Posted by kwmunnell on August 04, 1999 at 17:09:49:
CPR Dream: any responses, impressions, input welcome.
I am with my young son and we go into a long rectangular room with a pool,
the same shape as the room, in it, and there is an older dark-haired woman
in the water at the far end of the pool. We go down the stairs into the water
and wade across the pool to her. When we arrive close to her, she whispers
to me, "His father is DEAD". I know she means my son's father and I am
ENRAGED. How dare she say this! I lunge at her and strangle her. I am
completely violent, overwhelmed with some protective instinct for my son
and with murderous rage towards her! I am killing her. I realize this as if
something outside myself pulls me away from myself for an instant to see
what I am actually doing! I stop, I release her, and grab my son to leave.
Reaching the other end of the pool, some of the emotions are ebbing and I
realize I am leaving her for dead, and the I don't care and that I killed
her. Then, I go back, thinking she might survive, that maybe she is still
barely alive. I check. She is! Now, looking down at her, she is only a damp,
blue v-neck t-shirt lying on the pool deck, and I can see barely visible
breaths moving up and down in the shirt. She will live, Fine, I think, I am
leaving and I will call to send help. But, I can't go. I am riveted by the thin
thread that her life is clinging to so visibly with these weak breaths. That's
it, I will help her survive. I begin to give her CPR as the breaths are
becoming frighteningly scarce. As I do, she becomes her body Self again.
She returns to her flesh. Her skin is pale and clammy and her dark hair is
matted to her head, but she breathes. And she continues to breathe. And, I
feel I have saved her life. Oddly enough I feel a profound pride and
strength and rightness in this act, even though I had been the one to
attack her and kill her. Then, as I wade across the pool with my son again to
leave, I know I couldn't have lived with the guilt of killing her and that I
have done the right thing. And, I turn to look back at her and know that
she is SOPHIA, she is restored and living and breathing and full of life.