Follow Your Dreams

We’ve all heard that phrase “follow your dreams” and I assume we all have tried to do that exact thing. I believe your mind does some weird stuff up there and it is more powerful over our actions than we even know. Therefore here is the dream I just had (in story form) and I am SURE it means something very important and makes sense but I need help figuring out what (names and locations have been changed for the safety of those involved):

THE BEGINNING

She looked like Ron Swanson’s mother from Parks and Rec, Tammy. She was a very nice lady though and she invited me in the house where I was supposed to be helping her do some work. Her name was Sharon and her house smelled like cats and cigarettes but it was oddly reminiscent of a combination of grandmothers I had met over the years. Except she was only 50 years old. As I am helping her with some house work she keeps stopping and staring at me. I was reaching up in the cupboard to put something away and Sharon slowly peered around the corner and looked at me intently.

“Hey” I said.
“Hi” she said.
“Is there anything else you need help with?” I said.
“I don’t think so, but I got you a gift” Sharon replied.

She brings out a Nike box of brand new basketball shoes. They were awesome, I was super excited! I thanked her and she told me to wait one more second. Sharon walked back to her room and then emerged holding another bag. This one was filled with a pair of black and teal yoga pants and a tank top along with another box of running shoes. I was taken aback by this as I didn’t really understand why she was giving me so many gifts. Was there more to this story? Was she making up for not having children? Did one f her daughters die? Was she trying to have sex with me? All relevant answers to the question. I asked her if she was sure she wanted to give these things to me and she said it was the least she could do for having me help her.

Finally, a third time she goes back to the bedroom and brings back full arms of other workout clothes and shoes. Maybe she was telling me I needed to work out? That seems rude but she had been watching me closely all day, so she would know, I thought to myself.

She set the pile of clothing on the couch near the previous gifts. As I looked at this pile I realized it was not new items they were used and looked like they had come out of a laundry basket. Each item I looked at seemed more and more familiar until it hit me that these were all my clothes. Sharon, this seemingly nice middle-aged lonely woman just brought me a pile of my own dirty clothes, as a gift. She smiled with one of the most terrifying grins I had ever seen and then turned to walk back to the bedroom again. I was panicked and couldn’t quite comprehend what was happening so I gathered up as much of the pile as I could, new or old and ran out of the door to my car. I don’t know what happened to Sharon because she didn’t make it out of the house before I could never look back but somehow she had gotten my clothes from my room and I didn’t get it.

There I was, breathing heavily and driving away, trying to put together any part of what just happened. I arrived downtown and thought to myself I couldn’t go home right now because she knows how to get in there. I stopped to grab some coffee and as I was walking back to the car I noticed one of my friends from college getting into a cab.

“Hey! Lizzy! What’s up? How are you?” I yelled.
Lizzy stared at me with dead eyes as she slid to the farthest part of the car she could and said “Not great, I am doing a lot of things I used to do. Being more of an Elizabeth than a Lizzy.” She was speaking almost too softly to hear and very slowly pressing herself as far into the cab as she could manage. I had very little idea what she was talking about, she had confided in my once that she had gone through some issues with an eating disorder and I thought maybe that was what she was talking about.
I told her “I hope you are ok, I will call you later tonight to catch up.” She stared at me blindly as the cab door closed and she took off.

I thought to myself that was weird and something had to be going on today that I just didn’t know about. I figured the best place to go was to my mother’s house. I called my mom, Pan, to make sure they were home. She said she was but she was afraid that she had lice. I assured her that I could check for her when I arrived, I had a lot of experience looking for lice on the children I had worked with over the years. There is a technique.

I got to my mother’s house and she was already sitting in a chair in the middle of the kitchen waiting for me to check her head. She really didn’t greet me when I entered the home, she just stayed in the chair and waited for me to come to her. So I did. I walked over to her as she sat frustrated and nearly defeated.

“Okay, let me check” I said.
“I can feeling them moving, it has to be lice” she sheepishly announced.
As I combed through her hair and looked directly at her scalp, there was nothing to be found. No small black lice moving, nor white eggs on the hair. “I am not seeing anything” I told her as I started in the front of her scalp.
Pan reached up and touched the rear top part of her head and said “It hurts right here.”
“Hurts? That seems weird, I don’t think it is lice” I replied.

I parted her hair in that spot to reveal two medium sized cockroaches embedded in her scalp. They weren’t moving enough to change positions but they were kind of running in place on their sides and their antenna were moving freely. It was appalling and unexpected but I was able to keep calm. I put my hands on her shoulders and said “this is something else and since they’re painful let’s go take you to the doctor, just in case.”

At this point Pan would have followed you with this blank stare into the ocean if you asked her to. I walked her into the hospital and checked her in as she had done for me many times before. I was aware of the role reversal but wasn’t clear enough in the mind to think about it. Something was happening and I only knew we needed to figure it out. The doctors took her back and would not allow me to come with her. Three hours later I was outside of the hospital on the phone with Lizzy, who seemed totally fine and almost oblivious to her behavior earlier in the day. As we were saying goodbye Pan came strolling through the sliding doors of the hospital. As she walked out she had this big smile on her face with her purse at her side looked me in the face and just said “ready to go?”

THE END

I will gladly following any interpretation of what that dream is supposed to mean.