Last night I had a totally lucid dream, Brother Bear setting. And so I wake remembering detail after detail. I immediately surfed the net for some answers. Funny revelations, some are true and some are hard to admit. Here’s the story with the blue coded sentences to interpret them.

I dreamt of being a native girl, living in a hut in the middle of a rural area.

To see or live in a hut in your dream, represents the basic necessities and comforts. You need to simplify your life and get back to the bare basics. Accept what you already have and know that that is enough.

I dreamt of owning a mountain dog with golden brown and white color. Very loyal and very fun to be with. I remember feeding it with dog treat and it almost swallowed my hand. Huge but gentle dog.

To see a dog in your dream, symbolizes intuition, loyalty, generosity, protection, and fidelity. The dream suggests that your strong values and good intentions will enable you to go forward in the world and bring you success. To see a happily barking dog in your dream, symbolizes pleasures and social activity. You are being accepted into some circle.

While walking around a seemingly rural land, I saw a dying lady and a dead black horse. Then I saw a huge and ugly guy, like an abomination, confront the lady and struck her with a sharp knife in the back.

To see a dead horse in your dream, indicates that something in your life that initially offered you strength is now gone.

To see violence in your dream, indicates unexpressed anger or rage. You need more discipline in your life.

After that abomination killed the woman, a huge flood came. Lucky I was able to hold on to some plants and climb to a higher part safe from being consumed by the flood.

To dream that you are in a flood represents your need to release some sexual desires. If the flood is raging, then it represents emotional issues and tensions. Your repressed emotions are overwhelming you.

I dreamt of the woman and her family living in that hut, like an Indian household, gave me a shell necklace.

To see or wear a necklace in your dream, represents unsatisfied desires. It also highlights your intellect and your desire to have more influence and power over others.

After the woman gave me that necklace I left and rode a bus. A very huge bus where there are only a few people riding with me. I remember some of them were my friends.

To dream that you are riding a bus, implies that you are going along with the crowd. You are lacking originality and control over where your life is taking.

The bus I was riding on was huge. And it probably caused the traffic. Looking outside the window I saw other buses going different directions which probably made the traffic worse.

To dream that you are in traffic, signifies the frustrations that you are experiencing in your life. Things are not going as smoothly as you would like it to. You feel stuck at where you are in life.

And then in the bus there was this Dance Revo machine, and unlike in the real world, I was playing it like a pro.

To dream that you are dancing, signifies freedom from any constraints and restrictions. Your life is in balance and in harmony. Dancing also represents frivolity, happiness, gracefulness, sensuality and sexual desires. You need to incorporate these qualities in your waking life.

Finally I arrived home. I went straight to my room and did something naughty. Then to my surprise, somebody else was there in the room. I stormed out in shame.

To dream that you are in the bedroom, signifies aspects of yourself that you keep private. It is also indicative of your sexual nature and intimate relations.

This was a reflection paper our Critical Care Nursing professor asked us to submit. This is an ethical dilemma most health professionals encounter in the hospital setting. A battle between life and death in the face of paternalism. The Terri Schiavo Case.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp058062

Upon reading the article above, certain questions made me wonder whether what happened deserved to happen.

To preserve or to let go?

Terri is a vegetable. Her incapacity to rationalize like a normal human being makes her dead beyond the aid of ventilators and machines yet her right to live remains intact. Preserving her under the aid of expensive equipment would be like a hungry dog being tied six inches away from infected food. Though the act of saving the dog from eating infected food seems noble, tying the dog in front of the food and having nothing to feed the dog in the first place, sounds more like torture. Just as Terri’s family wants to keep her from facing death, keeping her alive without the whole essence of living may seem selfish, and senseless. On the other hand, letting her go would sound a lot like murder. Which is more painful? In this case, I may have to acquiesce with John Rawls’ philosophy of accepting the lesser evil in the face of having no good option. Letting her go would seem more considerable if I were asked. Holding her back from death is like holding her back from salvation. It is selfish and by all means as the court have decided and as the husband heard her once state, she does not want to be kept alive on a machine, she wanted to die a natural death in God’s time. She had a predisposed perspective about being chained to a machine and that is good enough to view what she would’ve wanted.

Who deserves the right to decide for Terri?

The husband is a blabbing moron. Deciding for her wife and fornicating with another woman. All this cheating while his wife lives the sad life of a wood piece. He doesn’t have a right to stand up and decide for her. She wouldn’t want his say on this if only she was faking her condition on a reality show to expose her cheating husband. The family members on the other hand, as the author of the article said, are selfish. They wanted to keep her breathing because they are too weak to let her go. The Florida Supreme Court was the only competent persona for paternalism.

What would Terri have decided?

Terri due to her critical medical condition could not sign a DNR sheet nor tell everybody “Hey, keep me breathing.” But if she were awake for even 15 minutes and can fully understand her condition, what could she have chosen?

It is not for me to guess what runs in Terri’s mind, if there was something at all, seeing everybody debating over her life. All I can say is that, Death is inevitable. It is something that comes either suddenly or gradually. It’s the last thing every living creature experiences yet the thought of it as the end of everything gives more essence to living. Death is always unexpected because only God knows the time for everything. Human as we are, if we have the power to save lives, we must also have the courage to let go and trust that we’re freeing somebody from worldly pain into eternal happiness.

