What does this dream mean?

It only means what you think it means. Other people can’t tell you what a dream means except in the most generic terms, since the archetypes of everybody’s mind and life are different.

People who claim to be able to interpret dreams probably have a degree in psychology and have no other way to use it.

I would think you were getting ready to push some boundries. Whether it was starting school or taking on a new project that you had never attempted before. Like a bird leaving the nest for the first time, your bed was a comfort zone, and outgrowing it in a dream and being terrified is a manifestation of a fear of failure. Try to think about what was happening in your life when you were having the dream and see if you can find a connection.

Being bedridden seems like it might have you relating to the bed, and trying to be comfortable after lying there a long time could have you fix on the corner of it, while being sick could have you worried about a struggle like that. Also your dream imagination is nice and creative – I really like that dream and haven’t heard one quite like it before. Basically it sounds to me like a reaction to how being sick can suddenly and uncontrollably change your entire experience of life, but that interpretation comes from my thought structures from my past, naturally. What do you think, feel, or intuit that it’s about?

Are you struggling with being a slacker or being productive? Or were you?

Your fighting an external force to grow.
And if you don’t grow enough you lose.
That alone scares me personally without thinking more about it.

If you need to grow (get better at) something, you really need to, and something external is stopping you from doing that, it is not okay. I mean what happens if you lose and you can’t get where you want to be? That is a lot of uncertainty.

I see why this is sticking with you. It is similarly bothering me just thinking about the meaning of it.

It’s like your being oppressed. Your fighting a force beyond your control for something that needs to occur. (Does this apply to anything in your life at the time? Maybe there was something that you needed to achieve, an illness you needed to overcome, someone that was causing you to feel unsafe, a personality flaw like lack of friends that was overwhelmingly bothering you.. something of that nature, something you needed to change or achieve. You would know if there was something. Whatever it was, if the analysis is correct which I do not assume it is, was ever present and very real for you, however small or large it was to anyone else it was important to you at the time).

And why the bed?

You were a child so unless there was abuse going on (which given the dream could be possible) it is likely not about sex. For children beds are about night time which is often scary, being alone which is often scary, but also comfort and the fantasy of dreams and what the next day will bring. I think this is kinda a turning point. I would need to know what your relationship was to bedtime as a child? Was it more the positive? The Neutral? or the Negative? Without knowing that I would only be projecting my own experiences.

If you answer the question about bedtime I might be able to progress the interpretation some. Of course if it is off base already there is no need, lol :)

@evelyns_pet_zebra – I’m personally not a big fan of Freud but I’m still interested in what other people think it means. Personally, I wouldn’t have a clue as to what it would mean, if it means anything.

@mamabeverly – I’m not sure, I think the period in which I had this dream spans years. Though perhaps it was growing up in general, as it was at the start of puberty.

@Zaku – I positively have no idea what it’s about, because it’s so odd. Perhaps it has something to do with growing (I never was tall, in fact, I used to be very, very small compared to people of my age in the Netherlands), though the feeling of growth felt more as if I was getting fat (but I was always underweight and never worried about that – was quite happy with not being able to get fat, in fact).

@daloon – well, yeah, I’m very much of a slacker and have always been. Why?

@RedPowerLady – that’s very interesting. It might have to do with my mom’s ex, who was really holding my development back. We very much suspected he had a lot of mental issues, but since 1) we daren’t mention it and 2) if we did hint at it he’d furiously deny it, so it has never been diagnosed (well, he had been diagnosed with mysophobia when he was twenty or so, but was supposedly ‘cured’ – I only found this out after he left, when I asked whether he was mysophobia). Anyway, once he left I really started to become more of a social animal, less shy and less introvert, like I was (and still am) catching up. So now that you mention it, it might very well be that I stopped having this dream somewhere around the time he left (I can’t be sure though).

As for the bed, rest assured that there was no sexual abuse. My relationship to bedtime was quite neutral, I think. I didn’t hate going to bed but I didn’t look forward to it either.

