Memories

Childhood frustrations often seem silly and irrelevant to adults, but I am beginning to believe they are much more deeply seated than I ever thought.

I wonder if my bad dreams are feelings drifting through time, still trying to work themselves out?

Why else would a retired woman dream that someone took apart her toy cars, destroyed her dolls,  left her feeling terrified and helpless?  And why else would she be waiting for her mother to come and make things right?  In this dream it was late at night and I was watching out the door for her car to come.  A car did come down the road, but it was an old cream colored sixties Mercury, not my mother's 1957 blue and white Ford Fairlane. And when my cousin knew she was close he tried to bite me.  I could feel his teeth on my hands as I held him off.

Such a juvenile dream, but so packed with emotions that I am still reeling.  If a friend had not texted me and woke me up I feel like I might have been trapped in it forever.
 
Of course, in real life, my cousin was never the problem, so why I would dream of him I don't know.

I wonder if insanity or senility is like that?  Trapped in the arms of Morpheus, forced to live in a surreal dream-scape where past demons reenact old feelings in twisted ways, spiraling over and over again through emotions long since buried?

If so, it is the best case I know for making sure we talk to the younger generation, help them express their feelings, allow them to lay them out on the table before they are buried deeply in the family plot. 

The childish abuses of tender spirits may grow into the nightmares of the future.