A while back, I said that I was having anxiety-filled COVID dreams. I am having less of those, but I have noticed that my dreams have changed. I guess they would be new-age COVID dreams. Now, they’re less terrifying and more sad. They point out all the little things that I miss, or think might happen when I can eventually go back to doing things that used to be considered normal. I would be curious to know if other people are dreaming like this too.
First, there are the planning dreams. When social circles became a thing, I dreamed that I was trying to figure out if our book club could have a bubble, and then we could have book club at our friend’s house like we used to do, and all sit together and eat cookies and have apple cider and stuff like that. But as I was running out of my house and trying to get on the bus, I started to think that this was impossible because we couldn’t be our own bubble. Two of us have a baby and they probably have people helping them out with stuff to do with that, and another one works in a lab, never mind that this lab has nothing to do with viruses of any kind, so that would be no good, and…this is a bad idea. I’d better turn around. It’s amusing that in that dream, I didn’t even bother checking to see if I could go to my friend’s house first. Nope! I was just so excited about this bubble idea…until I wasn’t.
Even within that dream, there was an element of uncertainty that I would remember how to travel around the city. Would I know what bus to take? Would I remember the route? I’ve had many of those dreams, along with dreams about worrying about forgetting how to take a longer train or plane trip.
I had a dream that months had gone by and I had gone back to the office, but nothing looked the same and then I didn’t know if I could find my desk. Suddenly I was searching people’s desks for familiar objects like Trixie’s statue or other things, hoping I wouldn’t get found at the wrong desk.
I had dreams where I ended up going on a trip, and then I wake up while I’m in the middle of dreaming about being on a bus or a plane or whatever. That’s a weird feeling. It feels like a lifetime ago.
I had many dreams about having dinner with friends. In one dream, I went on a walking and tasting tour and sat down at a bunch of restaurants. Chuck from the guide dog school was there and we talked about when he thought I would get in to class. Maybe in this one, I was hoping for those times to return where we could go out to a restaurant and eat and not worry about it being unsafe. I think I was also hoping for more certainty about guide dog things.
Another time, the dream was in a back yard and it was a bunch of Steve’s family. We were all cracking jokes and were making references to something dirty and we didn’t want Steve’s grandpa to hear. I can’t remember the details, but it seemed so real. I can hear different people’s laughs, I can hear dogs barking, I can smell hamburgers cooking. I guess this one is just a sign of missing the old gatherings.
I’ve now had two dreams about staying in a hotel. One was a big convention full of blind people. There had been some sort of technical problem and they couldn’t supply everyone with an electronic copy of the schedule, so we had to take Braille copies. People were mad because it would be bulky and cumbersome, but that’s all we could do. I think some were worried that it wasn’t clean enough and we’d all get the virus off the braille, but the bigger complaint was how cumbersome it was. But the computer was busted, so that’s all they could do for us, so off we all moped with our braille schedules. Was this a comparison to how we have to do things now? Everything we do now involves planning for every stop we want to make, picking things up curbside, not being able to just grab things at the store. There’s a good reason why we have to all take a braille copy, just like There’s a good reason that we all have to pick things up curbside, but it doesn’t make it suck any less.
The other dream was just a dream where Steve, a buddy of his, and I went on a trip and we were getting ready to leave the hotel. There wasn’t anything super special, except for the part where we were in a hotel together.
But the one I had last night was the simplest, and I think it had the strongest message. All it was was a song I haven’t thought about in years.
The song tells you to enjoy every moment, no matter what it is. Strangely, last night, I was feeling especially sad about not feeling brave enough to see family, wondering when we ever will again, bla bla bla. Was I trying to tell myself to take things less seriously? Maybe I was right.
I haven’t had many COVID dreams, but I have had at least one.
Somehow I was able to get hold of the Coronavirus and modify it. But I guess it didn’t go well because the major memory I have of the whole thing was everyone in my family yelling at me.
“What did you do to the Coronavirus? Look what you did! It’s so much worse now! Nobody is going to ever be able to fix it! You’re out of the family!”
That was…ungood.