The other night I dreamt of climbing stairs in a huge coliseum. I climbed the stairs, just continued climbing as I tried to look for something I cannot recall anymore. And as I looked back, the path I have been trudging turned into a dark labyrinth. I then looked at the floor I stopped in. The place was like a 5-star hotel with the whole glossy wood-yellow light feel. Then it dawned on me. I wanted to go home, and there’s no other way home than to go back down. The huge crazily creepy labyrinth was something I won’t even dare enter and so I tried to ask for other directions. I wondered if there was an elevator somewhere or a switch to light the stairs. I talked to an adult woman who was wearing a business suit who came walking briskly towards the stairs where I was. I asked her for directions. She was obviously going downstairs but she told me she has no idea how she got there in the first place but she was also clueless how for several times already she manages to go downstairs, down to where certain evil entities may be suspected to be gallivanting around.

Creepy dream with an open-ended question: Did I decide to stay on that floor or go down that horror downstairs to go home? I have no idea whether anything happened after, maybe I woke up, or I simply forgot. But what did it all mean?

I told my friend about that dream and he answered me right away. The ‘climb’ represented me soaring high from the confines of mediocrity. This one final college year I decided to run for President in Women’s Club, volunteered leader of our duty group, and tried to be a better person. I wanted so much to make up for the mess I made during my last year in High school. The ‘floor’ I was in represented my dream. The high society has always been my dream destination. The feeling of ‘wanting to go home’ may be a call to go back and live in the present. It may also mean an invitation to humility that despite the wonderful place before me, I still yearned to go back home, that despite the responsibility, I wanted to live an ordinary life. The ‘dark labyrinth’ behind me represents an unwanted past, which holds me back from being consistent in the present. It may mean that instead of evaluating how much I am moving towards the future, I keep on comparing myself to who I was in the past. And that definitely scared me from going back to the ordinary Me.

The lesson here? As Mr. Robinson said, “Keep moving forward.” and as I move forward, memories and lessons from the past will continue to inspire me, my dream will continue to push me.

The greatest feeling even better than success or the climax during sex is the ability to stand smiling after being pushed, stepped on and bullied, and say, “If you seriously think your pathetic ability to annoy people made me miserable, think again.”

He’s never an ordinary guy in class. He always gets attention. He’s got girls all around him. He may be the class clown. He may even be the teachers’ favorite. But one thing definitely is not right. He’s a bully.

I’m an ordinary girl in class. I get occasionally good grades. I have a position in a college-based organization. I may have the looks to die for. I may even have the greatest friends in the world yet beneath the wretches of being ordinary, I feel bullied.

No it’s not a scene where I am punched or tripped or given a toilet facial. It’s a story about his unique fondness of making fun of others, being simply irritating and arrogantly annoying. He seems to not care about anything. It’s all fun and games to him and sometimes wanting to get all the attention every time, he tends to get into people’s nerves.

I used to date one of his friends. His friend and I simply kissed and made out a little and now he’s creating a scene calling me a non-virgin when I haven’t really given my woohoo to anybody yet. There’s a lot of crap about being judgmental when you seriously have no idea what really happened. And then the modern dance competition. The level president talked to me and asked me to start the auditions. And so I assumed the coordinator role. A week later when I happen to decide who the members would be he suddenly started laughing at me. He told me I wasn’t the assigned coordinator and that I was proud enough to assume the position. Later on I realized that president sucked because he gave me a task I wasn’t supposed to do in the first place. And what he did, it ridiculed me. And now that I’m not anymore a member of the dance troupe, because a friend chose another student instead of me during the auditions because she is so just and fair, he continues to step on my pride. Even without words, his mere presence continues to mock me. I never wanted revenge my whole life. I wanted some Criss Angel mojo to lift him high in the air and slowly tear his guts off.

I’m human. I make mistakes. He doesn’t have a right to shove up to my face the wrong I have done. Hell he has no reason to do so. I haven’t done him wrong and he has nothing to do with it in the first place. I just wonder why the hell he loves making a huge buffoonery out of people’s tragedy. It has been said that putting others down won’t get you any higher but he doesn’t give a damn. Torturing people’s psyche is like a drug to him. A day won’t be complete without someone being insulted or someone being made fun of. Since I have no capacity to step down his level and torture him back, I think it would be best to just wish him good luck. Good luck that he may survive whatever karma has for him.

Now I have reconciled with my personal frustrations. I emerge stronger with every downfall and now I understand why he tried to make me miserable. Maybe he hates his life. Maybe he’s got a family problem. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism because people won’t take him seriously.

It’s not because he’s better nor am I a loser. Maybe he’s just a sad clown.

A dream vacation in Tagaytay, a time away from the stresses of thesis-writing and the monotonous life of a student, an opportunity to go soul-searching and a chance to be independent—I couldn’t be any more excited to go on a 3-day camp in Tagaytay. I didn’t really feel pressured to study and review Obstetrics, Nutrition and all just to save the face of my alma mater. Heck, I just wanted the time away. And I’m quite lucky to be one of the few chosen ones to go that trip.

