Strap yourself in and prepare for a bumpy ride into the deepest, darkest landscapes of my subconscious, because it’s time to get Freudian!
I am tormented by nightmares. Correction: I am tormented by a nightmare. It’s a recurring feature and it is disrupting my already disturbed sleep all too frequently. Allow me to elaborate. The setting and situation tends to differ slightly each time the dream reappears but the general scenario remains the same. Basically, I have a baby in my care, a girl who is very obviously my own offspring; in the dream, I am fully aware of the fact that this is my biological child. Without going into detail, the course of events of this nightmare always leads to my baby being forcefully taken from me in some cruel and unusual circumstances. While this in itself is a distressing experience, what’s worse is what follows: I tend to wake in floods of tears with a haze of confusion hovering over my head; for a few minutes afterwards, I tend to find myself actually searching for the baby girl from my dream until I grow accustomed to the fact that I am now in my waking state, safe from the horrors of my nightmares, and that I actually do not have this child. This adds all too greatly to the entire experience, as I suddenly and rather uncomfortably begin to feel a sense of grieving loss, even in my waking life.
I am sure that my attempt to emphasise the point that it is a baby girl who features in my dream has not gone unnoticed (at least, I hope that has been an obvious emphasis). This is because this is not the first time I have experienced this brand of vision; I have regularly dreamed of losing a baby boy since around 2012. Coincidentally, the arrival of this recurring nightmare coincided with my fifteen year old self learning what it felt like to genuinely have your heart broken. Don’t worry, I will now allow for a pregnant pause to allow the readers to deliver their collective, “Awww…”
So, I had grown used to losing my baby boy (well, as much as you can…it does tend to reappear from time to time, but it acts as a comfort now more than a nuisance). The girl, however, knocked me for six, as the idiom goes.
So, what does it all mean? Looking at it from a positive perspective, I would suggest that the baby is a metaphor for my old self, this weak, wilting thing which had no independence whatsoever, both literally due to my physical state and from the disorder. That being said, my body image has been the lowest of the low after the past fortnight or so, the phrase, “I want to rip my eyeballs out so I never have to look at myself ever again,” featuring way too frequently in my vocabulary of late. I fear that, no matter how hard I may try, I see anorexia as my baby; this thing which I own. It is my own creation, it is part of me…and it tears me apart to lose it.
So I shall open the floor up to interpretations. Please feel free to put your two cents in. This is your time to exercise your right to psychoanalyse; who knows, maybe we’ll find the next Freud, Jung or Klein amongst my small but loyal readership?
-Niamhy xx
High Priestess Resurrected 