Let me tell you about a dream I had, about 8 months ago, when the hormones first really started working on my body and mind fully. I was at a family gathering at my Great Grandmother's house, it was the way it was when I was a kid, before my Grandmother ruined it with the "modern" stuff, it was cozy, and dirty, and lived in.
Everyone was there, uncles, cousins, grandparents, from both sides of my family, everyone I was related to was there, celebrating something. I was on the driveway, watching my siblings run and play, and I noticed that next to the driveway was a freezer, a chest freezer. It was one of the old ones. with a dome lid and a manual latch on it, it had once been white, but the sun and red clay had stained it a mix of yellow, brown and orange.
The freezer transfixed me.
I walked over to it, and tried to open it up, but the latch wouldn't open up, it was stuck. I pulled on the lid, and tried to wrench it open by force, but it wouldn't pop open no matter how I tried. Finally, I was fed up, and I got a stick, and I wedged it into the slight crack where the rotten rubber seal was just barely visible, and shoved as hard as I could.
The freezer tumbled down the hill in slow motion, end over end, until it hit a tree with a dull thud, and it spew open with a gush of liquid. I ran down the hill, and saw that there was a young girl in the moldy black water, pale, with black spots on her where she'd been in the moldy water, surrounded by rotting books. She coughed up black water, and looked up at me squinting in the sun, looking lost and alone, and I instantly felt an overwhelming sense that I needed to help her, to protect her. She had been in the freezer for a long time, as long as I could remember, and she was frail and unprepared for the outside world.
I gathered her up in my arms and rushed into the farmhouse, into the kitchen, where all the food was being prepared before it was taken to the basement for the feast, and begged for some food to give her. The family members I asked sneered at me and carried the food away, saying cruel things like "She doesn't belong here" or " You should have left her in the freezer". I turned to see my aunt spraying what was left of the food with a thick oily butter, and I knew the girl couldn't eat that without getting sick, so I grabbed a handful of cookies without waiting for anyone to tell me I could have them, and I rushed out of the house and into the woods.
I lay her under a tree, against the kudzu, and broke the cookies into bits and put them in her mouth. She looked at me and smiled, and the feeling of needing to protect her filled me up again. My family members kept walking by, calling down more mean things to us, or just pretending she wasn't there, until I had fed her enough cookies that she could stand up. She thanked me, her thick country accent sounding soft and clear in the green woods, and I woke up, sobbing harder than I could remember ever subbing before, my chest hurting, my eyes swimming, and hardly able to breathe. I'm crying again as I write this.
It took a lot of self reflection to understand that dream for me, sharing my dream journal with others, talking it through, but I'm sure you've understood it already.
The girl in the freezer is me. My real self, the one I hid away and covered up, refused to let see the light until just last year. She is still weak and starving, and she desperately need to grow and to be nourished, and I owe it to her to protect her, to do anything and everything I can to help her grow and be stronger, I know she's beautiful and powerful, I just need to protect her and nurture her until she's ready to show the world.