I dream that it’s the last week of school and I’m planning to skip my finals. Again. (I’m fascinated at this point, nothing like this ever happened during my actual high school finals, so it’s obviously a manifestation of guilt and anxiety, maybe because I dropped out of college? But then why HS?) I also dream about a wonderfully round lady teacher hugging me and I’m just leaning into it because “I’ll take my affection where I can get it”.
Tag: finals
Puppeh
I dream that we find a golden retriever puppy lost on the street and bring him home. We call him Miss February even though he’s a boy. He’s got a big smile and is super soft, we know we can’t keep him because he’s gonna become huge and our apartment is too small, I should call the vet and leave him with them, I’m procrastinating it though.
I wake up in my childhood room, the puppy has crawled under my covers and fallen asleep. It’s the last week of school and I don’t care about being late at all. I’ll skip my finals even, don’t they know I already got my degree? My old high school literature teacher is writing a long math formula on the blackboard, I find solving it as easy as eating a bowl of rice. During recess I tell my classmates all about my puppy.
In Which I Stay Winning
I dream that I’m sitting for my finals, after having so many nightmares about it. I scribble furiously with a pencil. I answer to every question sarcastically. The answer to a math question is a little drawing. Time’s almost up. I write, go fuck yourselves. I don’t need you and your degrees anymore, I’m an adult.
Asshole Teacher
I dream that my high school finals are getting near and I haven’t studied or anything, I’m terrified of what my father will say when I fail miserably.
On the day of the final I go to class and I’m assigned a comic book to draw. The assignment is too damn long and I tell the teacher I can’t possibly finish it in time. “Am I not human?” I ask in tears.
“Yes,” he says, “but you’ll never be special.“
Haircut Troubles, Heart Troubles, School Troubles, Fitness Troubles, Troubles Of All Sorts
I want to shave my head! All the salons are closed and my hair is getting so long it’s driving me insane (this is also true IRL). My dad and I drive to a beach house where Cousin G. is sitting on the patio, doing guess what? Yes, she has a buzzer and it’s giving herself a nice clean shaved cut.
I ask her to do mine too, dad immediately forbids it. She tries to trim my hair a bit instead, I look in the mirror and… she gave me a Mike from Stranger Things haircut! Angry, I grab the razor and shave off a big chunk of hair, now she won’t have any choice but finish the job.
My newly shaved head looks bulgy and knobby and the skin has a grayish zombie hue to it. I look like a cartoon villain! It’s absolutely horrifying, dad says it’s disgusting. Now I’ll have to wear a hat everywhere I go.
I’m dating A., my old best friend from elementary and middle school: I didn’t know she was into girls but she has revealed she’s −in fact− bisexual. I want to spend all my time with her and I’m dreading going back to work once the quarantine is over, because we won’t be able to see each other anymore.
We come back from school hand in hand, I’m wearing an awkward early 2000s polo shirt, the striped, tight-fitting kind. We get to my house and my Gran starts fussing over us; A. sighs and rolls her eyes, she says ,
At the start of every relationship there’s always a grandma butting in.
We are tidying up my room, Gran finds my report card hidden in a drawer and looks very disappointed. I tell her I don’t want to go to school anymore, I have a job, why can’t I just skip my finals and start earning money?!
Ashamed, I go to hide in the kitchen. Mom is there and she’s looking at my legs. Have I been exercising? She asks. I’ve been running a lot, I explain, alone in my bedroom since we can’t go out (also true IRL). I look down at my calves, they are incredible! Muscular and round and toned. They look completely ridiculous in the context of my wimpy, chubby body, I’ll have to diversify my fitness regime.
Pandemic Sure Has Added Another Layer of Anxiety To My Recurring Dreams
I’m grocery shopping with my cousin, we find an aisle in the supermarket stocked with every kind of face masks: they are expensive, truly outrageously expensive, common surgical masks cost 20 bucks apiece and there’s one single N95 mask, orange, that costs more than 600 bucks. Still, we’ve been looking everywhere and we really need those masks, I want to call my dad and ask what to do but once again I only have an old phone on me. I look for “home” on the contacts list and a stranger answers: he’s using my childhood landline number, I feel weirdly angry and protective.
We go to my cousin’s place and have fried fish and chicken for lunch. Then I go to school and my old philosophy teacher is there, but this time he’s teaching math, even better. He’s graded yesterday’s tests, on mine I only wrote down half of the answers and that half I copied. He’s really angry with me, he asks why, oh why am I so bad at math? I explain it’s because I’m smart, I’m so smart that in primary school I never learned how to study, everything was so easy. And now that math is difficult I cannot study to save my life. He says he doesn’t believe me.
I go back home and around the dinner table I explain the situation. I say I cannot even be bothered to learn my classes’ schedule. My mother is very worried, she says I’ll need to do something if I want to pass my finals. I say that hopefully this pandemic will be over soon, I’ll be back to work and won’t have to go to school ever again. Who cares about my finals anyway? Everyone is shocked and angry at me.*
My sister who’s also at the table sends me to fetch her boyfriend’s dog. I walk to town and start looking at every person walking with a dog, hoping to recognize her. I eventually find her, she doesn’t look at all like his real life dog but she’s limping just like her. She’s pooped all over herself and has to be rushed home to get washed, as we wait my sister and I walk into a stationary store. I hope to find stickers but only find pretty notebooks.
*I want to point out once again that I’m an adult, I’ve been out of school for 15 years and I definitely passed my finals back then. WHY DO I KEEP DREAMING ABOUT THIS.
DECADE DREAM JOURNAL 