Tattoo

I sometimes have dreams of either becoming pregnant, being pregnant, in labor, or already having a baby. All varying forms of pending motherhood. I assume these types of dreams are common amongst women to have in some form with varying meanings and significance to their lives- but I can't help but feel that my feelings towards them might be... different.

I don't always have the same dream, but the same category of dream, and I these dreams I have a tendency of remembering due to the severity of how the make me feel about myself.

I call this dream Tattoo:

My dreams are always remembered from a third-person point of view, kind of like I'm watching a movie, they are seen through my eyes, my point of view, but I rarely see myself though I am aware I am present. In this particular dream I am at a party of some kind. I hear the faint sound of music playing mixed in with ambiguous conversations around me. The tone is fun and light-hearted. There are familiar faces and some un-familiar faces around me. I remember feeling throughout the dream an unexplained and sudden feeling of pending doom, it's unsettling to say the least. I pull out my phone and scroll through my emails and calendar to try to see if I missed something very important, a deadline? A birthday? Is my Drivers License expired? is the IRS after me- my taxes?? Yet no resolution comes to mind. Suddenly I become very aware of how uncomfortable I feel in the clothes I'm wearing, I feel exposed yet no one seems to be paying any attention to me. This isn't my party, the party isn't for me, so I'm not the focal point of everyone's attention. I get a tight and itchy sensation around my back and rib cage, like my bra being too tight. I excuse myself to the bathroom and shut the door to face myself in a full length hanging door mirror.

I get the awareness as "the dreamer" that this is me. I'm looking at myself at this point. It is some time in the future, but I don't look too much older. I am much thinner than what my current body stature is, as weight and weight loss are common scenario based dreams I have often. I am wearing a black dress, a cocktail type of dress, cut just above the knee with spaghetti straps that cross behind my neck with an open back.. I feel my hands up and down my body searching for any physical signs of obvious discomfort- I feel nothing. I slightly turn my shoulder and that is when I see it- black lines just barely creeping past my shoulder blades. I wet a hand towel and try to wipe off the lines like I'm trying to wipe off dirt- it's not coming off. I rub harder and longer- still there. Then I turn around fully and there I see it. A full sized back tattoo.

I blink and squint repeatedly, taking double even triple checks as to what I am actually seeing on my body. This tattoo covers my full back. I am horrified. I suddenly feel angry and terrified with myself. This feels very out of character for me to do, I scramble my brain, biting my nails and lip to shreds- I have no memory getting this tattoo. How is this possible? How does someone forget something as significant and permanent, such as getting a full back tattoo. I don't drink, I don't do drugs, and I'm that social enough as a person where I would a large number of friends or a guy i could have dated that I could think of that would have gone with me to do such a thing to myself. I never expressed any interest in getting a tattoo.

I keep checking and re-checking my back in the mirror after counting a few seconds without looking at it, hoping that "this is a dream" and that it's not on my back, and that it'll just go away. But it doesn't. I am left with the angersome acknowledgment of acceptance. Acceptance of the permanence of my decision, and the overwhelming feeling of regret and dread over the reality of the situation I've put myself in.

"I did do it." "I do have a tattoo." "I have a tattoo."I have a tattoo." I repeat these mantras to myself like mentally beating myself with a flaming mallet. There is a full length tattoo on my back, and everyone can see it, and I'm stuck in this dress with an open back. The attractive feature about this dress has now become the most unattractive flaw. I wear the dress like my own skin, and I've never felt to naked, so exposed, so ashamed in my own skin. I take a deep breath, and contemplate a strategy for how I can somehow make myself unnoticeable. I step outside the bathroom, and proceed to walk my way through some social acquaintances. Some people stop and talk to me. Though through talking with these people, I come to notice- they don't notice. My back tattoo is hardly subtle, yet they continue to talk to me and look at me like everything is perfectly normal. Then I realize, this is normal- it's normal to them. Is it possible that I have had this tattoo for some significant period of time that the sight of it to others has become as boring and as mundane as viewing the moon at night, and I am just coming to terms and acknowledgment over its existence on my body.

Somewhere around this point of awareness in the dream I wake up. No matter how hard I try to reflect back on the details of the dream, I have no memory of what the tattoo itself looked like, just the feeling I had when I discovered it.

Through months of contemplation over this dream, I've come to daunting resolution that this perhaps could be my interpretation of my fears about becoming pregnant. The tattoo was a symbol of the permanent change pregnancy represents.

I'd be very curious to see what some other thoughts people have on this dream, and what it could possibly mean. Have other women had similar dreams?