I haven’t been sleeping very well in the overnights, so I have generally found myself taking a nap after I get done with work. One afternoon this week, I evidently slept deep enough to get some decent REM sleep because I had a really weird dream. I enjoy analyzing my dreams to try to figure out what they mean, and over the years I have built a pretty decent dream dictionary for myself. This one was a little bit of a challenge, though.

I met this woman who did nails as her job, at a salon, and she did some work on my nails. (In reality I don’t do manicures, because my nails are too short). She asked to schedule a follow-up appointment, and I actually set one. She ended up giving me a discount on my next appointment, but she was very insistent to not let anybody know that she was giving me a discount, which was kind of weird. I told her no problem, I wouldn’t say anything. It wasn’t even that much of a discount, it just felt like she was trying to convince me that she was giving me something of value.

For some reason I had just moved into a new apartment, and for some reason I invited her over to visit as soon as I moved in. I didn’t even have much furniture in place yet, just a couple of beds and a bunch of stuff in boxes. She found someone to watch her 8-year-old child, then came over to the apartment. She ended up massively overstaying her welcome, to the point where I was trying to cook something to eat for dinner and hoping she would leave because I didn’t want to be rude and eat in front of her, but it wasn’t working. She eventually left, and I ate, and then she came back, crawled into one of the beds, and promptly fell asleep.

Somehow fast forward to it being 3 months later, and she was still living in my second bedroom. Her boyfriend, who was a complete jackass/doper, had also moved in. The second bedroom was packed with their stuff. The two of them had absolutely no intention of ever leaving, never paid any rent, and laughed at me when I told them that they had to leave and I was going to get them evicted. They were claiming that since they had been there so long they had tenants rights, and good luck getting rid of them.

I went off. I mean full-blown screaming, yelling, almost getting into a fist fight with the guy, trying to get them to leave. I ended up going over and getting the landlord, getting him to back me up on kicking them out, and basically haranguing and berating them as they packed up their shit and got out of my apartment. The woman was crying, talking about she didn’t know where she was going to go, telling her kid that it was all my fault that they were going to be homeless, and all sorts of emotional manipulation and abuse. I refused to give in, but I woke up before she and her boyfriend had actually finished packing and moving out.

When I woke up I was still a little bit keyed up, but I also wanted to understand what the dream meant. As I started writing it out it occurred to me that there are habits in my life that I am working to get rid of, and maybe it is tied to that. When I had that realization, it felt right. The apartment is the new body/life I’m trying to build, and she and her boyfriend are the old habits that are keeping me from “moving in” to that new life. Even the discount she was trying to give me makes sense – she was playing it like it was some big benefit she was giving me, but it really wasn’t valuable at all. My bad habits seem to have benefits for me, but they really don’t.

I’m using this dream as a reminder that getting rid of the old habits that no longer serve me will be difficult, but it will be worth it in the long run.

So I am going to go with that and use it as a reminder that kicking them out will not be easy, but it will be worth it in the long run. As I work through getting rid of my bad habits, I can visualize them as the woman and her boyfriend, kicking them out of my new life because they are no longer welcome.