The Trouble With Dreams

I had a dream last night in which I revisited the past but was still in the present. I woke up feeling so strange, like I’d been somewhere that was off limits, out of bounds. At first my dream was anchored in the present. I was dreaming that I was here in Munich, dealing with the aftermath of unpleasant situations that have unfolded in reality recently. It was almost like I was dreaming of the continuation of my own reality. It was very strange. And then the plot moved forward and it was revealed that I was closing all these ties because I was leaving Munich at the end of August to go back to school in California. Suddenly, I was walking myself to school on that first day – no backpack or text books or school supplies. But I was wearing mismatched shoes and a thick sweatshirt. In August. It was so vivid and real. I was in Morro Bay, walking the streets to the high school that I know so well and I approached the entrance to my school which is a long driveway lined on either side by sidewalks and tall, gorgeous trees – eucalyptus, I think. I was walking with a small boy who was starting his first day of high school and I was telling him things, teaching him how to survive at the school, and I just remember him smiling and telling me thank you. I felt like such a wise old soul – maybe because I was my 23 year old self going back to the first day of my senior year of high school. Of course I should feel wise.

When I got to the school, everyone was crowded around the front of the main offices but the only people that I could recognize were the faculty members. My classmates wouldn’t be there, of course. We’d all graduated from high school five years before. What was I doing there? Yet in my dream, it felt naturally unright. Does that make sense? Like I was supposed to be there, suspended in the past, but still in reality. All of a sudden my favorite office lady, Margo, came up to me and hugged me. But I didn’t recognize her until she invited me inside to come see her new office. And then it just clicked. I was back to those days in high school when I worked as an office assistant and would just sit in the office with the middle aged ladies, talking about nothing and everything all at once. In my dream I was in her office and she was showing me all of these new things and I remember just looking for pictures of her grand-daughter, for her dogs and cats, anything that would bring me back to the fact that she was real and that I remembered her correctly. Then I started telling her about how I’d come back from Munich to finish my education but that I was returning in the spring. I kept asking her, “Didn’t you get my emails?” And she never said yes or no. Weird because in real life I had emailed her a few months back, telling her all about my new life. She never replied.

I don’t remember much after that – I woke up and was so confused, as one would be after a vivid dream like that. I laid there in my bed trying to figure out why’d I gone back to high school when I’d just completed five years of college. I don’t know what it means. I’ve done as many interpretations as I can think of:

To dream about high school, refers to the bonds and friendships that you made while you were in high school. What spiritual lessons have you learned? The dream may also be telling you that you need to start preparing for the real world.

To dream that you have to repeat high school, suggests that you are doubting your accomplishments and the goals that you have already completed. You feel that you may not be measuring up to the expectation of others. The dream may occur because some recent situation may have awakened old anxieties and insecurities.

To dream of the past, suggests that a current waking situation is paralleling a past situation. You need to learn from the past and not make the same mistake again. Alternatively, the dream may represent unresolved issues from the past. Or that you need to stop living in the past and look forward toward the future.

To dream that you are forgetting things, signify life's anxieties. You are expressing an overwhelming amount of stress in your life. You feel the need to tend to everything and everyone's needs. Alternatively, forgetting something may represent your unconscious desire to leave that something behind. On a more direct level, the dream could just be your subconscious telling you or reminding you of a forgotten appointment or date.

That’s all that I can come up with. Some of it makes sense. Most of it doesn’t. I really believe in the power of dreams though. I think it can tell you a lot about your subconscious thoughts and desires. I think in this case, I have a longing to go back to school – more than anything else. I’ve realized that for the first time in almost 20 years, I’m not ending the summer with a fall semester at school. And that’s so strange. I think I’m missing that feeling of continuity in the pattern of my life. And even though I know what I’m doing here in Munich and I’m not apprehensive of the 10 months ahead of me, there’s something that exists after that. And I have no idea what it is. And the whole idea of seeing Margo in my dream and not remembering her signifies, in my opinion, that I’m feeling the loss of the strong friendships that I’ve made since I graduated high school. Is it weird to say that I grew closer to a 50-year-old woman while I was in high school than I did to anyone else? Sometimes I remember just going to sit in her office and talk to her because I was sad or upset about something that had happened at home or at school. She was a mentor to me, whether she knows it or not, and I was so grateful for her during that time of my life. I hope she’s doing well – wherever she is in the world.

On the interpretation of stress – I don’t think that I currently have much stress in my life at all. Life is good. I know that I create stress for myself where it could be avoided but who doesn’t do that? I think I’m just dealing with it in a roundabout way and trying to dream that stress away. Wouldn’t it be nice if it worked out that way?

I don’t know about the rest of it. What do you think?