Anxiety Dreams
Jan. 25th, 2021 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinIn the Before Times, a regular feature of my otherwise quite dull dreamscape was the Travel Anxiety Dream. They were dependable as sunrise if I were within a few months of planned travel – which, in recent years, has meant having them fairly constantly. Usually they involved confusing the flight time with the time I needed to be at the airport (always the wrong way around) and often forgetting to pack until the absolute last minute; if I turned up at my destination (usually something like a blend between London and San Francisco) it was without passport, wallet, or phone, or some combination of the three. When I wake, I know the dream is preposterous, because I get extremely wound-up before I go anywhere and am usually triple checking that I have the essential items round about the time I would be remembering, in my dream, that I still needed to pack at all. But they are anxiety dreams. They wouldn't serve their subconscious purpose if I had my conscious wits about me.
I haven't gone anywhere in nearly a year, now, since I was flown home from Denmark last March just before they shut the borders. The only travel I've done is going two stops on a mostly empty train to meet a friend for a country walk last summer. So the travel anxiety dream has mostly left me. But what would life be without anxiety dreams? So we have welcomed to the nocturnal cinema the new and exciting genre of Mask Anxiety Dream.
On one hand, these are more believable, because it's entirely in-character for me to leave the house without a mask, and I have done so on more occasions than I care to count, because, living in the country, I generally don't need one until I get where I'm going. But in all of those cases, I have realised, within a short distance from home, that I don't have one, and either turned around or aborted the trip. My dreams, however, usually start when I'm already at the place (most often Cambridge) and find me defenceless in a sudden and unexpected high-risk situation (usually being thronged with maskless youth). These dreams have begun to fade away under Lockdown III, however; whether because I'm not even going on errands now, or because I spend so much of my day lost in work that I sometimes forget there's even a pandemic on, I couldn't say. But last night I had a new one: I was on a bus in Vancouver, and had got on just before the end of its run, so sat in a bus full of people for 20 minutes waiting for it to start the route back the other way. It only occurred to me once the bus started moving again that there was still a pandemic, and I had been in a small damp enclosed space with a dozen other people, none of us wearing masks, and that it was practically impossible that I hadn't caught Covid now. It was such a dreadful certainty that I even woke up with it, and had one of those waves of relief when you get your bearings and realise it was just a dream.
The chances of my getting on a bus just before its terminus are slim to none, and there is no way I'm getting on any public transit until the numbers go way, way down, but I know that the next time I am in Vancouver and the bus pauses at a timed stop, instead of chilling out and sketching the passengers I'm going to think of this dream. Thanks a lot, subconscious.
I haven't gone anywhere in nearly a year, now, since I was flown home from Denmark last March just before they shut the borders. The only travel I've done is going two stops on a mostly empty train to meet a friend for a country walk last summer. So the travel anxiety dream has mostly left me. But what would life be without anxiety dreams? So we have welcomed to the nocturnal cinema the new and exciting genre of Mask Anxiety Dream.
On one hand, these are more believable, because it's entirely in-character for me to leave the house without a mask, and I have done so on more occasions than I care to count, because, living in the country, I generally don't need one until I get where I'm going. But in all of those cases, I have realised, within a short distance from home, that I don't have one, and either turned around or aborted the trip. My dreams, however, usually start when I'm already at the place (most often Cambridge) and find me defenceless in a sudden and unexpected high-risk situation (usually being thronged with maskless youth). These dreams have begun to fade away under Lockdown III, however; whether because I'm not even going on errands now, or because I spend so much of my day lost in work that I sometimes forget there's even a pandemic on, I couldn't say. But last night I had a new one: I was on a bus in Vancouver, and had got on just before the end of its run, so sat in a bus full of people for 20 minutes waiting for it to start the route back the other way. It only occurred to me once the bus started moving again that there was still a pandemic, and I had been in a small damp enclosed space with a dozen other people, none of us wearing masks, and that it was practically impossible that I hadn't caught Covid now. It was such a dreadful certainty that I even woke up with it, and had one of those waves of relief when you get your bearings and realise it was just a dream.
The chances of my getting on a bus just before its terminus are slim to none, and there is no way I'm getting on any public transit until the numbers go way, way down, but I know that the next time I am in Vancouver and the bus pauses at a timed stop, instead of chilling out and sketching the passengers I'm going to think of this dream. Thanks a lot, subconscious.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-25 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-26 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-27 12:58 pm (UTC)