July 1, 2010. 6:00 pm we already had to board the bus to Manila but a few hours before, I was caught running to and fro the premises of the school trying to smoothen out the huge heap of tasks I’ll be leaving behind and settling an anomaly with our travel order. For one thing, the administration kept on confusing us for another pair of students also going to Tagaytay for the same reason. We thought they were from another campus. For the biggest joke of all, our travel order contained the name of my mother instead of mine. No wonder she was more excited to go the trip. Another issue I have to clear out was the photo shoot for our Fashion Show ’10 that was scheduled July 2. I won’t be around that time to facilitate things so I had to clear the activity out with everybody. I also had to enumerate certain responsibilities to my fellow officers of Women’s club: our re-accreditation, foundation day t-shirt, fee collection, etc... Finally, I had to secure an excuse letter to our level coordinator for my supposed absence for concepts on Friday and 1^st day of duty on Monday. Leaving Albay in a totally slovenly shape did not concern me as much as telling my mom we would be escorted by a professor who didn’t really exist. I’m such a liar. Sorry Mom.

The dread of riding the bus and suffering from insomnia and hypothermia along the trip haunted me. Plus the thought of going to a crazy massive place I’m faintly familiar with annoyed me. This is what I wanted. I’m in it already and there’s no holding back. Although, in the back of my mind still lies a tiny speck of anxiety despite my huge craving for independence.

So there I was merely freezing and slowly becoming another fossil from the Ice Age, my butt drained of blood, my feet numb, my mind hazy and everything about me was wrong. Finally, like a long time prisoner receiving parole, the bus stopped at the Cubao terminal. I could barely walk and move my hands but I was darn thankful that at long last, the bus-size refrigerator has released me.

My name is Lou Antonette Llaneras, born a rising star on the day of Philippine Independence 1991. I was born ¼ Chinese from my father’s kin, and ¾ Filipino from my mom’s. I’m currently living in Daraga, Albay with my family from my mother’s side while my dad’s family is in Lucena City. I wouldn’t even try to describe my family from Lucena because it’s damn huge and complicated. Anyway, my mother is a housewife who once dreamt of becoming a nurse but instead took Economics and have been regretting it ever since. My dad is one of the modern heroes who works abroad, has no vices and no chicks, well as far as I know. My brother by the way is the biggest nuisance in the world but nevertheless, he’s the best there is. We’re one big happy family.

My childhood memories are filled with happy moments mostly shared with my brother who used to be my extra super best friend in the world. We used to do everything together—wake up, watch TV, play Barbie doll, take a bath and piss off our yaya. We’ve been the worst kids there were but thankfully our yaya still lived to tell her story of misery.

My most fond childhood memory was that when we would go out and play with the neighborhood kids. That’s where I met my soul mate. That magical moment happened. Naïve as I was, I knew then and there it was him for me. Back to pissing off our yaya. Then I have to enter the world of education. Enough said I didn’t have quite a fruitful pre-elementary class as I usually hated the school I’m in either it bores me to death or every time is playtime that I’d rather play at home. I can say I only finished one year of nursery and one semester of preparatory class before I took the entrance exam for Grade 1 in St. Agnes Academy. I was too young for that level but I passed anyway so hello, Elementary!

Elementary school in St. Agnes Academy was where I realized I had quite a stupid beginning at life. Filled with wrong, immature and entirely regrettable decisions and attitude, I was deemed to be one of those students who never seemed to exist in the classroom. I hated studying, I developed friendship with some and I ruined some, I have been the most irresponsible President during 3^rd grade and I have been the snottiest bitch running after this guy, who as I would describe now, would never be as cute as he used to be. Above all, I loathed my teachers. I can say I’ve been a favorite—a favorite target of mishaps when it comes to academics and mostly everything.

Then I entered the halls of the adjacent building and became a High school student. A new tabula rasa to paint and mess with was right in front of me. I had a great high school story. I’ve been a consistent honor student, committed myself to theatre, arts and journalism, and gained the recognitions I’ve been denied of back in elementary. I met my true friends. I became one of the heartthrobs, had my first boyfriend (the one I called Soul mate) and had the wackiest stories to tell. Of course, it wasn’t a smooth ride for me. Like every story plot, I had my fair share of antagonists and storms. The climax of it all happened in my last year where I literally screwed everything up simply because I not only hated these two professors, I cursed them. And in turn my curse took a bad hit at my grades. I graduated with three service awards though, just not honors. Immaturity laid with convictions allowed me to jeopardize my academics as much as I wanted to get out of that sad dictatorship academy. Oh and by the way I broke off with my boyfriend because our families couldn’t get along well.

Now I’m in what they say the outside world. Bicol University gave me one of the worst culture shocks but it is here where I can finally say I learned to stand up for myself and build a good reputation. I learned to be wise and independent. I’ve made friends, got good grades, won Modern Dance Competition awards, drank, partied and enjoyed the freedom of College life. Above all, I’m going to be a great nurse and an awesome surgeon someday.