Thanks for the answers everybody, this has been the most interesting question for me personally I’ve asked on Fluther hitherto.

@Vincentt—well, that was yesterday, and I don’t remember all that I was thinking.

The two parts of the competition represent two parts of yourself. They each want control of you. Since it’s a bed, it has something to do with a kind of sleeping activity. I.e., not doing much; i.e., being a slacker. So, what’s the opposite of a slacker? A person who accomplishes a lot.

The problem is, I don’t know which side is you. Is it the side that is a slacker, and is afraid you will lose control, and start doing something? Or is it the side of you that wants to accomplish things, and is afraid it will be pulled down permanently into slackerdom. The fact that you win and lose suggests that you vacillate back and forth between the two. My guess is that the slacker is afraid of being successful (if I add the pop psychological analysis).

Do you smoke marijuana a lot? (Just because that seems to be associated with slackerdom.) If so, this could be about giving up marijuana. I’m sorry. I’m just free associating. I get one idea, and then I have to invent a back story that explains it. There’s also the issue of the baby picture in your avatar. Maybe you have a new child, and this is forcing you to get serious, and you really wish you didn’t have to.

So, anyway, there it is. I’m always nervous when I do these interpretations, because I hate being wrong, but when I don’t like the interpretation, I hate being right. I like to see how good I am, but I don’t want to be laughed at. “You thought whaa-at? What the hell were you thinking?” So writing this down in front of the public is making me very anxious.

@Vincentt Well that just may be it. A lot of times our dreams are ways of acting out and telling us what is happening in our waking lives. So what was the trigger related to that you had the other day?

Now see my relationship to bedtime as a kid was I hated it. Not because of abuse or anything horrible that too many people have to face. But frankly I just hated it.

If you had such a neutral relationship to bedtime I’m not sure how relevant it is to the dream. It is likely the bed is manifesting itself simply because it is one of the last things you saw before going to bed. Not very enlightening, lol, but a possibility.

@daloon – sounds plausible. I don’t smoke anything (asthma), so that won’t be it ;-). And the baby picture is of myself, and is in response to this question.

Also, don’t be afraid to be wrong, as I’m not really looking for a ‘right’ answer (there’s no way to verify, right? :). I’m really just interested in what people might think it could mean, and your answer has been very interesting in that regard :)

@RedPowerLady – the trigger was a feeling slightly similar to the feeling I had in that dream (only without it feeling ‘bad’). I experienced it while lying in bed, too, but that’s probably because that’s when my thoughts wander and because I was lying still. The “last thing you say”-theory sounds very plausible as well.

I didn’t think this question would appeal to me until I read the details. When I was a kid, everytime I had a fever, I used to dream in geometric shapes (think squares that turn into windows, etc.). Eventually it came to be my clue that I had a fever. I wonder if your case is similar as you mentioned it happened when you were ill . . .

@Kayak8 – that might very well be, I do associate it with fever. However, it also happened when the fever was so slight that I wasn’t even sure it was a real fever, and then when I woke up next day I wouldn’t feel bad at all anymore.

It’s quite odd though – why on earth would we be dreaming about geometric shapes?

@Kayak8
@Vincentt

You know the fever idea reminded me of something. It could very much be the case. I have something called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. Mostly, but not always, triggered by a fever. Where you experience things such as Alice did. Like I feel as if I’m running when I know I’m walking. Or I see my fingers as tiny and shriveled even though they feel fine and I know they are fine. It is odd how are brains react to fever.

@RedPowerLady – that’s an interesting syndrome. I don’t think that’s what we got, though, as this only happens while dreaming, though ”for example a corridor may appear to be very long, or the ground may appear too close” sounds very much like dreaming (or being high).

Anyway, best of luck with the syndrome. How often do you experience it?

@Vincentt I experienced it a couple times a year as a child, a bit less as a teen, and as an adult very rarely.