maybe a message

I tend to remember the dreams I have. I think it's because I tend to be a light sleeper, and I wake up around the end of a dream. And then I often remember them into the next day. Sometimes that's good; a lot of the time, not so much.

But sometimes I think I should pay attention to them, because they are perhaps messages from the deep part of my brain I normally try to keep shut up with busy-ness.

And yeah, I know, a lot of people have been having uncomfortable dreams during the whole pandemic, partly from stress, though I suspect also for a lot of people like me, it's because we're alone so much and in our own heads so much and stuff builds up.

But last night I had one that maybe tells me something I need to consider once it's safe to come out.

In the dream, there was either a flood or something like a tsunami coming. And I had the job - or, more likely, I had taken on the job myself - of getting some animals to safety. Don't read too much into it that it's *animals,* usually my dreams are about animals and they often stand in for people or concepts*


(*Like: I frequently dream I have cats I am neglecting the care of when there's something in my life I need to attend to)

There were cats, because pretty much cats always feature in my dreams (also seeing the roaming neighborhood cats - some of the few other living creatures I see regularly now). There were also pigs, but small cute pigs. I suspect it's because I got to the part of "The Book of Three" last night where they found Hen Wen and were reunited with her, so pigs, especially the small cute kind, were on my mind.

Anyway, I was herding them to one place they would be safe - the area (I don't remember exactly what it is called) of my church up where the pulpit and choir loft and lectern are (they are higher than the rest of the sanctuary; they are in most traditionally-built churches). I had to get them up there and encourage them to stay there because apparently it was the safest place - and I had to go and grab a couple other cats roaming around in the sanctuary and then I looked out the front door (and the church was really kind of a hybrid of the one I currently belong to, and the one in Illinois I belonged to - like that church, there was a set of steep steps down to the street). And it was already raining and the wind was blowing and I knew it was going to get bad fast so I grabbed the couple of cats and headed back up towards the "safe place." And then I woke up.

(I had another, briefer one, where I was the person who exercised the small fluffy dog of someone who was unable to, I just remember having the dog's toy in my hand and telling the dog "The beach isn't safe to go to today, we'll have to figure out somewhere else to run")

I wonder if....after all this is over....it means I'm being called to some kind of additional work where I have a "protective" role. I don't know what that would be. The first thing that springs to mind is CASA (court-appointed special advocates - a group that goes to court with children when they have to testify, to be a supportive adult in cases where maybe no one in the kid's family is) but I also know I'm not great with children and not always comfortable around them. I don't know if there's a similar advocacy role but for seniors (then again - I am close to that age group now myself, which is bizarre to me) or for people leaving an abusive relationship. Or maybe something else?

Or maybe when this is all over, if I still have a job? I will be so busy with it I won't have time. (Though then again: maybe someday I will retire, if there's any money to, and will need something to do).

But yeah. I think some of my distress in this is that the many little things I did for people in the past, a lot of those things are just suspended and I miss it; it was part of my role and part of my meaning in life and now I am thinking about something I read about the 2000 outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease in the UK, where large numbers of animals were euthanized to stop the spread, and on some farms where the sheep were gone, the sheepdogs showed symptoms of what would be called "depression" in a human - because they had lost their purpose. (And some farms fixed that by inviting people to come to them, and to let the dogs herd THEM, and apparently that helped?)

I suspect a lot of us are mourning the (hopefully temporary) losses of our purpose. Maybe it hits a little harder for me, because so much of that was - out there - and when I returned home it was to rest and be alone (and in families staying together, they have each other to care for).