He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it. - Douglas Adams
I rarely remember my dreams. I think this is common. I had a psychology professor in college, a world-famous psychologist whose theory on depression was respected as one of the leading models, yet ended up turning his life to the study of happiness and how one could train oneself to be happy; sadly he changed specialities after I left the university….but I digress. This psychology professor instructed us how to train ourselves to remember our dreams. I may have tried it once or twice, but I’ve never been a prolific dreamer so when I did have one of my sporadic reveries - dream or nightmare - I hadn’t created the reflex to get up and scribble it into a notebook immediately upon waking, as he had told us to do, so I never did.
I rarely remember my dreams; sometimes bits and pieces of one stay in my mind for a few hours after I wake up, a specific person who imposed their presence inside my head, or a place, a space insisting on its own meaning. I try to dig around in the shadows and piece it together, sure that if I could remember even a single element then surely it was a dream with a message, the universe trying to tell me something. For I’m one of those people who believe that dreams do have meaning, our subconscious both confronting us with our deepest fears and anxieties and, at the same time, trying to free us from them.
I’ve had so many anxiety nightmares since owning the hotel, always about breakfast service; working mornings was too stressful for me, so my anxieties would come out at night as I slept. These, oddly enough, I almost always remember.
Since I’ve stopped working breakfast at the hotel just this year, these nightmares have faded away. But I recently had two strange dreams, back to back, one night and then the next, dreams I remembered clearly enough to have been able to discuss with my therapist, dreams that had an absolutely clear message.
The first dream found me sitting at a table across from my husband. It was neither in a restaurant nor in our own home; it seemed to be (or must’ve been) some fairly public place where we had come for a meal. As we were dining, we began to have a conversation, leaning in towards each other as we spoke earnestly and animatedly. We tried to get closer to hug or kiss, then moving towards each other across the table to carry that love into a moment of intimacy. Yet we weren’t alone. We were surrounded by people, from a few at a distance at the beginning, to an increasing number of strangers maneuvering closer and closer to us; people moving around, their talking getting louder and louder, drowning out our words so my husband and I could no longer hear each other, even as we raised our voices; people surrounding us, their movements quicker and more dynamic, closer and closer, breaking our intimacy.
My second dream was similar in tiny ways. I found myself in some vast open space, possibly a tourist attraction or amusement park, that might have morphed into a train station and then an airport - or maybe not. It’s so hard to tell in a dream, isn’t it? I was with my family, my husband and our two grown sons, walking through this space, clearly with a destination in mind, home, I think, or at least something that would take us there. The three of them walked side by side, their heads bent close in conversation, their pace quickening as we pressed forward; I was following closely.
Soon they had moved ahead of me, absorbed in their own discussion, no longer glancing over to see if I was keeping up. I quickened my steps, making an effort to match their stride, fearful of losing them, but the way forward kept closing against me; knots of animated, chattering people stood rooted in place (you know how it is when you’re trying to move quickly through an airport, right?), oblivious to my attempts to pass, slowing me down. Heaps of luggage multiplied until they swelled into barricades. And then piles of suitcases began erupting into flames, obstructing my path even more - cutting me off, until at last I lost sight of my family altogether, left behind and unable to reach them.
I didn’t need my therapist to tell me that this was about the hotel. What I found strange was that, for all of the hotel-related anxiety dreams I have had in the past, and all the anxiety dreams I’ve had for years, in which I woke in a sweat, heart pounding, taking seconds to realize where I was, this wasn’t. I was upset in my dreams, maybe frustrated in the first and fearful in the second, but I woke up after each feeling oddly calm. When I described these two dreams to my therapist, all he said was “we know what these are about, don’t we….”