Had one of my experiencing another person dreams last night, really out of the blue kind of stuff. I was a kid with a compulsive disorder, very stressed kid, and the hour or so I dreamed I was living as that kid, I was highly strung, nervously searching through drawers for anything I could swallow, and the variety of junk already in my stomach felt like plenty of misery, but then I spied a box of bullets and without any hesitation started chunking them one by one into my mouth and swallowing them. I got through roughly a quarter of the box and then stopped because my stomach was hurting badly enough by then that I didn't feel like I could swallow any more.
I remember the smell, the taste, the feel of them going down. In my entire real life I have never been at all fascinated with firearms weaponry because my first husband was a gun thief and I hated living that kind of life, so it's been a lot of years since I've even held a bullet. Scott says I described a 22 short, but I looked that up and it's still too long. I did a search for shorter than 22 short and finally RWS BB cap, the shortest one in this pic.
I also found the 22 short cap on this forum, this is the post with pics. Those look about right, too.
In the dream, I was non-interfering (some of those dreams I start interacting because I get the person I'm dreaming about mixed up with what I know in real life, which cuts the dream short), and I started panicking like a kid would about whether the bullets I swallowed would go off inside my stomach. The stomach ache grew more and more intense over the next half hour till my belly started feeling hard and puffy, and I longed to be able to throw up and couldn't. I started imagining whether an ambulance rescue would need to cut my stomach open on the spot to get the bullets out, and I started regretting ever swallowing those. From my real life perspective now that I'm awake, I'm more concerned that the pointy things and cotton balls were more of a threat than the bullets, but I don't know about what constitutes more of an imminent danger.
In the dream I was breaking into sweats and starting to panic, finally terrified enough to pull a sibling aside and say "Please go tell Mom I swallowed stuff but don't tell Dad" kind of thing, but the sibling, who may have been accustomed to this behavior in the past, simply went back to playing. The real panic set in after that, and I finally went outside where my mom was gardening and started confessing, imagining all the worst while my stomach was hurting so bad I thought I would faint.
And then I woke up, as if I had turned off the TV, and my own stomach wasn't hurting at all.
I have no idea who that family is, or where they live. I think I would be able to draw a partial floor plan of their house, and I could probably describe the yard a little, but I couldn't tell you what any of them looked like or how they really sounded. I remember the dad being on the phone in another room talking business, the mom outside gardening some flowers, a few siblings quietly scattered doing their own things, and some of the contents I saw in drawers and swallowed. That's about it.
I hope that kid is ok. I can't really worry about it since once in awhile in these kinds of dreams I get clues of past or future, so I don't know if this is real time in sync with me. Doubt I ever forget it, though.
When I was in second grade, which was back in the 60s, a little girl showed me she could swallow straight pins that were laying loose underneath the bulletin board in our class. I remember feeling a little shocked watching her do that, but I never thought to mention it to anyone, much less that teacher, because back then I interacted as little as possible (autism spectrum) and I couldn't yet follow events to logical consequences like teens and adults can. I remember the next day she was absent, and I remember remembering she swallowed pins, but without more information that just dropped out of my head. A couple days later she was back in class and told me she had her stomach pumped. I thought she was stupid for swallowing the pins in the first place but didn't say anything, and didn't think of it again until I was in my 30s and realized what must have happened with her experiences in her family and a hospital. And after that I again didn't think of it any more.
I know now this is called pica eating disorder and that acuphagia is more focused on metallic items. If you are interested in knowing more, > this post < highlights a few examples.
I feel no personal significance with this dream. I myself had plenty of nervous tension stomach aches growing up, threw up a lot, and nearly OD'd on liquiprin when I was very young, but otherwise am loathe to swallow anything nonfood (some foods illicit an extreme gag and vomit response with me, particularly raw fruits and coconut because of the texture), so I'm kind of the opposite of all this stuff. My tension had more to do with authoritarian and mentally ill adults, and I'm personally torn between loving comfort food and not eating at all (I absolutely hate and refuse to throw up, which is probably what has saved me from a diagnosable eating disorder).
For readers who have experience with eating and compulsive disorders, huge hugs. 💕 I've never visibly self harmed, I'm not a cutter, and I can't bear the fearfulness of causing myself more pain on top of my chronic pain problems, but I did go through a year as a young adult nearly drinking myself to death while I wasted away not eating. I've had stomach aches since I was born, I've been messed up all my life with stress, and I very much feel for compulsions driving any of my readers to lurk through the interwebs in the long dark nights. I hope you find comfort and peace and the love you need, and I truly believe this because I've done it, if you feel you cannot find the love you need, become the love yourself, even if this seems hard and impossible. The smallest acts of love are far more powerful than fear and pain, and I know this because learning to baby step my way through my own jungle has made me powerful over time as a loving person. You can do this. 💟
No comments:
Post a Comment