1999 Dream

Going through files tonight, I came across something I'd written May 20, 1999 - stuck in a folder and forgot. All these years later, I open it. At the time I thought, "Just a dream!"

But it's years later, and I've got more research and information under my belt. Just a dream, yes - Just a dream recorded by a young mother who'd never been anywhere in her life. Who'd had militant dreams from childhood and didn't even know why she "shouldn't leave her post" and tended to stand straight and firm. Now I know. But then - a recording of innocence.

Posted here word for word:

I was a soldier, sort of. I don't exactly recall how it happened but there was a friend with me. She and I were standing outside a military building.

"Come on," she said to me. So we walked inside like we belonged, somehow stole a couple of uniforms, and paraded around like soldiers. She wore a general's bars on her shoulders. I had the silver bars of a lieutenant. The uniforms themselves were khacky green.

(Of course these days I know I was wrong about the bars - and the details are too faded for me to figure it out.)

Perhaps it went too far, but somehow we were mistaken not only for the real thing but ended up on a plane to go the war zone. A secret mission or some such. Of course, when it comes to war every maneuver has to remain a secret because you don't want the enemy knowing what you're up to.

I was fascinated, looking down at the ground below. Thousands of men in uniform were across the fields. I remember in particular one was apparently wounded and he dug in the soil, trying to use his gun as leverage to stand. They reminded me of a bucket of soldiers littered across the play yard.

Upon landing, a high ranking soldier, could have been a general of something, approached us. He mistook my friend for someone important. I saluted. She did not. He started talking to her, asking us our business etc. Something about plans. I started to answer, as he was looking at me, but he sort of sniffed in my direction and turned to her. I shut my mouth, for fear of being discovered in this zany adventure.

We went to the mess hall to eat. There were soldiers all around us, but I don't remember what exactly happened here. I kept looking at my lieutenant bars, thinking that I hadn't wanted to portray anything more than a private, and wanted to find someplace secret to take them off.

We met the general again. He was haughty to me, and said something to the effect of, "I have no time for people who masquerade as lieutenants when they're nothing more than privates. That's a hanging offense, private!" My friend was taken for the real thing, even though she was just as much a fraud as I.

I followed my friend because I had wanted to do something good. I was nervous, but not willing to turn in my stolen uniform. I wanted an adventure, to make my mark, and I was there in the war zone to do something heroic. Something good. I can't describe the feeling; The need to do something.

There was a guy. We were in the field, running or something. Can't remember the rest.

I'm breathing, I'm alive: where there's hope there's panic.

When I stumble across the musing of others Flutterbies or, in most cases, people who fake it I see a lot of PTSD reactions. It's fashionable to react as if you have PTSD, as if you are still suffering deep down inside from what may have happened two, ten, or twenty years ago. Like the surge of "multiple personalities" was fashionable for a while, it's fashionable to suffer from shell shock.

These people talk about how the aliens come for them at night, and when they see bright lights they experience unreasonable fear. They talk about sexual trauma; saying things by rote as if memorized from the page of a book. The things they express are very large, movie grade events. Things that make their stories entirely unbelievable to those that were never there.

And, quite often, to me.

Let me tell you about PTSD - a trigger. A big one that was a seed when I was a small child. Understanding of it didn't come to light until my husband came across the information in a book by Springmeier, only a couple of years ago.

Night terrors: we all had them as a child. But imagine being terrified of going to sleep - or waking up - because deep down inside you're more terrified that these nightmares are real. That you're not dreaming at all. And even if you could comprehend past "that was a nightmare" to touch the more tangible thing that surrounds the fugue, no one would believe you. Or if you were believed, no one would talk to you. To let you know you're not alone.

The dreamworld for me was very consistent. When I was a toddler I'd crawl out of my crib to stand at the window and wait, watching by the door. But when I was older, right before I started kindergarten, the dreams took on a very different tone. It was a dark, reoccuring tone that I couldn't escape from no matter how much I screamed for my mommy, or ran, or anything.

