The Deer of my Nightmares

Normally I don't pay much attention to dreams. Sometimes I have a terrible dream about hurting someone I love, but then I wake up and I'm just thankful that it was merely a dream. On the flipside of that coin sometimes I'm having a dream that I won the lottery or that I'm married to Keira Knightley, then waking up is met with disappointment when I look around at my mediocre bedroom, in my mediocre apartment. However last night was an exception. I've never had a dream that felt more real, symbolic, and relevant to me. However there are a few aspects that had me scratching my head until I really got critical with myself.

Here's the dream:
I'm hanging out with my friend Weston, he and I are former friends from work and we don't see each other all that often but he and I are driving down a dirt road near where i grew up. (Bird rd. for all my buddies from Byron) I'm in the passenger seat looking out to the left of the car. I see a open corn field that has already been harvested along with hundreds of deer just standing there looking at us. The day is cloudy and cold. There are also about 5 hunters pointing guns toward the deer with their backs to us. I see one of the hunters shoot a deer right through the heart. The blood is instantly spreading over it's entire chest. As it goes down, myself and Weston walk over to the animal along with the hunter, who I figure out is my friend Scott (who actually grew up on Bird Rd.). As we approach the downed deer it jumps up and starts attacking Gibbs with its hooves and gnashing it's teeth at him. Myself and Weston think it's funny for a while but after Scott gets hit in the head a couple times with the hooves it's obvious that he's in trouble. I run up to the deer and kick it in the side to distract it long enough for Scott to get away. But the Deer now turns on me and begins charging with the same type of attacks. I go into a defensive stance covering my face and head to avoid a skull splitting hoof attack. After I realize nobody is going to come to my aid I lash out blindly and catch the animal with with a right hook to the chops putting the animal down on the ground then I jump on its back and snap the animals neck hard to the right until I feel the bones in its neck crack. I collapse afterward. (I'm not a hunter and I don't hurt animals so I was pretty depressed about having to provide the mercy kill.) Right when I think it's time to leave the deer begins to rise up again groaning all the while and staring into my eyes. I jump on it once more, this time twisting the animals head hard in the opposite direction until I hear the same sickening sound. Myself and Weston get back in the car and decide we're going to the bar....Then I black out within my own dream. I have no recollection of the bar but I wake up in a house. (I think it's supposed to be my parents house, even though it looks nothing like their house) Myself and Weston are asleep in a room in a basement. We are in two seperate beds and when I wake I ask him what happened. He recalls in detail the whole situation with the deer. I'm pretty sad at this point because i was hoping that it was only a dream but unfortunately I still have blood all over me. My dad comes into the room and he says something in a very mean tone, I forget what it was exactly but my mom is also extremely mad at me. (If you know my parents, you realize how uncharacteristic this would be for them) I walk out of the room and into another area of the basement, I'm a little taken aback when I see my parents, aunts and uncles, friends and cousins all sitting in this closed-in room with one window and no doors. It's an intervention and they want me to stop drinking. People cry and tell me how much they love me and whatnot. A few of my friends can't even make it through the inervention because it's too painful for them. Right before my Grandma begins to talk, I hear a scratching at the window behind me. I turn around and it's the deer from the previous day. It's still bloody and mad. It's back legs no longer work and it drags its body through the window and lands on the carpeting it moves in grotesque jerking motions it's face is angry and it's making noises too horrible for words. I look down with pity at this broken animal as it's dead legs trail behind it. I look around for some kind of support but everyone that was in the room is gone. The room has no doors so I am stranded with this animal. I fall to my knees and just begin crying my eyes out. Then my alarm goes off and I wake up for real this time. My pillow is covered with tears and my nose is running.
The End. Pretty weird eh?

