Allowing the 2012 Shift to Come to You by Rick DiClemente;

[magical thyme]

8. during my waking hours

all I was thinking about was selling my mini-farm and starting over. I have a single prospect. I'm not sure how serious a buyer she is, only time will tell. But she is disabled from a car accident and wants to bring her therapy horse home. She wants to move to my village because she was adopted and discovered her sisters live up here, so by moving here she can be near her rediscovered family and bring her therapy horse home. I have been worried about her ability to care for a horse with her injuries, but then realized I have living kitty-corner to me a developmentally disabled young woman who used to ride at a local therapeutic riding center. The center closed down due to lack of funding a couple years ago. Her father came to me suggesting she could help me out in exchange for riding. I had to decline: my horses were not in any way suitable. But a horse that *is* a therapy horse would be suitable.

But last night I had a dream that I think gets to the core of my issues. In the dream, my house has collapsed into a pile of rubble. There are people around me; their lives are normal, their houses standing. Winter is coming and I tell one of them that I'm planning on meditating on the situation to bring a solution to me, instead of going out and doing/seeking a solution. They scoff that you can't just meditate something into being, you have to go out and do it. An attractive man shows up and he is worried about me trying to meditate the solution, and says he will rebuild my home. A couple of his friends are there; he gets them to help them. (And so I'm thinking I have meditated my solution into being.) As they start to rebuild my home, a frightening, howling wind type sound comes through the windows (suddenly there is a shell with open windows, lol). It is some kind of terrifying beast and female friends tell me not to look and shield me from it. But it swoops in (I guess through the windows) and knocks the attractive man unconscious. And then it takes on the form of another attractive man (who looks very much like the unconscious one), trying to entice me to choose it instead of the man. The howling sound has abated, and is replaced by a chorus singing the same refrain over and over, "No man. No man. No man. No man. No man. No man."

I think the dream is a metaphor. The house represents the structure of my life, which has indeed crumbled. (I have a part time job I detest more than I ever imagined possible, and I earn only 2/3s of what I had been led to believe I would. I can't move forward and maintain my home, I can't move forward with my dream and my reason for moving here, I can't quit this job which does not really meet even my basic needs. I avoided bankruptcy only due to the income based student loan repayment plan. And I have no serious buyers for my house to enable me to start over. So I am in a very stuck place, treading water and waiting for a wave or something to set me free to swim again.)

The 2 men definitely were not the spirits of anybody I've ever known or currently in my life (thank goodness because I did once have a very repulsive stalker who first penetrated a dream and then 2 weeks later started stalking me irl.) I think they represent 2 aspects of my desire: the safe one and the dangerous, yet more exciting, one. I think the chorus is a warning, as was the howling wind. I know that every time in my life I was open to starting over, a caretaker man has appeared in my life and looked like the solution. And then a "dangerous" man showed up, metaphorically knocked the caretaker aside, and I got fucked over big time. That is why I am pushing 59 and single. Either they used to me get their real girlfriend back in line, or they were non-committers using me for whatever it was they needed that they thought I had to offer. The caretaker men just stood around looking helpless and then wandered away. This has been a fairly repetitive pattern. So for me, it really is "No man."