I had a dream last night. It was the first time I had a dream in a while, so I decided to write it down immediately when I woke up. 

The dream was about a man and a woman who were separated, formerly married. I was experiencing the dream as the former husband and for conveniences sake, I'll address myself as him. The setting was a mix of fantasy and the old west. For example, you could ride your horse around the American southwest and see European-style castles. 

I had been separated from my wife for a while for reasons unknown. One day, she summoned me to meet her somewhere specific. I don't remember how she summoned me, perhaps it was a letter. I only remember thinking that the journey would be long and arduous. 

Most of the dream was about the end of the journey. At some point, I was taken prisoner and made two acquaintances. One of them was a guard who worked for the kingdom we lived in and accidentally taken prisoner. The other was the leader of the "Trejo Gang", a group of bandits who were notorious in the southern states. The bandit leader was taken up north, far away from his home as a precaution. They didn't want his gang to organize his escape. 

At some point the prison guards were transporting us across a river. Picture the scene of George Washington crossing the Delaware River, we all looked like that and wore similar clothing. All of a sudden, the Trejo gang leader gave all the prisoners a signal and they all began a riot among the small fleet of row boats we were in. We all managed to escape and steal a few horses. The gang leader recruited the prisoners into his gang and began an assault on a nearby patrol. Meanwhile, the friendly guard and I mounted up on horses. The gang leader begins to ride towards home and we follow him. 

Moments later we're spotted by a guard outpost and they sound the alarm. We try to speed through and hope that the guards don't catch us, but they begin to shoot arrows at our backs as soon as we pass the guard tower. The gang leader is the first to fall. Then, the friendly guard takes an arrow to the shoulder and falls as well. I take a shot directly in the back, but luckily I had a shield on my back. However, the force is enough to throw me off the horse and into one of the warehouses at the edge of the outpost. The guards begin to search for us. I imagine the gang leader and friendly guard have already been apprehended. 

I'm trying to get up from the floor and leave the warehouse, but I'm in an incredible daze and don't think that I can make it.

It's then that my wife appears and gestures for me to be silent. She helps me up and whisks me away before the guards arrive. I think she leaves before me, but tells me to meet her down the road. The location for the meetup doesn't feel far. It's a junkyard at the end of the road. She is standing at the entrance of the junkyard and I notice that the yard goes further down. At the bottom, I see something that resembles an alien space ship. I walk up to her and realize that I can't say anything. The air is tense and our silence speaks volumes. We both struggle to find the right words to express ourselves with after being away from each other for so long. It's apparent that we care about each other, or used to, but are both incredible disappointed with how things turned out. Her face bears an expression of disgust, not necessarily at me, but at the situation. 

In the end, she turns around and walks away towards the junkyard. I'm assuming she's going to the space ship. I just stand there and eventually wake up.

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A few weeks ago I began to read Carl Jung's A Man and His Symbols. It's a book about his thoughts on the things we experience unconsciously, like dreams, that could be trying to say something point at a person's "neurosis". Or if you're not actively focusing on something, you can unconsciously experience a sound or smell in your environment and it can trigger a memory that is seemingly "random". 

Jung would always be careful when talking to his patients about their dreams because he believed that their interpretation solely depended on the individual and any input from himself or anyone else would taint the message. He also though that the concept of dream interpretation book was stupid for the same reason. Even if both people have the same dream, it could mean completely different things to each of them. 

I know exactly what this dream is about and it's not pulling any punches. Though, I don't think I'll ever feel comfortable talking about it deliberately in public. Even on my own blog, lol. I don't know who the bandit leader or friendly guard are to me. I think the only way I can relate to them is that we're all far away from home. The bandit leader is interesting to me because he makes lemons into lemonade. Even though he's a prisoner and away from his gang, he still manages to become a leader of a gang away and break everyone out. However, he ends up losing in the end. 

The friendly guard never stood out to me, but I felt bad about his situation. He was legitimately misunderstood and none of the other guards ever thought to look at his uniform and just lumped in with the rest of us. He didn't do anything wrong and met the same fate as the bandit leader. I can only hope that things went his way after he was caught the second time. 

Then, there's me. I was very eager to see my wife again. I was sort of crushed to see how things ended even after meeting again. And I was scared when I saw her get on the space ship because I thought I'd never see her again. I also wonder why she summoned me in the first place. The journey was long and we were separated, how did she know I'd come see her? 

I think I can interpret about 60% of the dream at the moment, but it's resurfacing a topic that's still very sore for me.

Jung said that sometimes the dream is nudging you to do something or it's a visualization of something you'll do in the future. It's not like future sight, but imagine what you'll probably eat for breakfast or lunch tomorrow with what you have in your kitchen. You can make a reasonable assumption of what that event will look like, so I assume he meant that. However, the unconscious loves to present itself to us as seemingly utter nonsense.