The Levitating Slave
I noticed it was midnight on the dot. I let myself sleep again soon after, thinking that despite me sleeping the entire day prior, I was going to have a full nights rest.
I only slept for about two hours. I dreamed again:
I stay with a family of slave owners, and they have enslaved black people on a plantation. I’m, for some unknown reason, indebted to them, unable to leave yet having the privilege of being as I am— a white woman. I befriend the slaves, and try to bring them food and medicine as often as I can.
We almost get caught one time. I’m giving medicine to a wounded young man when someone sees our exchange from afar and sends dogs. They chase us, baying and gnashing. The thunder of paws on dead, hot grass. We cut ourselves on stray branches as we run from the forest, to the field, to the slaver’s house. I get on the far side of the house, in the shade, wiping my brow and panting. I then realize my friend is far behind me, still betwixt houses, exposed. I run for him and whistle loudly, taking the role of the slaver, and the dogs heel to me. We’re safe.
The next day, the same man gets hurt at work in a mine. It’s worth noting I never saw a slave in a field for this entire dream. The other slaves frantically carried him while his legs dragged. They were leading him past to the house. Blood and sweat and soot everywhere. I rushed over, helping him. I usually tried to use utmost caution when engaging with slaves, as I knew my presence could make things worse for them, should the slaver see. In this moment, caring about the slaver was no longer an option. There was no considering the slaver, nor the other slaves. The slaver could’ve killed us all. I just acted, and ran towards my friend. Taking him to the house meant death.
He was wailing, passing out yet agonizingly awake. Once I had him in my arms, I wiped his face with my raggedy dress and apologized for my presence, as it puts the group in danger, and told them to leave. One giant man insisted on helping and stayed behind to carry my friend. He leads us back into their underground home, which I had never been to.
I never knew where they slept, and was surprised to be lead underground, in the very shaft as the mine. It was a dirt room with cots and makeshift beds, a cob fireplace made from hay and clay, still crackling. We laid him down, tended to his wounds, and left him to rest.
I cracked jokes with the big man around the small fire, sitting on a bail of hay. Suddenly, a wooden trunk starts shaking. The man looks petrified, then stands up quickly, and urges me to leave, pulling my arm. I hesitate long enough to catch a glimpse of what comes out. He yells at me, intent on locking every door on the way out— a slave woman, bald and naked, covered in sweat, levitating. Somehow she was also me, and I knew her immediately, though I only saw a sliver of the back of her head and back as the man pulled me away and slammed the door.
The man, sweating and hysterically screaming crying “she’s not even human”, like it was his first time seeing her too. I ran away, back to the safety of the slaver’s house, yet didn’t go inside. I went to the same side of the house I ran to when my friend and I evaded the dogs.
I rocked back and forth, begging God to wake me up again. I couldn’t wake up again. I panicked, screamed, kicked the walls of the house, remembering it was just a dream. I went back to crouching, rocking, crying.
I remembered that I was once a “slave”, and battled this thought, kicking the house again. I screamed externally, internally saying “it’s insulting to say I was a slave when horrors like this exist! What about them?”
I only woke up after I accepted that one’s trauma doesn’t delude another’s. I also had to accept I wouldn’t have helped me, if I saw childhood-me before me today.
Someone sent me some verses while I slept:
Here is my servant whom I uphold,
my chosen one with whom I am pleased.
Upon him I have put my spirit;
he shall bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry out, nor shout,
nor make his voice heard in the street.
A bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench.
He will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow dim or be bruised
until he establishes justice on the earth;
the coastlands will wait for his teaching.
MY ANALYSIS
This dream showed me the various ways I learned to live in order to survive, and the various parts of myself that took shape to accommodate my survival. In a way, everyone in the dream was me except for the slavers, who were stand-ins for my abusers.
The woman I was in the dream was the version of myself who learned how to behave, speak, and carry herself so things would stay manageable. I was also “indebted” to the slavers, my abusers, yet I avoided that discomfort for the entire dream, which reflects the way I learned to not acknowledge the source of harm while still living inside the world it created.
The enslaved people were the parts of me that took the hurt directly. They were pushed out of sight so I could keep going. I didn’t even know where they slept, and I never thought to investigate their lives further than trying to “help” them by merely giving them things and then vanishing to manage. All care I’ve given to these hurt parts of myself was rushed, hidden, and in fear. I cared for them quietly because that is how I have always handled my own pain: indirectly, safely, without letting it interrupt the life I was trying to maintain.
