Saturday, June 21, 2025

Dream feelings #12 - garage as metaphor

A dream about this:
an actual photo of the garage from back in the day

A dream with many small vignettes, but the biggest was this: I am in the garage, straightening it out. There is once more a lot of chaos; things that need to be sorted/organized/made room for.   I work a small area, making ground, and someone comes behind me and hangs a striped blanket up near what I was tidying.  It feels rough like wool, and the stripes are large and wavy in green, blue, orange, black.  What is this?  Where did this come from? It becomes known to me that its something for camping. As I am cleaning and straightening, Mark is adding more stuff.  I look out of the garage and see a large junky vehicle like a van and ask what is that? Mark answers me with a word I don't know.  "Don-something".  That's not staying here, right?  It will take up the whole driveway. Yes, it is, he says.  I immediately start yelling "NOOOOOO" and sink to my knees.  All that effort in trying to get a handle on the mess and straighten, and he gets to do whatever he wants and add more junk. The dreams ends and I get up for the day.
******
I never had any say in how we managed anything out here.  If I spent hours sweeping and organizing it, tossing trash, organizing equipment after campouts, making space for whatever crap Mark decided to bring home, and making room for the kids to park their bikes and scooters, he would downplay it or get angry that it was a problem for me.  And it always took me hours - it was sweaty dusty heavy work.  And he was never OK with helping.  I never felt like this space was mine too, even though I had to work so hard on it and help pay for it.  I still have so much anger about it.  The state of the garage mirrors how I felt about my married life.

I had to go out to the garage and take a couple of photos of what it actually looks like now:


Mostly so I could reassure myself.  I know what and where everything is out here.  There are spaces to walk.  There is order.  Everything is manageable.
And no one can tell me shit about it.


I could still get rid of some things - I probably will.  But never again will I feel that I have no control or peace in my own home, smothered by literal stacks and piles of things and having no say in it.


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