“I’m just another writer still trapped within my truth.” ~ Dan Hill

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Sometimes when I dream, the honesty is too much.  Sometimes when I dream, I travel into the life and spirit of a friend. Sometimes strangers visit me. Always, always people come, in all forms, with all types of messages. And we touch.

Recently, I’ve had two friends visit in my dreams, just in this last six days. Both dreams were filled with extreme emotion, both dreams had anxiety, both involved an urgency. When I awake from dreams such as these, I am left with a residue, a film in my spirit, something that remains, the remnants of what was shared with me. A streak in the glass of my vision I can’t wipe clean.

If I am fortunate enough to confirm the happening in the dream, and make a connection, and find some validity in discovering what I sensed actually occurred in real life, I am able to discharge and remove some of the energy. If not, sometimes I take on the feelings of the other person, become overly concerned about something I do not understand and cannot even pinpoint. I may feel a rush of panic, fear, or injustice. I might weep. I might laugh. I might become hyper focused. I might hibernate; attempting to disrobe the feelings, only to emerge still weighed down and lost. I take on this energy, as much as I take on the dreams, without knowing how or why, and without knowing how to stop.

Sometimes I want to break down and cry. Sometimes I have to close my eyes and hide. The emotions are so overwhelming. I feel like I’ve been opened up and had another’s spirit poured into me. At times I become that person. At times I understand the person more than myself.

I dreamt once, years ago, of my long time friend. She was stretched out on a car and pointing to her kidneys and kept saying, “I need a bladder operation; the doctor told me I need a bladder operation.” I called my friend the next morning, and sure enough she had just found out she required surgery related to the tubing above her bladder.

Long ago, while I was napping my grandmother started wafting above my bed, a ghostly apparition draped in an aqua-colored dress. Swaying back and forth, an inch below the bedroom ceiling, she kept repeating the same phrase:  “Wake up.  Get off the phone.  I am waiting for a man from Egypt to call.” This made absolutely no sense to me, as I was sound asleep some two hundred miles away from Grandma, and I most certainly wasn’t on the telephone.  Still dreaming, and wanting desperately to get some rest, I looked up at Grandma and answered, “But I’m not on the phone.  I’m taking a nap.”

Grandma continued on, a stream of blue, weaving herself back and forth in my room, badgering me to get off the telephone.  Having found no luck, after I placed two pillows over my head to block out her voice, I sat up and screamed, “If you leave me alone, I’ll call you when I wake up.  Go away and let me sleep!”  On my words, Grandma vanished.

Within the hour I phoned my grandmother.  After a few minutes on the phone, I delicately described my dream to her, thinking at some point she’d say I wasn’t making any sense, and that would be the end of the discussion.  Surprisingly, Grandma responded, without pause for breath, “You’re a witch! I’ve been sitting by the phone waiting for a man from Egypt to call me about his interest in buying my house.  How did you know? Actually, I need to get off the phone now.  He might be trying to call.”

Years ago, I dreamt that two of my teaching colleagues would be going to Japan by the end of the year. They both came to my dream together and told me. That year both were surprised to learn they were traveling to Japan. One was accepted in an over-seas teaching program; the other unexpectedly was invited by a host family. Another time an old woman, a stranger,  came to me in my dream very upset. She said that my mother was going through her items and taking them, keeping them for herself. She showed me the room where the items were spread out. She showed me my mother holding her things. I told my mother the next day, and sure enough my mother had been to a friend’s house and had collected several items from her friend’s mom whom had just died.

There are so many visits, I could go on and on: a family drowned on the beach, my future house and the owners of the house, my future employer, my car accident, my grandfather’s car accident, my mother-in-law’s cancer, my friend house hunting, the person dying in the car off the highway, my husband’s co-worker getting married and denying it, my son’s karate teacher getting engaged, friends divorcing, friends weeping on couches …..so many various people visiting me to tell me about their lives.

When I was very little, animals visited me and showed me their death. Usually my pets, but once a friend’s bunny came in my dream. The animals usually died just like they showed me within seven days. Once my canary was slashed under the eye by a stray cat. Once my dog died on the Fourth of July after jumping a fence. The dreams came true, just as I had witnessed. Thank goodness I was able to tell my mother the night of the dreams, which then I called nightmares. She was at least able to validate my experience. To show me my dreams were coming true and I wasn’t insane.

Interestingly, it seems lately the more I share and write, and the more I am not afraid to be authentic and honest, the more these dreams and feelings are coming. And the more I’m visited.  I don’t mind the visits for the most part. I feel honored and know this gift or ability, or whatever one choses to call my visions, is a part of my journey. But there are definite times, like this week, when the emotions are so over powering that I don’t know what to say or do.

It’s times like these that sometimes when we touch, sometimes the honesty is too much. And then, all I want to do is to just hold my friend and cry, to hold on tight and not let go until the fear in us subsides.