The Family

I’ve had a recurring house dream, probably a meaningful symbolic one at that. But I haven’t really figured out what it says about me – perhaps you all have perspective. Or will at least enjoy deconstructing it.

In the dream I am a young girl, not a child – early adolescent, I suppose. I am in the house of my grandmother, who has recently died. My parents and other adults are there, taking care of things and distributing the household possessions. It is all going on over my head, but the only thing I care about is the books and things in the attic. Over my childhood, my grandmother and I had shared a special connection regarding those books, and she had told me that they were especially mine.

However, no one actually believes that there is an attic. There’s no access, no one else has been in the attic, no one believes it exists. I’m hesitant to mention the books; they’re almost a secret special thing, but even when I do no one believes that they exist at all. So. I finally gather permission from my father character (who, in the dream, is very absent, nearly militaristic). Actually, it isn’t so much permission as it is somthing to get me out of their hair. I’m also told that I can have everything that I find in this so called ‘attic.’

I have permission. I go to the room where I know the access is, which is in the closet in a seldom used room. The rope to pull down the ladder isn’t hidden, but it is unobtrusive. There is a sense of triumph when the rope and ladder and such are there; I’d almost begun to doubt it myself. I pull the ladder down, I go up, and then I stop. I remember all of a sudden why grandmother was never with me in the attic, why it was a shared thing between us but only I was up there.

The access is up near the roof, so to get into the attic you have to squeeze up and through this very tight space. I’m up there on the ladder, wondering if it’s even physically possible for me to get in there anymore, wondering if it matters becuase I doubt I’m psychologically able to go through such a small dark gap. If I don’t rescue the books they’ll be lost forever; there’s a feeling the house will be demolished once the estate is settled.

And then I wake up.

I had this dream many nights in a row, pretty much until I recognized it as a meaningful symbolic dream. Once my conscious mind acknowledged receipt, the unconscious mind stopped sending. Thing is, I’m not entirely sure what this is telling me.

I know houses are symbols of the self, and that unused rooms and spaces generally represence unused facets of one’s personality.

With that, what do you guys think of this? What do you think this is telling me?