lifepath

I just finished watching a documentary called 5 Girls. The doc follows five teen girls who are experiencing life and dealing with finding their place in this world (specifically the USA, Chicago-area) as females. It was interesting, but dredged up a pain.

When I was in high school, it was expected that I'd go to college afterward. I wasn't a first-generation college student and not attending college wasn't an option. During my junior year, I applied to the college I wanted to go to more than anything in the world: Hampton University.

I got accepted. In case I hadn't gotten accepted, I had also applied to other HBCUs that would do in a pinch. I got accepted to all of them, as well. When my mother made a fuss about me attending the colleges I wanted to go to (none of them were acceptable to her, although she, my father, and my father's side of the family had all attended HBCUs), I applied to colleges in Chicago, thinking I could stay at home and still go to school. That option held some appeal because I was scared of leaving home. I had no idea how to take care of myself.

My mother, being who she was, made sure I understood that she would not help me get into any of the universities I wanted to attend. She forced me to go to Purdue University and I went because I had a problem. I honestly didn't know how to lead a self-directed life. I didn't know how to live outside of my head.

Because of that single decision, her decision to disallow me my dreams, my life has taken on fractures. I'm not saying I haven't been happy. I have. I have enjoyed life in spite of the fact that when I needed support the most, it was kept from me. I was taught to be afraid of life, to not go after what I want in life, and to take what's handed to me, whether or not it's good for me.

Those are difficult lessons to unlearn.

It's taken me about fifteen years, but I think I finally know how to support myself, regardless of environment. I can go through the motions, anyway. But, deep inside, I'm still very unsure of where I'm going or what I'm doing. Inside, I still feel like that eighteen year old girl who needed more than her environment was willing to give.

Watching that documentary caused me to wonder how my life would have been different if my mother had encouraged and supported my dreams. How would my life have been different if I hadn't grown accustomed to being dominated and controlled by outside forces?

Because I don't ever want my children to experience the pain of an unsupportive parent, I argue with their father. But, that pain is there, anyway. There's nothing I can do about it, now. The time to control that was pre-conception. Now, all I can do is support them in their dreams and let them know that I will always be here to help them.

And, what if that's still not enough?

streaming thought

I have a fascinating dream life. I'd go so far as to say my dream life is more interesting than my real life.

Recently, I had a dream with shadowy figures in it. I call them mud entities, because I don't know how else to describe them. I keep thinking about the dream and what the entities represented: me, others, spirit guides, what? I'm not sure and it's driving me a little mad, because I have a feeling the dream is significant and none of my current theories about what it meant ring true for me.

Reading about how humans got started on this Earth, I've run into a lot of alien stories. Many African tribes tell us that we came from the stars. Apparently, the Illuminati believes at least some of us came from space. I don't generally care about all that, but I did have an out-of-body experience once in which I was definitely not a human. It was very cool. The furniture and bathroom (especially) were just like human stuff, but much larger.

Some people think stuff like that is crazy. I've always been the sort of person who was fascinated by stories like that. I've never really cared if I had any experiences myself, I just thought it was cool. Probably has something to do with why I love science-fiction.

So, back to my mud entities. They weren't made of mud in my dream. That's just what I thought of when I tried to describe them. And, there was a point in the dream where the entity I was following needed to go into the earth. Like a hibernation of some sort. And, it decided to go into a shack, instead, and smoke a cigarette. Only, it had no mouth (or eyes or nose). When the sun fully rose, it disappeared. Just *poof*. Gone. And, the dreaming me stood there, stunned. Then, the real me woke up wondering what the dream was about and who the entity was.

I often have dreams about myself as another entity. Or there are a couple of me in the dream; one acting and one observing. I've always felt separate from myself, if that makes sense. I've never felt like one person. I'm easily three or more people in one life, one body. My dreams seem to bear that out.

There's a horror film in which a girl walks up to herself. The "herself" she's walking up to has her back turned to her walking self. I've had moments like that in dreams. It seems like whenever I ask my spirit guides to present themselves to me, one is always me. She always looks like me or has my energy.

I think that means I'm my own guide in this life. I've known that all along, but getting confirmation is still unsettling. Everyone looks to me for guidance. Even my self.

I'm not sure how I feel about that, yet. And, I'm not sure the mud entity was me. I'm also not sure it wasn't.