Ah, this time of year. It’s my favorite. I’ve written about it before — this time last year, logically enough.
What I didn’t say then: as the leaves turn, as the rain starts falling, it’s harder and harder to get me out of the house. That’s exacerbated this year because of my Summer-Full-Of-Travel. All I want to do is alternate between curling up with a book (or, god help me, a shelter magazine, because I’m that kind of girl), writing, being online, and puttering around the house, the stereo on, but not loud, so the music just adds a subtle evocative layer to the already-lovely experience of just being home. It’s the time of year I feel most like a hobbit, or a hibernating sort of mammal. Slowing down, contemplating, staring into space.
Sadly, my subconscious doesn’t comply. My dreams are ludicrously easy to interpret: I get out of my car while it’s still running. I watch it smash into one vehicle after another, and an aghast crowd watches, too. I’m in court, and it’s somehow also a job interview, and I’m justifying, explaining, rationalizing, and no one believes me.
What are your recurring anxiety dreams?
Dylan
September 17, 2007 at 11:33 amI get the Actor’s Nightmare on a regular basis: performing a play I’ve been in before, only years later. Sometimes those dreams are actually fun, because we manage to pull off an entertaining show.
Other regular visitors include the death of one of my parents, dreams in which my teeth are damaged or infected or rotting (highlight: one in which a rotten molar was revealed to be infected with a larval cockroach!), and, yes, dreams in which I get in a stationary car that then starts unstoppably rolling forward.
My most rampantly Jungian dream had to do with my very intense high school boyfriend, right before we broke up. He always exacerbated my competitive impulses, which bothered me deeply.
In the dream, he had entered a psychic contest of wills. Two closed stone huts were arranged next to each other, with a single granite slab laid in each. The two contestants were tied to their slabs, and then engaged in a brutal psychic battle between the walls of their minds.
I knew that the loser had to forfeit their life, and I begged him not to enter the contest, but he was breezily determined to fight and win. Despondent, I left, unable to watch.
I returned an hour later, with my heart in my throat – and arrived back just in time to see the attendants carry a wet sack of his dismembered body parts from the hut.
I recounted this horror to my mom, who laughed at how much this was one of those dreams where everybody in it represents the dreamer. I felt emotionally ripped apart by engaging in so much competition with him, and I felt like it was destroying the relationship. (which, in part, it did.)
Strangely, anxiety dreams are among the few dreams I have in which I’m somebody resembling myself. Generally I get to play made-from-scratch dream characters, or at least travel around with them.
sdn
September 17, 2007 at 12:16 pmsince i went to a college that had no exams, i have a different kind of school dream. i dream i am re-registering for classes i forgot to take, and i have a new advisor and a new living situation, and everyone around me is a stranger.
Ellie
September 21, 2007 at 5:49 amSometimes I have this dream where I’m about to cross a road.There is a car coming, but I know there’s enough time to get accross. I start walking, but in the middle of the road, I stumble and fall. I’m on my hands and knees, trying to get up, but I’m too weak and everytime I get even close to standing up, I fall over again. And all this time, the car is getting closer…
In another dream, I find myself all alone on an island. It isn’t a pretty island with palm trees – it is taken up entirely by a gigantic factory with lots of machinary, but no people. It’s really eerie, because a kind of green mist is coming out of the chimneys, and it’s filling the air. Then all of a sudden, an alarm goes off and lights start flashing, but there’s no where to go! I hate that dream, it’s so scary.