The Need To Pee
Dream - I am in a small dark shack of a house with other people. We are on the move, hiding out from some other people. I have to pee so bad I don’t even have time to find the bathroom. I can’t even lower my pants in time. It’s all over the floor, so deep that my pant legs get wet. What a mess! I’ve got to clean this all up. Also, these are the only clothes I have so I try to figure out how to wash then out and get them dried before we move on. Shift - I am in small room, still in a dark shack. A teen boy calls me to come across the hall to a narrow bathroom. The attractive surface tile is gone and the floor is down to its original beat-up linoleum and even that is peeling up; I can see the wooden subfloor underneath. I’m panicked and confused and ask, “What are you doing?? What is happening?” “I’m not sure,” he says, “all I know is that the foundation is pushing up from below and these upper layers are coming off.”
With this dream I had been working with my dreams for about a month and a half, learning the many ways my dreams both challenge and support me. Ways I had always known myself were starting to come undone. Surface parts of me, parts the world and I found attractive but were coming from a persona not in alignment with my true self, were beginning to expose themselves and peel away; my foundation was pushing up from below.
In the first part of the dream I feel wary, perhaps even hunted. Yet, there is no one in the dream chasing me. It is a feeling I carried, a sense of urgency that I always had, that I was always under the gun, to get things done, do them right; there is a lot of fear here of which I was still unaware. And then I can wait not longer...I pee...so much pee, so much I’ve been holding back.
When I allow myself to let it all go, I’m ankle deep in it. I only allow myself a moment of relief though before I react to my own vulnerability. Peeing is a natural function, a release, but for me I was still seeing any expression of my natural self as a mess, something to be cleaned up, a judgement...against myself. In the dream I feel shame at being vulnerable which keeps me from feeling the fear that is underneath. To be the girl soul means that I am free to be myself, free to screw up, free to feel it all.
Here the dream shifts - a shift to another scene usually means there is a feeling that I don’t want to feel. I go from peeing to my mind, figuring out how to fix this, how to clean up the mess I’ve made. The feeling in this gap is probably fear, fear of being myself, being in my girl self, my libido, my passion, desire, fear of being vulnerable.
The teen boy is probably an archetype stepping in at that moment to show me what is happening, to reassure me. He calls me to the bathroom, a place usually associated with shame, to show me how the foundation is pushing up from below, the depths, my depths, are starting to rise...and that is frightening to me. The boy says, “I don’t know what’s happening.” That simple statement is a teaching...a willingness to be in the unknown, to not be in control as the old begins to peel away and the unknown new emerges.
Homework: Be the girl peeing; feel the naturalness of that. Know that I don’t have to clean up the pee. Feel my fear as I see the floor coming up.
Mary Jo Heyen, M.Ed., was an author, founding member and certified practitioner of Natural Dreamwork until her death in 2022. She had a diverse private practice working with dream clients of all ages and backgrounds. Her practice included her volunteer work with the dreams and visions of those in hospice, their families and grief groups, honoring the gift of their dreams at this most important threshold. Her experiences in this area have been published in The Journal of Palliative Medicine and the 2021 release of her book, Dreaming into the Mystery: Explorations into Being with the Dreams and Visions of the Dying.