The beachs where I grew up were very different from how they are now. They didn't have boardwalks: they had dunes, a lot of dunes. Main beach had foundation blocks and pipes sticking up out of the sand - remnants of a suburban area destroyed by Hurricane Dora - and for most of my young life I honestly thought all beaches had pipes sticking up out of the sand. St. Peter's Point, however, was wild beach. Sand upon sand upon sand waited for you to walk across it before you came to the clear water, where the sun beat down upon you and browned your skin.

I loved that beach more than Main Beach. It was more primal: you could dig there. You could be free there. But at night, for a few weeks, it turned into a nightmare as - I thought - in my dreams I found myself deposited on the sand alone in the dark. There were heads sticking up out of the sand from people who were buried. Sometimes there would be no heads, just hands waiting beneath the sand. And sometimes when I ran, trying to get away from the water and back to the parking lot where I knew it was safer, the hands would reach up out of the ground and pull me under. Once or twice I saw my grandmother, or I thought the woman was my grandmother.

I called the beach the Blood Beach to myself... I was a child in the 70's. Blood Beach the movie, which from the trailers I've seen matches the situation, was released in 1981.

The unreasonable fear of being suffocated, buried alive, or locked in the dark came out again when I was locked in the bathroom with my mother's sister's stepdaughter in the dark. The scream of terror came out of me without any control. The horrible woman's response at my fear - no comfort, no care, just anger at the inconvenience of dealing with a loud child - didn't help.

So it goes.. so that now I'm 40. I can't watch anything on television that deals with the subject. If I do I end up awake at almost midnight, like right now, trying to deal with the pain. Trying to come to terms with the fact that the information my husband found was about the training of young Flutterbies. Apparently they'd be buried alive. Knowing that isn't the comfort; understanding this might be the source doesn't help because in your head is a lack of information. There's a black hole where the offending incident or incidents might be, and so long as you can't remember them you can never come to terms with what has happened. If it happened at all.

At the hint of the situation - even knowing the main character will be alright - my heart pounds as I stare at the television, mewling like a frightened animal. Sometimes all you can do is revert to being that small child again, bounce off the couch, and run to the wall with your back to it as you watch the entire room in your terror. In your mind races all sorts of scenarios: you're in a car, drowning in a river. You're buried in a coffin. Your lungs are filling with water from being sick and nobody will do anything to stop it.

Your mind is racing with escape scenarios, too. Maybe you can kick the glass out of the car door and swim to the surface - but oh gods. Your children. How will you save your children? So that for all your intelligence, nothing can save you.

That, my friends, is PTSD and being a Flutterby - probably of the last generation to be taught in the old-fashioned manner. It's not sex: it's not thinking about some abusive figure on purpose so you can rant in your journal and get a little attention. It's not bright lights: telling people some Fourth Contact scenario again and again. It's trying to hide from the fear, the darkness, the terror. Trying to avoid situations that trigger the feelings. Of not talking about it. Of long nights being unable to sleep no matter how tired you are and finally coming to your computer to blog about it. Of knowing that your shell shock isn't the kind anybody at the VA will ever care enough about.

I have PTSD. I have many triggers. Some, best I can tell being as I have to treat myself and handle things by myself, stem from the waking world and everyday mundane things. But then there are others that set my mind into motion, and there's no explanation for them at all.

Time for A Paradox

This story comes from a long ways away.

Once upon a time I had this dream:
2005-10-26 23:54:00
In my dreams last night, I was with Jessie on some great, green lawn. Jessie said to me, "Someone is here. He's your husband from the future, and he's here to tell you something. You died in fire in a warehouse."

I'm not sure if he said warehouse, but I think that's what he said.

The future husband had long, curly brown hair and a roundish face. At least, that's how his face appeared one minute. Then it changed, and I could see lines and a different structure. I studied it, trying to see if he was someone I knew. I wondered if it was Jack. He told me that I'd not recognize him this way, that it had been a long time and he had changed.

