Sometimes my subconscious likes to be really mysterious in its messages to me (so, why, exactly, did a frog hop on the big pink bubble gum bubble I was blowing?). Sometimes it likes to tell jokes. Sometimes it (like many a subconscious) likes to play on my fears (hm, what would those be?). And sometimes it likes to tell really obviously metaphorical stories that I can turn into blog posts about living with addiction…

My sister came to visit me in my dream. I don’t have a sister, but you know dreams, so in this one, I did. I hadn’t seen her for a long time and when she arrived, I was horrified. Her body was grotesquely bloated and her flushed, blotchy cheeks were distended, like the cheeks of a chipmunk hoarding nuts. I worried that the huge lumps were tumors and that her bloated body was filled with cancer. But she seemed not to notice that her appearance had changed so dramatically at all, and she sat down and chatted cheerfully with me.

And I chatted cheerfully back. After all, I couldn’t tell her she looked awful. If she didn’t see herself as looking terrible, I ought not to either. I should see her the way she wanted me to, through the eyes of love. Telling her she looked bad might hurt her feelings. Or scare her. Or insult her. She might get angry and leave. I had to take care of her and keep what I saw from her. And really, was it even true? Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she was perfectly fine. She certainly seemed fine. Maybe I was crazy and projecting my own hypochondria on her. Maybe I misremembered how she used to look. So I kept smiling and chatting and wondering when she would leave so that I could look at old pictures of her and confirm that she really had changed and I could google things like “bloating and distended cheeks” to see if cancer came up.

That interaction with my dream sister was like my interactions with so many of the active addicts I’ve been close to during my life. I’ll sense something wrong, but they’ll seem perfectly fine, which leaves me wondering if I’m crazy. I don’t feel safe telling them what I see my truth and my reality, not theirs, for fear of hurting or angering them. I don’t feel confident saying that my truth and my reality are valid. I woke up thinking, “Ok, I get it subconscious!” And that was something in itself. If I’d had that dream years ago, I would have missed the metaphor entirely. Or maybe just wondered if I was crazy to see it.