12 April 2020, 11:14 pm - In Which I Detail My Weird Dream
Do you think all graduate students have PTSD from the stress of school? I had nightmares about school (and life) Friday night and Saturday night. I read an article that said that the stay-at-home/shelter-in-place/quarantine is affecting many peoples’ dreams. Several experts weighed in. I’ve linked the article so you can read the myriad of explanations, but I’ll say right now that I believe mine are from a mix of stress (hello, anxiety disorder), lack of exercise (I really miss my gym), and an upturned sleep cycle (anyone else stay up until 1 AM for no reason?).
See: Having weird dreams in quarantine? You’re not alone.
The article lead me to a super interesting blog where people can anonymously submit their dreams. The dreams are collected and sorted by location and topic. It is ripe with data concerning our collective shift in dreams. If only I was a dream analyst and not a communication studies researcher…
See: I Dream of Covid
Anyway, I hope to use it as a “This Week In The Apocalypse” post. For now, I’ll just jot down what I remember of my dreams. On Friday night, I dreamt that my committee members were extremely disappointed in me. Then, my boss, who I am very good friends with, fired me for no reason, and none of my coworkers would explain why. It was like I lost my entire non-family support system through this dream. Even though I’ve passed my defense, I still had revisions, and my confidence in my revisions tanked after that dream.
Last night, I dreamt that my partner and I were cutting my hair. I often do at-home trims, and I am generally pretty lax about my hair, so normally this would not be a point of stress. WELL, in the dream, we cut off about two inches of hair. As the dream progressed, my hair became more and more bonkers. In the beginning, the trim was even. Then, the back portion of my hair made a “V” shape, while the front section was cut in a bob. After that, my left side was longer than my right side. That’s not all - before the dream was over, my dream self realized I had half of my hair in a bun, so we had only cut the bottom portion of my hair, and our scissors broke, so we couldn’t fix it! I woke up very distressed, realized I could sleep some more, and promptly laid back down (after feeling the length of my hair - it is all here). In my second dream, my family came to visit. I was ecstatic to see them. However, they had arrived late, and could not get a hotel room. Let me take you out of the dream for a moment to explain my family and house dynamics:
I am the shortest in my family, and I stand at 6’0”. I have two older brothers, who are 6’5” and 7’0”. Our parents are 6’1” and 6’3”. We are not small by any means. My partner is the outlier - he is 5’8". Our house is fairly small, and even though there are three bedrooms, we only have our shared bed. The other rooms are offices/storage for things we’ve never unpacked. My partner’s office is smaller and much more cluttered than mine, since mine has a closet that most boxes are hidden in. We have a couch and a loveseat in the living room. I can lay on the couch comfortably, but it is still a bit short for my legs, so they’re usually propped up on the armrest. There’s maybe 5.5 feet between our couch and the television. It is pretty cramped. When my family visits, they usually bring their camper and camp at the campground, or they will rent a couple of hotel rooms.
Okay, back to the dream. So, my family did not have a place to sleep. My partner and I went to our bedroom to discuss what we should do, since my family did not have their camper nor were hotels open. We went out to the living room, and they had completely cleaned out my partner’s office and made space for a queen-sized bed, and our couch had magically lengthened so my tallest brother could sleep on it, and there was a bed squeezed into my office as well. I was amazed - where did all this room come from!? But my partner was not amused, he was irate! For reference, my partner is a gentle human who would never be so rude as to get upset at my family for cleaning his office. In fact, he’d be grateful. I was so stressed out and confused by his reaction, and so upset that my family had been treated so rudely, that I woke myself up.
I am exhausted mentally, physically, and emotionally, and these dreams are not helping. I fully expect to have another stress dream tonight. I also think that I will have continuous stress dreams about graduate school, long after I am done. Why do we choose to put ourselves through this rigorous process? And is it worth it? I hope so, but also I am so emotionally drained that I can’t help but be antagonistic. I think that is a sign I should end this blog entry.
UPDATE 13 April 2020: I did have a nightmare Sunday night. In it, one of my grandmothers died in a fire, and I had to rescue my other grandma from a different fire, as well as 20+ kindergartners. 0/10, would not recommend this dream.