Nightmare

Had a dream that I was in the backseat of a car my friend was driving. She had her five-year-old daughter in the passenger's seat and the three of us were going to some mysterious place to me, but known to the two of them. This friend has two older children, and up until that moment I believed that was the full extent of her children: three.

We drive through underground gates and passage ways, tunnels and alleys and suddenly she's standing outside the car with a tiny baby in her arms. I see her trying to manage the five-year-old and the baby and offer to hold the baby for her. She dramatically pulls the baby to her closer and shifts away from me saying, "You can go home and read about babies if you want to know more about them!"

I then proceed to tell her that no one has ever in my life uttered more hurtful words, and I storm off determined to find my own way home, but alas, am hopelessly lost in a maze of darkness and spend the rest of the dream struggling to find her again, as she is my only way out.

Pretty sure those aren't the most hurtful words I've ever in my life heard, and now when I type this the whole dream sounds comical, but at the time it felt like a nightmare.

Trying to decide what are the dark and twisty parts of me. What is the baby part of me? The five-year-old part? The punitive part? The withholding and hurtful part? The pulling away and lashing out part? The lost part? The part that just wants to hold the baby?

* photo from i1.trekearth.com/photo