We’ve both been having weird dreams while staying at home, riding out the pandemic.
In yours, you’re usually somewhere, and no one is wearing masks. Everyone’s packed in. You’re so frustrated with them and worried.
Sometimes your dreams get a little more metaphorical but no less stressful. I think you said something about one with a vampire gangster syndicate.
Another friend has been dreaming about drowning in a sandbox, sinking down, having the grains fill their throat like scratchy water.
Me, I mostly dream about the places I’ve been. The people I’ve known. All things I can’t return to. And not just while the pandemic is going. But people and places I can’t ever return to, because of specific circumstances. Old jobs that are long ago and far away that I don’t even realize I miss until I’m back there in a dream, and somehow the dream convinces me that I could handle it better now that I’m older. Have different experiences. It’s probably a lie to myself. A fantasy. But who knows?
I also dream about people I loved who aren’t alive anymore. They come and talk to me in my dreams. Those dreams are the hardest… they’re so beautiful when they’re happening. So gratifying. So satisfying to say what I need to say. And to hear them answer.
But then I awake and I realize it’s a dream. The worst feeling.
Sometimes when I know other people miss them, too, when it’s someone we both loved and lost, I might reach out. And tell that other person about the dream. What we talked about. What they said. It really depends. Some people love that. For other people, it’s boring to hear about the dream. Or even too painful, depending.
I have one person I talk to who treats it like it’s the real thing. Like a telegram that the person is literally sending via me — from the beyond.
I never go that far with it. It feels too optimistic to me. Like something I desperately want to be true but isn’t.
But we all have ways of finding hope where we can. Different ways of surviving all the nightmares that the pandemic brings.