Shooting at the toddler on the border

Date: 7/20/2018

Me and a whole line of people are all laying on our backs on dusty earth. It’s dark, but there’s the orange glow of lights around. I can hear guards moving around, but I can’t see them. We’re used to this. It’s our duty. Apparently instead of just having jury duty, citizens were also called in at various times to take their turn guarding the border of our country. And we always did that by laying in a long line on the ground, shoulder to shoulder. This was apparently some way of deterring people from crossing illegally, because it would be too hard to get over us without stepping on us. We hear a commotion, but we don’t dare move to look. I hear people shouting—the voice of a toddler, and guards ordering people to get back. The toddler is crying now, his mother is calling his name, the guard is ordering her to stop, and someone else is begging him not to shoot. A shot rings out and all of us jump. Nobody breathes. The mother’s calls go quiet. The other woman becomes more insistent. “You can’t shoot him! He’s just a child!” “Get him out of here!” A guard orders angrily. “This is a no-trespass area!” The toddler is wailing, and we hear the woman’s footsteps pattering across the ground. All of us laying there are all sick. I want to cry, but none of us dare to make even a noise. We can’t move. The woman finally gets to the child and she tries to console him. “This is in humane” someone whispers next to me. “Shhh!” Says another. I can’t take it anymore. The woman is talking to other officials about what they’re going to do with the kid. “I can’t take him myself,” she says. “No institution is going to want him.” A guard replies. “You should have just let him die. It would have been a kinder way to go.” I can’t believe they’re talking like this—and the kid is still wailing—no doubt because he’s staring at his dead mother. I lurch to my feet and those around me gasp. “Have something to say?” The guard asks, others pointing their guns at me. “I’ll take the kid. He can live with me. I’ll take responsibility for him.” The guards don’t really care, they just want me to leave. The woman seems relieved to have solved her problem. No one asks me how I’m going to raise a toddler on my own, or how I’m going to support us both. I wouldn’t have had an answer anyway. But at this point, I don’t care. All I know is I need to keep them from killing this kid, and I need to get him away from his dead mom who is bleeding out on the ground just 20-30 feet away. The dream lasted for several months, even a few years, of me raising this kid. It was so hard at first, because I had no clue how to care for a small child, and I barely had any money anyway. Everyone told me I was crazy for choosing to become a single mother to a kid that wasn’t my own. I always treated him as if he were my own. I loved him so much and he loved me too. I’d never been happier.

AI generated interpretation This dream is likely a manifestation of your struggle to balance your duty and obligations to others with your own personal desires and goals. It appears that you feel a sense of duty to help those who are in need, as evidenced by your willingness to take in the toddler and care for him as if he were your own. At the same time, you may also feel overwhelmed by the responsibility and the difficulty of being a single parent. The dream may also be a reflection of your feelings of guilt and sadness over the loss of the toddler's mother, as well as a reminder of the powerlessness of the situation. Ultimately, the dream may be encouraging you to take action to help those in need, while also recognizing the importance of taking care of yourself.