Dream a Little Dream of Me

I rarely remember dreams - I don't often wake up during the night, and I'm usually done dreaming by the time my alarm goes off in the morning. Dreams are supposed to be where your subconscious works out all of the things that you can't quite deal with in your waking life, so I tend to assume that I never remember them because there are things my subconscious doesn't want me to know. And frankly, I'm okay with that...I'm willing to trust its judgement.

I do go through periods, however, where I remember my dreams with some frequency. Last summer, I had a lot of anxiety dreams right before waking up, due to the combined stress of being completely broke, teaching solo for the first time, living with my parents, and needing to make arrangements to move to a foreign country. In addition to the stress I was already under, the anxiety dreams meant I woke up well before my alarm, exhausted, but unable to go back to sleep...it was a rough couple of months. Luckily, I've had precious few of those since I settled in and became self-sufficient again.

But when I do remember my dreams, I make an effort to look up the themes and symbols to try to figure out what's going on. I have a couple of dream books and, while I think their interpretations are kind of like horoscopes - you can find whatever you want to find in them, picking and choosing the things that might be relevant to your own life until you're convinced the author is REALLY ONTO SOMETHING - I find it interesting when I hit on a symbol that is uncannily appropriate and can't be logically explained. Like, how does a couch mean something in your dream if you don't consciously know what it's supposed to represent?

Which brings me to the reason for this post: over the last couple of nights, I have actually remembered a couple of dreams. Both pretty literal, but I think fairly representative of what's been on my mind lately. A couple of nights ago, I had a dream about the VGLM. I can't remember if I had been thinking about him as I feel asleep in order to deliberately dream about him - I sometimes do that because I'm dying to see what my subconscious thinks he looks like naked - but regardless of whether it was intentional or not, it was a simple, lovely dream. I don't remember most of the specifics, just that we were spending an evening together at home. Some details from my waking day had worked their way in - I had bought a couple of movies that day, and in the dream I offered them up as something to do and was pleasantly surprised at how excited he was to watch one of them. In fact, the whole dream was one pleasant surprise after another - we sat on a couch (a particular home furnishing which, incidentally, is supposed to mean you're in love with the person you're sitting with...I've run into that one before. Not quite buying it - I like the VGLM, but I'm not in LOVE with him. I think I'm too jaded to fall in unrequited love nowadays.) and he put his arm around me. He snuggled with me, and told me I was beautiful. We were just about to start the movie when I woke up, trying to convince myself it wasn't just a dream. I kept my eyes closed, trying so hard to believe that it was his shoulder my head was against and not just a pillow.

How sad is it that my happy dreams never get to the good stuff? I fantasize about SNUGGLING, for God's sake. I can't even get lucky in my dreams. At any rate, I think this one is self-explanatory - anybody who reads this thing knows that I'm kind of getting sick of being single and going on crappy dates...I want someone to share my life with. Someone to come home to at the end of the day, who will greet me with a hug and a kiss and tell me I'm amazing. Real intimacy with a member of the opposite sex.

Which is what makes this morning's dream interesting.

In the dream, it was my wedding day. Except it wasn't a typical wedding day - I had sort of gotten up that morning and found out I was getting married. And my mom and some other miscellaneous people without faces had brought me a big box of clothing from Goodwill to sift through to find something to wear. I seem to recall there being a couple of actual wedding dresses, but for some reason I was either not allowed or afraid to ask to try them on. I do know that I said or thought at some point, "I really wish I could afford to buy a real wedding dress," and wanting to cry. Through all of this, I had no concept of who the groom might be...I just kept trying on hideous suits with shoulder pads and trying to at least find something white to wear. Now, apparently, to dream of wearing a wedding dress "is to be trying to sort out one's feelings and hopes about relationships and weddings." Gee, thanks, Dream Dictionary. Is there an interpretation of "No shit, Sherlock" I should be aware of? But frankly, I know why the dream was wedding-related - I have the show I was watching right before I went to bed to thank for that one. I do have a fairly debilitating fear of somehow getting myself into a situation where I have agreed to marry someone I don't really like, but this has come up in enough dreams that I am now fully aware of this fear and trying my best to shake it (although unless I go out on a truly exciting date sometime soon I may be beyond the point of no return). So let's move on to the other prominent themes.

The changing of clothes: "The clothes we wear in a dream can often depict the facade, or persona, we create for other people. We have certain roles that we adopt in response to other's reactions....Clothes can often act as a protection against being touched. This protection may also be against having the real self violated. Clothes can conceal or reveal. In covering up nudity they conceal our perceived imperfections and, by implication, disguise our sexuality. In revealing certain parts of us our dreams may show in what ways we are vulnerable...Changing clothes. We are attempting to change our image." Sounds familiar, no? I think my subconscious mind has been reading this here blog too much. I mean, using my dreams to merely reiterate what I've been saying consciously on here...that's just laziness. What does it mean when you're subconsciously plagiarizing yourself?

On being poor: "To experience poverty in a dream highlights a sense of being deprived of the ability to satisfy our basic needs. We may feel inadequate, either emotionally or materially. Often we need to go right back to basics to discover what our real needs are." Well, duh. Again, tell me something I don't know.

So I think my subconscious is really just telling me to blog more.