This is probably too personal, but I'll reveal it anyway. If you can't handle violence or feel uncomfortable reading the raw, open sores on a persons soul you'd probably want to skip this.
I've included a lot of stuff here that isn't specifically dream related, but I wanted you to understand where the dream comes from.
I have a recurring dream where I kill my father. Not in a nice, clean shoot him with a gun from a distance way, but in the up close with your hands and watch him twitch way.
My parents divorced when I was almost 6 and I went to live with my paternal grandparents. My mom tried to take care of us for a while before that but was eventually confined to a mental hospital because her family was worried that she might try to hurt us. It wasn't like she had really taken care of us anyway. I'd fed, clothed, and cleaned my brother and myself from the time I was 4 and he was 1. My grandparents would bring us food and take my mom shopping when she felt like. I have a vivid memory of my mom asking me what I wanted for dinner. This memory is so vivid because that only ever happened ONCE in the entire time that we lived with our parents.
I remember being told at about 6 that we couldn't see our mom because they were worried that she might hurt us. For the longest time I wondered what we had done to make her hate us so much. I figured that we must have been really horrible kids for her to feel like that. Not good, not good at all. I never talked to anybody about this until high school and by that time there were some really powerful feelings and emotions tied into it. Really not good. If you've got stuff inside of you that eats away at you, stuff that makes you feel like hurting yourself, please, please talk to somebody about it. Don't just let it sit there and eat away at you. Please. I was never able to act upon the feelings of self destruction because I knew that I would go to hell if I killed myself, but I spent many hours considering it. Hell doesn't seem so bad when you are already there.
I don't think that my father has ever had a steady job and my paternal grandparents were always there to clean up his messes and fix his problems for him. For the longest time I wondered if their taking us in was part of that cleaning up process, but they truly loved and cared for us. They financially supported him until he was close to 40. From the time that he was 40 to the time that he hit 50 he was homeless. It was hell. I was 22, working full time, and in college full time. I still lived at home with my grandparents and he would come around almost every day when I was gone and push my grandfather (who was in his late 60's) around. He wouldn't do it when I was there because I'd kicked his ass and told him that if he hurt them he was dead.
He would still come around occasionally when I was there, and those times were especially bad. My body would feel completely tense, almost like a spring, ready to expand at a moments notice and unleash violence. I'm not a violent person. I've only ever been in 3 fights in my entire life. One in grade school (nobody likes to be made fun of), one in high school (she told him to stop and he didn't), and the time where my dad pulled the knife. I worried every day when I left for work or school that I would come home and find them dead.
This is when the dreams started. The dream would start with him chasing me. I knew that even if he caught me he wouldn't be able to hurt me, but for whatever reason I still ran. We'd run for a long time but I'd always run into a dead end and he would be right behind me. He's not very big. He's in really bad shape and he's really physically weak. I take after my mothers side of the family and I'm the opposite. The knife isn't an issue because I'd learned during the first fight that he didn't know how to use it.
The end sequence of the dream was pretty graphic, and it was always the same. I'd wait for him to move up on me and then I'd get him in a hold. I'd side step and snake my arm up around the side of his neck. I'd apply as much force as I possibly could and feel the vertebrae separate. He'd drop to the ground and kick a few times, and then die. There would be no feelings of fear or anger during the entire dream. Just a certainty that he would chase me and then I'd kill him. I've had these dreams for about 10 years now. Sometimes they go away for a few weeks, but they always return. I'm hoping that eventually, if I talk about this stuff enough, that they'll go away.
It wasn't until last year that they finally found out that he had a tennis ball sized benign tumor growing very slowly in his brain. They have no idea how long the tumor was in there. One of the doctors said that the tumor may have been there for a really, really long time. The brain chemistry tests made it very easy to understand why he acted the way that he did. Certain chemicals (if that's the right word) were present in 30 - 100x the normal amounts.
They only found the tumor because it was pushing on his optic nerve and it was slowly making him go blind. They removed the tumor and I, at the request of my grandparents, stayed with him for 2 months to help him recuperate. I'd go to the hospital during the day, and then home to my family in the evenings.
The biggest difference that we've noticed is that his moods no longer swing to the massive extremes that they once did. He no longer cries or goes into a rage over really minor stuff. Finding out that the pen is out of ink is no longer a reason to call the store where he bought the pen and threaten to kill the people who work there. He is able to have a conversation without it ending in foul language, screaming, and violence. I think that the tumor and surgery have prevented him from ever being truly normal, but at least he's relatively harmless now. I never imagined that it would be possible, but I can 'relax' when I'm around him now and not constantly think about how I'd kill him if I had to.
You'll probably never understand how nice that is.
She is an artist by trade and incredibly "handy" around the house (I was amazed when she remodeled her entire bathroom, fixtures and all, without the aid of a plumber). Anyway, on to the dream.