For the past 9 months I've done a lot to control my drinking. I rarely get sloshed anymore. It's more of a casual thing to pound some beers while playing Madden online or watching some football. I don't mess with liquor anymore at all!! But after this dream I must still must be harboring alot of guilt over the fact that I still drink at all. It has cost me so much already, friends, jobs, respect, girlfriends. Alcoholism is a "progressive disease" that only grows stronger over time. Maybe I've convinced myself that the worst is over but subconsciously I know it's not true as long as I continue to drink. Just because I haven't had any legal troubles or lost any jobs in the last 3 years I think I have my disease beat. Obviously this dream suggests otherwise. Here's why...

The details that I haven't released yet further prove my thesis.

1. Although Weston and I are far from "best friends" he is a guy that I've always had alot of respect for. The last time I saw him was 2 years ago at a bar in Williamston the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Apparantley he offered me ride back to my parents house that night so I wouldn't have to walk through town hammered. When I tried to get into the car the door was locked but I pulled so hard with my drunken "retard" strength on the door handle that I ripped it off. I had no recollection of this for the last 2 years until he showed up at my mom's bank. He ask her how I was doing and then told the story about his door handle. My mom relayed the message to me later that day. She said he was laughing about it, but it still made me sick to my stomach to do something like that to a friend trying to do me a favor.

2.Scott was always a great friend growing up in Byron. We went to elementary and middle school together and we also met back up in our college years and worked at the same OfficeMax for 3 years or so. However in 2005 the year the shit hit the fan and I went on constant benders and other fun such self-destructive excursions. All my former friends from OfficeMax took notice and started treating me as a distant friend that they might respond to over phone or e-mail but never really wanted alot to do with me in person. Maybe the Deer attacking him was a way of showing my addiction causing harm to a friend. And when I kicked the deer to distract it, was a metaphor for taking the brunt of my addiction on my own shoulders and giving up on the notion that me and Scott were ever gonna be friends again. Letting my addiction hurt me to protect my friends from destructive behavior. That's when I started flying solo on drinking outings and avoiding other people for a few months in that span of time.

3.Bird Road was where Gibbs lived but also another childhood friend named Travis Bogart. Travis died our senior year in a car accident on that very road. I still haven't gotten a 100% true account of whether drinking was involved. Some people say yes, some people say no. Either way I think drinking was once again the central reason that the dream took place here.

4. I've done research online today about what a deer represents in a dream. The "experts" say it has something to do with feminine aspects of ones personality, a representation of grace and beauty, and also that killing a deer in a dream is a way of supressing the feminine aspects of your personality. Well I do alot to put on a tough front with my death metal and football. So I guess I can see some relevance. However the more i think about the central aspect of the dream (drinking) I think it represents my addition to alcohol. Gibbs shooting the deer was the manifestation of him turning his back on me in a sense to try to help me get help. As I said before then I took on the deer solo for a while and tried to squash it. It got in some good shots on me first a couple hooves to the head (Jail, Court, Loss of friends) So I tried to kill it twisting it's neck. (That was when I went to rehab and AA.) But it lived (relapse) so I tried killing it again. I went back to AA and other forms of alcohol couseling. I thought I had it under control so I went back to the bar. After smooth sailing for a while, I made an idiot out of myself at my friend Bob's birthday party last January I was pulled aside and given a quick intervention in his garage by my buddy Andy, his wife Crystal, and Bob himself. I vowed not to drink again and it lasted for a while until my favorite dog Tiber was put down in March due to old age mainly. I relapsed again and never really looked back. The intervention in the dream represented probably all the interventions that I have been given either formally or unformal in the last 5 years. When I turned my back on my loved ones to see the deer scratching at the window I believe that was a metaphor for turning my back on my loved ones and giving in once again to alcohol. The obvious outcome was that all my friends and family will be gone if I continue to give in to this ugly monster. The deer is crippled, shot, beaten. But unkillable. My addiction is something that will always be with me. Although it may be weak right now with my trying to limit my intake of alcohol, I will never be fully rid of this thing. The deer grows stronger the longer I allow it to live inside my room. I will be left with nothing but an empty room and my addiction...And I don't think that deer likes me too much anymore.