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mokie_edomMy father's marriage and hostages
Had an unpleasant dream this morning, at the edge of waking. I only remember the details and the tone, not all of the sinews binding the plotting together.
In essence, my mother's sister was getting married. To my father. In part of the dream, I approached the door of the suburban house they shared and my aunt was sitting on the porch, much younger than she is in waking life, and I wondered what the hell she was thinking. Inside, in a pastel blue room straight out of the '60s, my father was being loud, obnoxious and abusive, talking about kids and his rights and such.
Oh yes, the kids. A young boy and girl in the dream, two kids from the family (I think they were supposed to be a cousin's kids, in the dream), were there. My father and aunt were going to adopt them, but in his case, it was just to have a hold over someone, or for the money, or something like that. I was concerned but helpless.
Notes and explanations
#1. My father recently contacted my older (half)sister and my stepmother, trying to get from them contact information for my mother.
#2. I think my aunt appears in the dream as a stand-in for my mother. She had the same hair color that my mother currently has (my aunt usually keeps hers darker), and she's in a longterm relationship with a man who happens to have the same first name as my father, and we never call my father by anything but his first name around here, because we hate him that much. Maybe subbing her in as Mom's understudy is less squicky for me than putting Mom in directly.
Alternately, my aunt has been with a few abusive bastards in her time. It could be that, in dreaming of my father as an abusive bastard, my brain inserted my aunt rather than my mother, who dropped his ass like a rock when he got abusive with her (go Mom!).
Finally, coincidentally, she's how my mother and father met. I wasn't there at the time of course, but maybe there's some deep down mental association because of knowing that.
#3. Two children in my family were taken away by social services some years back. When my older (half)sister visited to talk to us about our father trying to get in touch, she also updated us on that story: after much fuckery and legal squirming, the kids have finally been adopted out of the family. They're gone. Permanently. It hurts, it's wrong, there was nothing I could do to help, and there's nothing I can do now, but I still feel guilty over doing nothing.
#4. When I was much younger, my mother warned my stepgrandmother not to let my father take my (half)sisters with him one day. She suspected he planned to leave the state and take the girls with him, to hold them over my stepmother's head since she wasn't doing what he wanted her to do.
There's a reason we hate him, and why my mother watched us carefully on the rare occasions when he visited...
#5. The blue room seemed a cross between the living room of our old house as it was when I was a child (except it was yellow) and the front room in my stepgrandmother's house as it was when I was a child (except they it was green).
#6. The two children, a girl and a boy, were dressed in yellow/white '70s summer clothes, very clean, as if they were dolls never let out of their display cabinets.
I don't know if the color has any significance, but the dated clothing, combined with the dated room and my too-young aunt enhance #4's retro-creepy factor.
Had an unpleasant dream this morning, at the edge of waking. I only remember the details and the tone, not all of the sinews binding the plotting together.
In essence, my mother's sister was getting married. To my father. In part of the dream, I approached the door of the suburban house they shared and my aunt was sitting on the porch, much younger than she is in waking life, and I wondered what the hell she was thinking. Inside, in a pastel blue room straight out of the '60s, my father was being loud, obnoxious and abusive, talking about kids and his rights and such.
Oh yes, the kids. A young boy and girl in the dream, two kids from the family (I think they were supposed to be a cousin's kids, in the dream), were there. My father and aunt were going to adopt them, but in his case, it was just to have a hold over someone, or for the money, or something like that. I was concerned but helpless.
Notes and explanations
#1. My father recently contacted my older (half)sister and my stepmother, trying to get from them contact information for my mother.
#2. I think my aunt appears in the dream as a stand-in for my mother. She had the same hair color that my mother currently has (my aunt usually keeps hers darker), and she's in a longterm relationship with a man who happens to have the same first name as my father, and we never call my father by anything but his first name around here, because we hate him that much. Maybe subbing her in as Mom's understudy is less squicky for me than putting Mom in directly.
Alternately, my aunt has been with a few abusive bastards in her time. It could be that, in dreaming of my father as an abusive bastard, my brain inserted my aunt rather than my mother, who dropped his ass like a rock when he got abusive with her (go Mom!).
Finally, coincidentally, she's how my mother and father met. I wasn't there at the time of course, but maybe there's some deep down mental association because of knowing that.
#3. Two children in my family were taken away by social services some years back. When my older (half)sister visited to talk to us about our father trying to get in touch, she also updated us on that story: after much fuckery and legal squirming, the kids have finally been adopted out of the family. They're gone. Permanently. It hurts, it's wrong, there was nothing I could do to help, and there's nothing I can do now, but I still feel guilty over doing nothing.
#4. When I was much younger, my mother warned my stepgrandmother not to let my father take my (half)sisters with him one day. She suspected he planned to leave the state and take the girls with him, to hold them over my stepmother's head since she wasn't doing what he wanted her to do.
There's a reason we hate him, and why my mother watched us carefully on the rare occasions when he visited...
#5. The blue room seemed a cross between the living room of our old house as it was when I was a child (except it was yellow) and the front room in my stepgrandmother's house as it was when I was a child (except they it was green).
#6. The two children, a girl and a boy, were dressed in yellow/white '70s summer clothes, very clean, as if they were dolls never let out of their display cabinets.
I don't know if the color has any significance, but the dated clothing, combined with the dated room and my too-young aunt enhance #4's retro-creepy factor.
