Cry, cry, cry, baby

Sometimes I dream of swimming, and this is freedom. This is pure freedom.

The experts tell me this is indicative of being immersed in your own emotions, and that people going through therapy often dream of swimming.

I was at a cottage I’d been at before, in my dreams; it was a conglomeration of Sarah’s grandmother’s cabin, and the dream version of a house I used to live in in Saskatoon. But in this dream, the lakefront was more like our cabin at Candle Lake – there were overgrown rose bushes and tall, tall poplars and pines. And the lake came up along the path and wound around behind it, and there were no rocks in the water, but the reeds….the reeds were tall. They stood up out of the water high enough that you could only see the shoulders and head of someone standing in the shallows.

I ran toward the lake, diving into the water when it was just past my knees; I dove through the reeds and the weeds and extremely disgusting stuff on top of the water – really it was almost a marsh. But there was someone out in the water I wanted to see…someone I wanted to talk to. Swimming was difficult – the weeds pulled at my arms and wound around my legs. They tried to slow my pace, to hold me back. At first, I shrugged off their clutches and sliced through them, diving, even, through the tenebrous water.

But I couldn’t reach the people I was trying to see – I couldn’t break through the weeds into the open water. I ended up trudging back through reedy mud, onto a dilapidated dock that partially submerged when you put weight on it. The dock flared out to a small spring-fed pool at the side of the cabin, and there, I would often see deer ’round the edges, drinking from the pure, cold pool. This day, a fawn had tumbled in, and was thrashing wildly trying to get its spindly legs back on shore. Its eyes were wild, and it bleated in terror.

I dove into that pool, pushed the fawn out onto the bank, and pulled myself out on to the sinky dock. But I couldn’t swim. The only thing left for me was the too-hot cabin and a collection of card games.