I take a pause leaning back in my office chair, my arms resting comfortably on the arms of the seat. I’m staring at my computer screen, intensely focused on the work. I feel something crawling around my arm and I look down to find a snake slowly wrapping itself around my arm. I am too terrified to move as the snake continues its progression, bringing its head around my hand which is frozen in midair, fingers stretched. The snake pauses momentarily to lock eyes with me before taking a bite out of my hand. I scream but no sound comes from my mouth.
My eyes fly open as I’m sucking in huge breaths of air and I realize I’m in my bed. My heart races and I immediately start to cry. I reach out for my partner and wrap my arms around him, squeezing hard. Concerned, he asked me what is wrong, and I tell him about my dream. Once I am calm, I get up to go to work. On the bus ride to the city, I Google “snake bite dream meaning” trying to process what I just experienced. Several months later, I would learn the dream was a warning from the deepest parts of my own intuition. There was a snake, maybe several, within my mists and I was getting ready to be bitten in real life by some of the people closest to me.
I have always been careful about sharing my dream stories with people. Mostly because I was overly concerned about sounding crazy. Much in the way I felt crazy this time last year, telling my Mom and Sisters about a terrifying dream I had about a birthday party. I had assumed it was my party since my birthday was approaching. However, I was visited at the party by my Pop Pop who had passed over a decade ago. I uttered the words, “What are you doing here?” At that moment I began to wake up but not before I watched him carry away a singing baby girl. My Mom asked me if I was okay, my sisters shared in my fears. Who was the singing baby girl?
I shared the story with a coworker and dear friend of mine. I had told him about my snake dream, and we bonded over our mystical experiences with dreams. Where dreams about animals or even sexual experiences had been a common place for me. Dreams about dead people only happened when my relatives die and until recently, we had not had many deaths in my family. I appreciated his concern and help trying to identify the singing baby girl. A few months later, after her 94th birthday, Mom Mom went home to be with Pop Pop. In hindsight, it should have been obvious to me, but I still was not accepting what was right in front of my eyes.
I have come to understand my dreams are not a foretelling but more of a mixture of intuition and my subconscious resolving my real-life experiences with trauma, anxiety and fear. Again, something that should have been obvious to me since the majority of my dreams are nightmares. I never experience happy endings in my dreams even the lusty ones. I usually wake in a state of fear or frustration. When I am happy, my mind is calm and I do not dream. This makes my dreams a key element in managing my mental health. When I analyze my dreams within the context of my current state of mind and my real-life situations, I can start addressing the areas of my life that are troubling me. This is something I didn’t understand at the time of my snake dream nor several nightmares after this one. It is only in this season of my life, when my world has slowed and I have the luxury of time for reflection, I have discovered the key to my vivid nightmares.
I would love to dream of fairy tales but it seems the only way to my happily-ever-after is by conquering the demons in my nightmares.
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