27 April 2020, 10:26 am - In Which I Reconsider My Dreams

Here’s a quick little weekend summary:

My partner and I mowed and cleaned up our yard; I made a triple lemon cake (lemon cake with lemon curd and lemon buttercream frosting, topped with sugared lemon zest curls); we tried to play video games together, as a team rather than as opponents; and I tried to not wallow in despair. I’m honestly trying to find any sort of motivation to finish out the semester and apply for jobs, but it just is not there right now.

I started reading The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline for ENGL745 this week. The young adult novel follows Francis, aka “Frenchie,” a Métis youth, and his not-blood-related family as they run from Recruiters in post-apocalypse North America. The Recruiters are tracking down and taking Indigenous people to “schools” where they harvest the Indigenous people’s bone marrow. Sounds gruesome, right? The bone marrow is wanted by the non-Indigenous (read: white) people because it holds the power of dreams. In this post-apocalypse world, non-Indigenous people have lost the ability to dream. They have basically lost the will to live beyond basic survival needs, and they want what they do not have (dreams).

I have been full of dreams. I noted this in a previous post. I should be lucky to be so full of vivid dreams and not be a dreamless Recruiter, hunting down people who have not committed any crime against me. What would my nights be like if I stopped dreaming? Even though my dreams are odd and troubled, I still have them every night. Would I be so inclined to sleep if I had no dreams at all?

See: 12 April 2020, 11:14 pm - In Which I Detail My Weird Dream

Perhaps I should pay more attention to what my dreams are telling me. They are definitely pulling out fears from my deep subconscious - like people being disappointed in me, or my family members dying, or a conflict arises within my family. I am worried that this virus will take away my loved ones. It is a common fear among many of us, right? Since I have an anxiety disorder, the fears are exacerbated by the uptick in daily stress. Logically, I know I have no reason to be afraid or worried about any of the above happening, but in my sleep, I cannot control those emotions.

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Works Cited:

Dimaline, Cherie. The Marrow Thieves. Cormorant Books Inc, 2017.