Dream Decoding: I Think I'm the One Who Left the Yard

Loui again, decoding my own life, as always.

I keep dreaming in flashes lately. Not stories. Just little static bursts of spirit. Like my soul is texting me from inside a locked bathroom stall, sending cryptic emojis and rainbow smoke signals. The messages come in strange: frogs with red toes, penguins in hats, women in gold frames with cigarettes hanging off their bottom lip like defiance.

And it’s all about me.
Not the one with decent hair and affirmations. The buried me. The one I usually tuck behind the kitchen gate when it gets too loud to be a person.

🌙 Before we break it down: Here’s what I dreamed that night.

If you’ve ever seen these symbols show up in your dreams, too—this might help. These aren’t rigid meanings, but widely understood themes and energies linked to each dream.

✦ Dream Symbols Decoded:

🌟 A flash of a future self, smiling
— Symbol of timeline alignment, hope, and higher self contact.
Often interpreted as a visitation from the future self or soul aspect that’s healed, integrated, or on the path toward embodiment. Smiles in dreams reflect contentment, healing, or divine reassurance.

📣 Megaphone with rainbow-colored speech
— Symbol of amplified truth, throat chakra activation, and soul visibility.
Rainbows represent full-spectrum healing, expression, and divine presence. The megaphone indicates the dreamer’s voice is meant to reach farther—truth that wants to be heard, not hidden.

🎨 A Victorian woman in a gold frame with a modern cigarette
— Symbol of sacred duality, feminine rebellion, and internal permission.
Gold frames denote value, legacy, or idolized versions of the self. A cigarette disrupts the reverence—often indicating refusal to perform perfection or a challenge to inherited roles.

🐸 Tiny green frogs with red toes
— Symbol of transformation, somatic fragments, and root chakra repair.
Frogs = metamorphosis. Green links to the heart and nature; red toes reflect survival and grounding energy (root chakra). Tiny frogs suggest small, sacred parts of self returning after trauma or dissociation.

🐧 Penguin in a red baseball cap
— Symbol of emotional repression masked as humor, generational coping mechanisms.
Penguins represent adaptability in extreme emotional environments. Red hats suggest reactive masculine energy (assertion, protection, deflection). This character often appears as a trickster or inner comic relief guarding deeper pain.

🌊 Teaching a child to go underwater (plugging nose)
— Symbol of emotional regulation, reparenting, and generational repair.
Water = emotion. Teaching a child to submerge safely indicates learning how to feel without drowning. This often reflects breaking cycles around fear, expression, and body-based survival patterns.

🛒 A stranger pushing a stroller (while the dreamer watches from inside)
— Symbol of perceived loss of control, emotional disconnection, and subconscious detachment.
The stroller = something precious (often a creation, child, or joy). The stranger may represent inherited scripts or unconscious forces taking over when overwhelm sets in. Being inside while watching = dissociation, survival, or deep freeze response.

Flash One: The Me Who Made It

I saw my future self. Joyfully laughing. This smile came from some timeline where I finally stopped apologizing for needing rest. Where I don’t freeze in Walmart when Truman screams at me. Where I don’t feel like every breakdown is a personal failure.

She looked like someone who actually sleeps. Who knows what the magnesium is doing in her body. Who didn’t flinch when her toddler yelled or threw a truck at her face because he’s two and doesn’t know what to do with his feelings yet.

Flash Two: Rainbow Mouth, Megaphone Girl (Again)

This is the second time this week I’ve dreamed about holding a megaphone.

Except this time? Rainbow beams were shooting out of my mouth like chakra karaoke.

Which is hilarious, because in real life I’m basically a one-woman mute button. I spend half my day trying to talk quieter, react less, smooth things out. I tell myself: don’t escalate. Don’t cry too loud. Don’t make it worse. Don’t react. Don’t Yell.

But in the dream? I was full volume.
Joyful. Loud. Like I finally said something real and the universe clapped back with glitter.

