"IN A RESTAURANT, TWICE"
RUMINATORY DREAM provided by
ULC Reverend John L. Fordham
Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, by: reverendfordham@tripod.com
Original Creation Date: 04-04-01

      I was in a restaurant, with a fairly pretty woman. I had known her at some time in the past, but never been close. I don't know how we ended up in the restaurant together. She had shoulder-length, straight blond hair with a little flip at the ends, and wore wire-framed glasses. In retrospect, I think she was someone I'd known (sort of) many years ago; a waitress in one of the restaurants I used to frequent. Intelligent and sensitive; basically a nice person. We'd talked a few times, but she'd been married, so it never went further.

      It was a fairly large restaurant. I'd estimate the room we were in had about twenty tables in the central area of it, and perhaps fifteen booths around the outside walls. I think we encountered each other there in the room, and then took a table together. I had to go to the washroom. Before I left, I leaned in close to her and gave her a brief kiss - not a passionate kiss, but a respectful, loving one.

      I remember there was at least one other room similar to the one we'd been sitting in, because of the walk to the washroom and back. I don't have clear memory of the time in the washroom. I think it was there as a sequence-break, to allow what happened next.

      As I arrived back in the room, I realized there were people I knew sitting at some tables which had been pulled together to accomodate the group. They were people from A.A. The first one I recognized was sitting at the nearest corner of the three tables which had been pulled together. Looking past, I next recognized another man sitting at the farthest corner of the set, on the edge toward the center of the room. There were about ten(?) people there, and a couple of people standing and talking to them. It was rather crowded.

      I went over and said hello to the first; glad to see each other - it's been a while. I moved down the row, having to go slightly outward into the center of the room to do so, intending on seeing the second. Moving back toward the tables, I was near the edge between the middle and last table. The two people in front of me who were talking moved out of the way; I guess, done talking and going about their business. I realized that my ex was sitting at the table there. Seeing her was a shock, so I didn't take in whether she was directly next to the second man or there was someone in-between. I stopped in my tracks, turned, and left. She didn't look at me, so there wasn't any interaction - but, (and the following is reality) she's broke up our family, endangered me with physical assault and legal attack, and endangered our daughter. She's knowingly made sure her boyfriend will continue to be able to take advantage of constant opportunity to abuse my daughter. She arranged a fraudulent Order of Protection against me, by lying to the court. Any time I find her in the place where I am, for the next two years, I have to leave.

      I turned around on the spot. I don't know what my ex would be doing with A.A. people; I think her presence at those tables in the dream was symbolic of the fact that by driving me to move out of state in self-defense, she's obstructing me from having contact with them, as surely as sitting at that table in the dream obstructed me. It may also have something to do with the fact that I'd kissed that other woman in the dream; allowing emotional involvement the chance to begin. And - there she was, the object of my last emotional involvement, which ended in such terrible intentional harm against me, and disaster. She was ruthless in what she did, and how she did it, against my daughter and myself.

      I walked back to the other side of the room, looking for the woman I'd been with. She wasn't at our table. As I said, the room was crowded; lots of people sitting and standing. I looked around for a minute, and eventually found her standing near a table and talking to some friends there. She ended her conversation, and we walked toward the table we'd originally been going to take. I said, "Guess who's here?" She said, "Who?" I said, "Remember me telling you about the woman I was with before?" She said, "You're kidding." I said, "Nope - right over there.", and pointed. She said, "So, we'd better leave, right?" I said, "Yeah."

      We collected a couple of things from our table, and left. I have a vague memory of stopping at the cash register on the way out, so I guess we'd had something which needed paying for. I remember walking around with her, on relatively quiet, dark streets for a while, so I guess it was at night. We eventually came (back?) to the restaurant.

      Upon entering the restaurant, I decided to use the washroom again. She went ahead to take a table. Again, I don't have any memory of using the washroom - I think it was just there as a break in the sequence, or simply because that's something I would normally do after having been on a long walk away from facilities (fulfilling requirements of normalcy in dream sequence, by insertion of a visit to the washroom). The restaurant was still quite busy. The layout of the areas had changed, compared to what I remember from earlier in the dream. Now, each of the connections between rooms was a small "service" hallway approximately seven or eight feet long, with items the table servers would need. I walked slowly through the first room, scanning the people present to see if she was there; didn't find her, so continued on. (Table servers were moving past me as they normally would in a busy restaurant, during this entire search/walk.)I entered the second room, and began scanning again. I remember somewhere enroute, thinking it would have been nice if someone had taken a moment to tell me where she'd been seated. As I began scanning the room, a waitress paused to tell me that she was seated "in the back", pointing at the far edge of the room beyond a divider wall with plants on top of it. The wall was about four feet high - just high enough so including the plants, it would conceal the tables on the far side of it. The waitress also told me, "Oh - and, she's decided to not go in to work tonight."; as if to say that she'd decided to be with me instead. Moving to where I could see the far side of the room beyond the divider, I saw her sitting at a table. She looked different, but I was fairly sure it was her - especially, considering, that she'd noticed me and was waving. In retrospect, I realize that the A.A. crowd and my ex were not there in the room. In the dream, it didn't occur to me to have this as an issue I needed to be taking into consideration for safety's sake. I don't know if it's because we were in a different restaurant (although I think it was supposed to be the same place), or because we'd managed to squander away enough time walking around that we had no fears that they'd still be there. I waved back and began moving toward her, past the tables in-between, when my alarm sounded and that was the end of the dream.

Copyright 2001, 2002 Notification include : "ULC Reverend Fordham" website

Copyright (C) 2001, 2002
reverendfordham@tripod.com