may be a source of some sadness in you.

Quite frankly a big reason people get depressed isn’t because there is something wrong with them and they are flawed in character. Depression can actually act as a form of self preservation. When we feel insignificant in the world, feel ridiculed by others or ourselves it’s only natural to want to run and hide. Depression is a hiding from life and from ourselves so we can keep from feeling the shame of unworthiness. If we don’t put ourselves out there then we can’t be a target for getting hurt but the problem is the enemy isn’t outside. The enemy is within us believe that how we are treated means it is true we are unworthy. You may be ready to confront such thoughts within yourself and see the true beauty that resides inside. The path to self mastery doesn’t come from demeaning the parts we feel are weak or bad. It comes from understanding we aren’t perfect and aren’t meant to be so watch your self talk and if it is at all demeaning in any way, big or small, try to stop yourself. We can’t control how the world treats us but we don’t have to add to it by putting ourselves down. Even a little bit can be harming to our confidence and well being. You are brilliant, worthy and loved just the way you are but may have to weed out some lies to see the truth.