He said that he had brought newspaper clippings with him so that I could read what the newspapers had said about the fire. Jessie objected, saying I shouldn't read them. I grabbed Jessie by the collar and said forcefully, "Jessie, you know what it is I have to do. You know what it is I'm here on Earth for. You KNOW I have to pay strict attention to the future, all of the time, and I WILL read those newspaper clippings!"

Looking at my future husband, something told me that he missed me... I mean there I was this younger version of the woman he'd married, and I hadn't married him yet. It must've been hard. I kissed him full on the mouth, and at first he returned the kiss but then pushed me away.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I know you must be uncomfortable."

"Thank you," he replied.

We went away from the field to talk, and we entered this dark little trailer in the middle of a swamp area. I don't know what happened to him. I was there, waiting for him to come talk to me about this thing he'd come to say, but he wasn't there yet. There were mushroom growing on the wall; miniature versions of the kind you find on tree trunks. They were lined up like little soldiers, or trees at a tree farm. I ate them one by one, thinking thatI wasn't hungry at all and I should stop.

I woke up from that dream, the way I do when things are a message, before my alarm clock rang when it was still dark outside.
***
And then I met him and married him.

2009-07-01 18:21
Note: I am now married and my husband has a round face and brown curly hair.
*** 

And have been stressed and worried about dying in a warehouse fire ever since.
So on Saturday night I'm in bed listening to him snore and worrying about dying in a warehouse. I worried about how sad he would be, you know. The typical things you worry about.
And They said to me, "We can fix that." The message came to me from the right frontal side of my head. I can't remember the exact way they said it, but they basically said they'd change my fate. And I knew, the way I always know, that it was time for a Peer review - which is basically when they take the folks who have certain roles on this planet, review their actions, hearts and minds, and see if they get to stay in their job. Or, if the contract is up, if they want to go for another round. It's all very legal.
I said, sure. I'd work some more... but I wasn't willing to exchange the life of my children, my husband, father, or really anybody to save my own. Imagine: living out a long life with such a sorrow on your shoulders.
I don't know if I fell asleep at night or not. I do remember feeling frightened and uneasy through this and wondering what on earth had set me off. The TV shows hadn't. I didn't know. And then I happened to notice tht there were 3 humanoid figures in my room by the bed in a row.
So I freaked and tried to crawl across the bed to my husband's side of the bed by the wall away from the figures and the edge of the bed. I'm kinda scared of the edge of the bed.
And while I'm doing that it's the typical thing. You're scared but you've got something inside of you telling you that you're faking being afraid, you're faking everything, you're imagining it, etc.
Tim started to wake up and said, "What are you doing?" very clearly. Normally he'd have gotten right up. But he didn't. He lay there like a stone, you know. And after a while I calmed down and fell asleep.
The next day I woke up very early, which is a habit of mine when I've "worked" and just kind spent the day in a foul mood and panicky.

Here's the thing. Got a call from one of my "hand maidens" a few hours ago. It appears Saturday night she also was picked up. She woke up that night to a very tall being in her room to collect her. And no matter how she told herself she needed to get up and confront things, she couldn't.

Thing is... were they lying? If so, this will happen. If not, as I have accepted another round of work, then we have a time paradox.

I know from experience you can change time. Oh, if you want to change a huge event you need several sets of people because that's a lot of flow you have to fight against. Picture standing on the beach alone when the tide is coming in, and you're trying to turn the tide with only your hands. Kinda hard, isn't it.
But there was this one time when I worked in a probation office and I couldn't find a particular folder. My supervisor was a former Navy officer, and she was awesome - but I knew me having to go to her all of the time to find things was getting to her. It would get to me.
She was out of the office when this was happening, so as I looked I worried. I didn't want to have to ask her where the stupid folder was. And then I remembered a deja vous dream I had as a teenager of that very event, and in the dream Navy Supervisor was indeed irrirated. And lectured me on not thinking for myself as she went and got the folder, showed me were it was.
And I realized: oh. She showed me where it was. I'll go to where she showed me it was.
And I found the folder.