« | Blog Home | »

I’d Know You Anywhere

I usually dream in novel plots. Is this a writer thing? I just assumed everyone dreamed this way, but then I asked my husband and he looked at me like I had two heads. So, writer thing? Just me? I’m not sure, but I would say that in probably 90% of my dreams I’m not actually ‘me’. Instead I’m a character in whatever novel plot my sleeping brain has come up with.

Last night my brain fiddled around with the usual few short flashes of dreams that the kids are crying or whatever, then settled on High School Romance for the night’s story. I was . . . hmmm, now that I’m actually writing it down, it’s a bit hard to explain the dream logic. I was more ‘me’ than I sometimes am in dreams. But I was in high school again, and it wasn’t the real high school I actually went to but some fictional school. So this dream-me, Anna-ish sort of person had a best friend, who was a dream-my husband, Nathan-ish sort of person. (My brain was conveniently overlooking the fact that we didn’t actually know each other in high school). Anyway, he was my husband but not, if that makes sense. To the dream Anna, he wasn’t even a love interest, he was a best friend who happened to be in a mental institution with some sort of severe condition that made him lucid only part of the time. (There was a whole sub plot with an evil nurse who was over-medicating him, too–very exciting, but I’ll spare you the crazy dream details). So me, the dream me, that is, arrived at the mental institution to visit, and the dream Nathan, my husband but not, was drugged almost unconscious. But he woke up a little when I came in and said, “I got you some roses” and sure enough there were red roses all over his antiseptic white walled hospital room. He’d had some sort of violent episode the previous time I’d come to visit, and he’d been afraid I wouldn’t come back.

Like I said, to the dream me, he wasn’t a love interest, just a best friend, but he was getting agitated, so with perfect dream logic I climbed up on the bed and rested my head on his chest. And then . . . it was the strangest feeling. I could feel my–my consciousness, soul, whatever you want to call it–I could feel my spirit sinking down, down, through and past the layers of whatever mental condition he had, through the layers of his physical body, even, until our souls, spirits, whatever you want to call them, actually touched.

And that’s when I recognized him.

In my dream, the Anna-ish high school me thought, Crap, this is going to be really tough, because I’m going to marry him, and it’s going to be hard to convince my parents that I should marry a mental patient while still in high school. But that’s it–I can’t marry anyone else.

And then I woke up. It was pre-dawn, which meant I had just a couple of precious hours before the girls woke up. But strangely I lay there, in no hurry to even try to fall back to sleep. I mean, it was a relief to realize that it was just a dream and my husband is not, in fact, a high school student in a mental institution. (Honey, I’m here and now sparing you the trouble of adding the obvious joke in comments that you may become a grad student in a mental institution if getting your PhD drags on much longer. You know you totally were going to).

But anyway, I lay there, staring at the ceiling, because I wanted to hold onto that strange spirit-to-spirit, I’d know you anywhere feeling as long as I could. Which is why, too, I’m writing this down. Because just like the vividness of a dream fades so quickly it’s often gone almost before you can remember it at all, it’s so easy to get caught up in the day to day busy-ness of work, kids, life, chores, no matter how much you love your husband. But . . . I really do love the guy, you know? I really would know him anywhere.

This entry was posted Monday, August 30th, 2010 at 12:52 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “I’d Know You Anywhere”

  1. Brynne Says:
    August 30th, 2010 at 3:18 pm

    My dreams are rarely as interesting as this, but I definitely experience the novel-plot dream more often than not. There are the ones where I’m babysitting and accidentally kill the kid, and the school dreams, but a lot of the time I’m a character and there is a distinct story arc.


  2. Laura Says:
    August 31st, 2010 at 12:58 am

    Anna,

    Do you believe in past lives? That we have known our partners, friends & family before? I know some people find the idea hugely outrageous, but some of the novel like dreams I have had are so vivid I know dates, I can draw the clothing in detail, I discovered things (these odd looking horse saddles) that I never knew existed! How? There are other dreams…crazy dreams? Or a past life? But I question myself whyim drawn to certain periods in history & have a huge distaste for others…so much to ponder?


  3. Anna Elliott Says:
    August 31st, 2010 at 8:34 am

    Oh, it’s such an interesting question, isn’t it? I at least believe that there could be some sort of cultural/spiritual memory that gets passed down through generations just like red hair or blue eyes and leads us to ‘remember’ those past times almost as though we’d lived them ourselves. Then, too, if you take the Celtic view of time as opposed to our linear Western view, time itself is an endless spiral . . .



Leave a Reply


Anna Elliott's blog is proudly powered by WordPress.
RSS icon Entries (RSS) and RSS icon Comments (RSS).


"...Anna Elliott has fashioned a worthy addition to the Arthurian and Trystan and Isolde cycles... This Isolde steps out from myth to become a living, breathing woman and one whose journey is heroic." -- Margaret George, author of Helen of Troy


Book cover picture
Book cover picture
Book cover picture
Book cover picture
Book cover picture
Book cover picture
Book cover picture
Book cover picture