And yeah, I think my soul is trying to scream through my throat. But I keep swallowing it. Because I don’t want to scare anyone. Because from what I’ve learned, loud meant trouble. Loud meant punishment. And now loud still feels like a risk. (But, I’m doing it anyway.)

Flash Three: Victorian Holy-Rebel Realness

This dream? A portrait.
A woman—vintage, dignified, flawless in that buttoned-up Victorian way. Hair coiled tight. Dress shimmering with golden threads. Posed like she belonged on the wall of a museum, behind glass and hush.

She was framed in gold.
And yet, casually, she had a cigarette resting between her lips. Like she'd just told someone off—politely, of course—with a smile that said I no longer live for anyone’s approval.

She was elegance with edge.
Sacredness with smoke.
She didn’t choose between being revered and being real.

And I knew instantly:
That woman is me.
Or maybe the part of me I’ve been hiding behind the gate.

In dreams, gold represents the highest self. Illumination. The divine spark. It’s not flashy. It’s eternal. Gold shows up when something inside you is ready to be honored, not hidden. It’s the color of worth that doesn’t waver when you’re messy, tired, or honest.

And that frame?
That’s the legacy I’ve been trying to rewrite. The box I was placed in. The perfection I was taught to perform. The reverence that always came with silence.

But the cigarette?
That was her line in the sand.

She wasn’t destructive. She was alive. She was done performing peace.
She didn’t burn the painting. She just stepped out of it.

That dream reminded me: I don’t have to choose.
I can be holy and human.
I can hold both grace and grit in my posture.
I can be art and have boundaries.
I can be loved and still be loud.

She wasn’t a warning. She was an invitation.
To stop toning down my light to stay in the frame.
To let myself take up sacred space—even if I ruffle someone’s lace collar.

And I think she came to say:
It’s time to stop hanging on the wall and start walking in your worth.

Flash Four: The Frogs Who Didn’t Jump

Tiny green frogs. Red toes. Watching me.

They weren’t symbols. They were witnesses.

They’re the parts of me that used to jump ship the moment things got scary. The dissociation. The autopilot. The out-of-body flinch when Truman throws something or screams or hits. The me that checked out when exes were yelling or shoving me. The girl who used to disappear at the first sign of emotional fire.

But lately?
The frogs aren’t jumping.
They’re just sitting there. Staying. Rooted. Watching to see if I’m going to run again.

They’ve got red toes. That’s root chakra. That’s blood. That’s will.

They’re not mad. They’re just taking attendance.

“Is she still here?”
“Did she stay this time?”
“Did she run back into the house again, or did she take the stroller back?”

Flash Five: The Penguin in a Baseball Cap

I dreamed of a penguin.
He was wearing a red baseball cap. Like he was one sarcastic quip away from falling apart, but still trying to seem chill.

He might be an ex.
He might be my dad.
He might be every man I’ve ever tried to emotionally decode.
He might be my inner protector.
Or maybe, probably, most definitely… he’s me.

Penguins in dreams often symbolize survival in harsh emotional climates. They’re birds that don’t fly—but they adapt. They waddle through frozen chaos. They slide when it gets too hard to walk. They carry eggs on their feet because their bodies are too cold to cradle anything soft directly. That’s not cute. That’s metaphor.

And the red cap? That’s fire. Masculine energy. Root chakra urgency. The kind that says “keep moving,” even when you’re breaking inside. It’s a cover. A strategy. A look.

This penguin is the part of me that copes by deflecting. That walks into emotional emergencies with snacks and sarcasm. That changes the subject when grief gets too loud. That wants to make everyone laugh so they don’t notice I’m overwhelmed.

He shows up in dreams like he’s got it all handled.
Like, “Don’t worry. I brought fish.”
But inside, he’s shivering.

He’s been doing this for years—trying to help. Trying to be useful. Trying to manage feelings without ever really feeling them.

And I love him for that.

But he’s not in charge anymore.

He can stay. He can wear the hat. He can pass out juice boxes at the edge of the meltdown.

