Freud and the Void

So I generally think that Freud is shit, but when it comes to dreams I can’t deny the truth of his psychoanalytical ideas. It hit me in one of those 4 AM epiphanies when finally, after being disturbed for some indefinite period of time, my body finally elicited a physical response to the dream, or perhaps nightmare, I had been having: I woke with a start, glazed in cold sweat, and laid for a few moments staring at the ceiling, trying to recall yet at the same time erase what I had just seen. I had wandered through a wasteland of blackened trees and oil-slicked ponds rank with the stench of decay. In between these physical landmarks there were dilapidated houses, some burning, some sliding down the muddy banks into the darkened bodies of water. In each of the houses were women, men, children, all resolutely refusing to leave. I ran to one house where a woman was standing in a window with her little boy while around them flames raged and pieces of the house blew off in fiery torrents. “Run out!” I screamed. “I can save you!” but she just stared back at me expressionlessly until finally I was forced to turn away in horror as they burned. I ran to another house that was folding upon itself, half submerged in one of the deathly bodies of water. There a woman was clinging to her porch railing as the house was steadily sucked down. I ran over and grabbed her arm, trying to pull her to safety, but the hold just dragged me along with her towards certain death. “What are you doing? You still have a chance!” I yelled, but I was not heeded. At the last moment I pulled my arm away and she sank into the abyss before my eyes. I continued to run among the houses, mad with grief as I saw all of the occupants fatalistically refusing to relinquish their positions. Finally I realized that I couldn’t save any of them unless they let me. There was nothing more I could do.

At that moment at 4 AM, I realized how this metaphor related to my own life beyond the world of my dreams. It is honestly the first time that my dreams have had a clear meaning in the Freudian sense of the dreamworld, but I know the meaning with such clarity as cannot be doubted. There is nothing I can do to help him, as much as it kills me to know it. He must make the choice to run from the fire, to save himself from falling into the void. I can’t do that for him; I never can. Last night made me realize that we can never separate dreams from life, they are intrinsically bound together in ways that are sometimes made manifest, yet oftentimes not. If we listen long enough our dreams will speak to us, revealing truths about lives we never knew.