Leave me alone!

Had the most disturbing dream a day or two ago.

My sleep is wildly variable these days, sometimes I have insomnia most of the night, and catch up with naps, sometimes I sleep right on schedule. Messing with my sleep is probably nature's meanest middle-age cruelty.

In the dream, I was wandering in a park with my dog (Cinder). "J" (my girlfriend) was with me, and I we were passing by a couple of security guys with trained dogs of their own.

Worried that Cinder would try to run over and say hi to the two guard dogs (she's inordinately friendly), I glanced over to her, and saw her in a ditch sniffing around. She came bounding out as I knelt down for some reason, and she was soaking wet. Knowing what was coming, I laid down, and rolled over with my back to her as she shook and sprayed ditch water everywhere.

Problem was, rolling over placed me right next to one of the guard dogs, who immediately bared his teeth and growled while he put his mouth near my throat.

The guard told me not to move, and used his radio to call the trainer. Then there was a long period (which I knew somehow was 20 minutes) where I laid there with this dog's mouth at my throat, hearing nothing else around me, and asking if anyone was still there. There was never an answer.

Eventually the trainer showed up, and I got up and searched out the guard's boss to cuss about being left alone on the sidewalk with his dog at my throat for 20 minutes. I also had a long period with "J", where I tried to talk to her about having gone on to take a nap while I was there, but she never acted like she really thought there was anything wrong with walking off on me.

It's odd, but now that I think about it, a LOT of my dreams are like this. The first nightmare I remember was when I was pre-school age, when I dreamed my mother was mad at me for some reason, and put me out on the back porch. She told me I couldn't come in the house anymore and left me there alone. I woke up crying, and my mother (my REAL waking mother) was asking me what was wrong.

It seems to show (and emotionally feels like) there's some abandonment issues here, but I had a reasonably normal childhood there.

I had a long period of withdraw in early adolescence that DID feel like that though.

It makes you wonder if there was ever something that triggered such a thing in childhood, something so far back that I don't even remember it... My parents were good parents in most ways, but you never know what small circumstance could cause such a quirk.