The mine itself was the world I built beneath the life I was living. A place where pain was converted into labor, where suffering became something “useful,” something that served survival. I lived above it, benefiting from its function, while refusing to investigate, thus never acknowledging it, thus never truly healing.
The dogs were the instinctive reactions that come up whenever I get too close to what I’ve buried. Confused, scared, I begin to want to bite. I know how to control those reactions the same way I learned to control myself—taking on qualities of my abusers, in order to keep things from escalating. I silenced my own trauma-reactions by acting as the slaver, my abusers. It still disturbed me, regardless of how effective it was. There is clearly room for improvement.
The collapse of the man was the moment where something in me simply could not continue under those terms. I didn’t think about consequences in that moment. I recognized suffering and moved toward it. That was the real breaking point of this entire dream.
The giant man who stayed behind to help represented the steady, grounded part of me that has held the weight of everything quietly, without praise or recognition. The one who has always done the heavy lifting of endurance. The part of me that has survived everything without shutting down. I joked with him in the dream the way people do when something is unbearably heavy. Humor as a small warmth in the middle of something brutal. The joking showed a kind of appreciation for the loyalty I didn’t realize I had toward myself.
The underground living space showed that the parts of me I believed were lost have been alive this whole time. They have their own continuity, their own warmth, their own world. I was surprised someone had put these beautiful people underground to work, away from sight, nonetheless to live down there.
The bald woman was the version of myself who felt everything when it happened, and I had put her in a box, underground. She was untouched by all of my “healing,” because it was something I had done while severed from her. I severed parts of myself, dissociating from the real emotional pain of my trauma. Seeing her was frightening because she is the part of me that would undo the entire way I have been living. I can’t just do medicine drop-offs to these unhealed parts of myself, but actually go down in the mine with them, and meet them where they are. She is the me before endurance, before adjustment, before strategy. She is the me that experiences. I have to re-associate, accept the pain, in order to truly heal, instead of just intellectualizing it or running from these complicated emotions. It’s not that she horrified me— I'm horrified of the emotional impact trauma has left me.
The distress at the end showed my habit of telling myself others have suffered more, so I shouldn’t even try to address my own pain, which I’ve often seen as trivial in comparison to others. I’m learning that comparison is not only the “thief of joy,” though it seems to also be the thief of healing. Silencing myself has been a way of keeping the deeper self at a distance. When I stopped arguing about it, trying to justify or rationalize nonsense, and simply acknowledged that my pain is real, the dream let go.
This dreamed showed to me the various ways I learned to live in order to survive, and the various parts of myself that took shape to accommodate my survival. In a way, everyone in the dream was me except for the slavers, who were stand-ins for my abusers.
The woman I was in the dream was the version of myself who learned how to behave, speak, and carry herself so things would stay manageable. I was also indebted to the slavers, yet I avoided that discomfort for the entire dream.
The enslaved people were the parts of me that took the hurt directly. They were pushed out of sight so I could keep going. I didn’t even know where they slept, and I never thought to investigate their lives further than trying to “help” them by merely giving them things, then vanishing. All care I’ve given to these hurt parts of myself were rushed, hidden, and in fear. I cared for them quietly because that is how I have always handled my own pain: indirectly, safely, without letting it interrupt the life I was trying to maintain.
The dogs were the instinctive reactions that come up whenever I get too close to what I’ve buried. I know how to control those reactions the same way I learned to control myself— taking on qualities of my abusers.
The collapse of the man was the moment where something in me simply could not continue under those terms. I didn’t think about consequences in that moment. I recognized suffering and moved toward it. That was the real break.
The underground living space showed that the parts of me I believed were lost have been alive this whole time. They have their own continuity, their own warmth, their own world. I was surprised they existed at all.
The bald woman was the version of myself who felt everything when it happened, and I had put her in a box. She was untouched by all of my healing, because it was something I had done while severed from her. I severed parts of myself, disassociating from the real physical and emotional pain of my trauma. Seeing her was frightening because she is the part of me that would undo the entire way I have been living. I have to re-associate, accept the pain, in order to truly heal, instead of just intellectualizing.
The distress at the end had to do with the habit of telling myself others have suffered more, so I shouldn’t even try to address my own pain, which I saw as trivial in comparison. I’m learning that comparison is not only the “thief of joy”, though it seems to also be the thief of healing. Silencing myself has been a way of keeping the deeper self at a distance. When I stopped arguing about it, trying to justify or rationalize nonsense, and simply acknowledged that my pain is real, the dream let go.