reentry, readjustment, review

As a psychology minor, I feel vaguely suspicious of dreams. I feel like they are often misleading and overemphasized. I am suspicious of those who find absolute meaning in their dreams. My overall view is that dreams are simply a result of the brain's synapses firing while sleeping. I feel that feelings are easily carried over from the worries of the day into our subconscious, so dreams are less literal, more figurative. Which may be obvious for those battling dragons or flying while they sleep. A greater stretch but one I am willing to occasionally support is that while we sleep we mentally work out problems and concepts that are flooding our mind. I don't believe every dream is a symbol, but I feel that dreams can potentially lead us to realize things about ourselves, whether it's a true insight or just a different way of looking at things. I also believe God can speak through dreams; I don't doubt He's powerful enough to prod the right synapse.

Still, I enjoy trying to search out meanings in dreams, to solve the puzzle of why something popped up or what it represents. It's more for fun, less life-changing. This is fairly easy for me, as most of my dreams are tied heavily to reality. Like my life.

All this said, I had a dream about a month ago.

Here's some backstory you may need. While in Papua New Guinea, in Lae at Martin Luther Seminary, I got the chance to talk to a wonderful woman named Dakis. Cyndi called her a rock star, and she was: the heart and soul of the place, a staple and an engine. At the end of our conversation, I commented on her black bracelets, of which she had a dozen or so lining her forearm. Goomies, she called them, and she proceeded to give me two. My first gifts from Papua New Guinea, far behind the already bilum-laden members of my team. I haven't taken the bracelets off since; they've been with me all around PNG, Australia, the US, Canada. Two little bands on my wrist.

Back to the dream. I dreamed I was in my room in Newberg, tidying up around my bright orange and green hippie polyester bedspread. Suddenly, without warning, the thicker of my two bracelets fell off my wrist and onto my bed. It hadn't been cut, or torn, or ripped. It just fell off.

That's all I remember of it. It was short and insignficant. But I woke up and thought, maybe this means something. Maybe it represents a loosening of my tongue, an ability to write, a freeing of my spirit so that the words could come and the experiences could be shared.

Then I proceeded to do nothing.

I've been silent for a long while. It's hard to believe I've been back from PNG for two months; it's even harder to believe that I even went to PNG. I have the pictures. I have the bilums, the bracelets. But it seems like a million years ago. I have become so acclimated to the US that PNG seems like a waking dream.

When I came back from PNG, I couldn't write about it. I was overwhelmed, I was exhausted, there was too much to process and too much to understand. I could barely exist, because I didn't know how to exist; I didn't know how to be me, and I didn't know who "me" was, now that I had this piece of PNG within me. I came home, I slept, and I tried to limit peppering my sentences with "This reminds me of the time in PNG when..."

Now, many weeks later, I fear that I've hit the other side. I don't remember. I can't feel it anymore. The flowers are fuzzy shades of orange and red, no longer vibrant in my mind's eye. The memories no longer crowd out everything else; I've succeeded at stuffing them behind what is more impacting to my everyday life.

This summer has been difficult for other reasons. Big life changes are approaching for those I love: a giddy best friend/roommate planning a wedding, a friend moving to Mexico for four months, another friend unreachable through the haze of theatre, another friend in turmoil over the most important relationship she's ever had, another friend just plain gone. And me, I'm trying to find a place. I'm trying to learn to dream again, to risk and perhaps fail. I'm trying to decide where to go next, because real life is edging closer; I can see the seam of her cloak as she hides behind textbooks and workstudy schedules. Emotionally, I'm ridiculously unstable.

Honestly, I haven't processed through what I experienced in Papua New Guinea. Like usual, instead I discount my experience, saying it wasn't valid, it wasn't good enough, it didn't make an impact, and I don't remember. But I need to work through what has happened, because I know that it made a difference to me. I know I'm different somehow; I don't like the difference thus far, but I'm hoping that what I'm living through now is simply the response to the repression of life-altering events. To relive my experience, to give it a voice and a purpose, to give it life and meaning? That is when I will be more whole.

But as always, I am afraid. Going to Papua New Guinea, that was a challenge. That was scary. But I didn't do it alone. What happened to me also happened to us. This new challenge, this writing? This is solo. I am alone, and battling tiredness, old movies, youtube videos, long phone calls, cold office buildings, and fear of the future, all the things pulling me from the words that I need to speak.

I have to speak them, so I'm breaking my silence to hopefully produce something that will give someone an idea of what that beautiful tropical warm glorious place is all about.