But I need to feel without performance.
I need silence without filler.
I need presence without the punchline.

And maybe he’s just scared.
Maybe he’s never been held either.
Maybe he thought wearing the hat meant staying in control.

But I see him now.
And I can gently take the cap off.
And I can say, “You don’t have to cover for me anymore. I’m ready to stay.”

Flash Six: Truman Underwater

Truman was learning to go underwater.
I helped him plug his nose.

And as I sat there beside him, something in me went,
“Oh. This is what safe feels like.”

Not because it was big or fancy. Just because I stayed.
Just because I didn’t rush. Just because I didn’t leave.

I was calm.
He was scared.
But we did it together.

And I wasn’t just helping him.

I was helping me too.

Because now, I know what it feels like to go into something scary… and not be alone.

We both came back up.
And we both felt good.

That’s what healing looks like sometimes.
Just being there.
Just breathing together.
Just love that doesn’t leave.

Flash Seven: The Stranger with the Stroller

A man I didn’t know was pushing Truman in a stroller. In our yard.
I was inside the house. Just watching.

And I hated it. Not because he was scary. But because I wasn’t outside.

And that’s what I do.

When things get hard—when Truman hits or throws or screams—I go in the “house.”
I go into the kitchen. Behind the baby gate.
Like a dog who snapped and now needs to be kenneled.

And the worst part?
I don’t even yell anymore. I go quiet.
Too quiet.

Because the urge is still there. I won’t lie.

Sometimes I want to scream.
Sometimes I want to shove him to the ground when he’s coming at me hard, hitting, throwing toys at my face, flailing, eyes wild.

And I think—what is wrong with me?
Why would I want to do that to a two-year-old?

But it’s not him. It’s me.
It’s my nervous system. It’s my ghosts.
It’s the screams I swallowed. The pinches I flinched from. The memories I don’t even have but my body definitely does.

So now, when Truman lashes out? I don’t lash back. I don’t yell, anymore.

I bite down. I clench my fists.
I say, “I’m going to give us space to be safe.”

Then I walk away. Into the kitchen.
I punch air for 30 seconds, sometimes cry.

And it feels like banishment.
But it’s not.

It’s survival.

It’s the holy pause between my meanie instinct and the mother I want to be instead.

The Truth That Still Hurts to Write:

Sometimes I get so tired. So overstimulated. So done trying to be calm while being screamed at for opening the wrong snack bag...

That I feel like I’m the one who’s two years old.

I feel like Truman and I are both just kids in bigger bodies—testing, hitting, crying, hugging too hard, needing to be held but not knowing how to ask for it.

He hits. Then hugs. Then hits again.

And I recognize that rhythm.

Because I was that child.

And I still am.

And now? I’m raising him. And I’m raising her. The one I used to be. The one who didn’t get held through it. The one who learned to be good to avoid being hurt. The one who left the yard the moment someone else raised their voice.

So yeah. I’m the one who left the yard.

Not Truman. Not the stranger. Me.

But I think I’m learning how to come back.

Barefoot. Breathing. Maybe shaking.
But I’m here.

And the frogs?
They’re still watching.
To see if I’ll stay this time.

And I will.
Even if I have to rebuild the whole yard from scratch.

Even if I cry while I do it.

I’ll never find the manual.
Because I am the manual.

And I’m writing it now.

💔 What pain or struggle is this blog addressing?

Emotional overstimulation and trauma reactivation during parenting—especially when children hit, scream, or overwhelm. The internal war between wanting to be calm and feeling like you're becoming the person you swore you'd never be. This is about dissociation, guilt, rage, inherited scripts, and the pain of raising a child while trying to re-raise yourself.

🔮 What’s the sacred transformation or takeaway?

That even in the mess—when you're behind the kitchen gate breathing through the urge to scream—you can still choose to stay. That healing isn't always quiet or graceful; sometimes it's loud, clumsy, and filled with frogs. But staying present is the transformation. You don't need the manual. You are the manual. And you're writing it now.