JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

My name is Olivia and here is my concern. I have been having weird dreams and I don’t know why. Last weekend I dreamt that I was Mulan. Yes, the Disney princess who took her father’s place and pretended to be a guy to join China’s army in fighting the Huns. In my dream I was getting married and I was walking down the aisle. When I got to the altar, the groom reached out his hand. When I looked at the groom’s face, there was nothing. He was faceless! Imagine my shock. That’s when I woke up. I didn’t bother telling my friends about this dream. I just shrugged it off.

My next and probably the weirdest dream I’ve ever had was the one I had 2 nights ago. In that dream I was back at my grandmother’s house and I was with my boyfriend. What’s weird about that, right? Sounds pretty normal. Except that my boyfriend in the dream was the President of the Republic of the Philippines, Noynoy Aquino.

Auntie Janey, I’m not thinking about marriage or anything like that. I’m not in a committed relationship but I go on dates. Why am I hounded by these strange dreams? Is my subconscious telling me something? Help me, I’m getting grossed out.

There are other people who have dreamt that they are Mulan, and most of them are men. Some may have looked at a mirror or a clear pond and sung: “Look at me, I can never pass for a perfect bride or a perfect daughter. Can it be I was never meant to play this part?”

We all know that dreams are very important signs of what is going on deep in our minds. They are vital in understanding our psyche.

The first dream I ever remembered was one I had when I was four years old. On that day I had seen my first real horse, a white one, and it was incorporated into my dream.

My dream was sepia. I dreamt that I was being chased by a giant that looked like one of those Susy and Geno mascots. The chase started from the topmost floor of my home, down to the first floor and out onto the streets. I ran and ran. The horse was running beside me but somehow I could not ride it.

This was the recurring theme of most of my dreams from early childhood to my teens. My dreams were in full color by then. The chase always started from the topmost floor of my building but the things that chased me depended on what I had read or watched recently. Some of the pursuers over the years have been werewolves, vampires, manananggal, cockroaches, fire ants, and X-Men villains. The dreams also had varied endings. Sometimes I would get trapped on the ground floor because the doors were locked, and sometimes I had the ability to jump or fly off the top of the building.

These dreams gave way to other dreams when I became a hormonal teenager. They ranged from the missionary to the bizarrely orgiastic. But we will not speak of those.

I now know that those dreams were my protests against the very controlling and repressive environment I grew up in. They also accurately predicted my pattern when it comes to commitment and relationships. Whenever I have determined conclusively that I am being controlled, manipulated or repressed in whatever way, my reaction is to plot a coup while devising an exit strategy. The emphasis of my dreams was not on physical freedom but on intellectual and personal freedom. My dreams also taught me that I am not designed to be stuck in one place or state throughout my life. I must continue to have the ability to pursue things that will help me enhance my capabilities and my understanding of myself and the world. Naks!

My take on your dream, Olivia, is not that you want to be in a relationship. I believe that what your dreams are telling you is that you are looking for something to commit to: an ideology, a sports team, a boy band or a person of great character or charisma. You are perhaps looking for something to believe in.

This will sound cloyingly Oprah-esque but the only way to look for something to believe in is to look within yourself (Yaaaaak! Did I just write that?). Looking very closely at yourself is hard to do. Being honest with yourself is much harder. You have to examine everything: your past, your experiences, the people who influenced you, your motivation, the lies you are telling yourself. It’s a very scary process.

It took me more than seven years for my reflection to show who I am inside. The hardest part was accepting the horrible truths about myself and the people in my life. Those were very dark years filled with melodrama, bad poetry, angry essays and angst. But by reaching deep inside the muck of my consciousness, I was able to find the foundations of who I am. They were covered by the slime of lies that other people made me believe and the mud of self-delusion. They required some thorough and painful scrubbing but in the end I have a grasp of who I truly am. My relationships and beliefs in certain things have stabilized since then. I am still evolving and my self-knowledge allows me to direct what direction I should grow. (All together now:”Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”).

“When will my reflection show who I am inside?” you ask. Your reflection already shows who you are inside. You just have to look at it straight in the eye.