I dream that I’m in a classroom where the desks are arranged in a circle, because it’s safer against Covid. The teacher calls my name, he asks me a medicine question, I cheerfully inform him that I didn’t study shit and he can go ahead and fail me. My old friend M. looks at me, half impressed and half outraged. She asks what the hell was I thinking, I explain that I am an adult with a job now, and who cares about grades when you can get a paycheck instead?
I dream that I’m looking into colleges for when I finish high school. At the same time I’m also my current adult self, so I end up choosing a psychology degree, because it’ll help with my retail job, somehow?? I guess customers do be crazy.
At the same time I’m looking into buying a car, I select an old gray Citroën, extremely boring but it somehow only costs 400 bucks. I can’t even drive but that’s not gonna stop me! I lie in the back seat and smile and smile.
I go home and I find a dozen cats, most of them black. My own cat is conspicuously missing. All the cats are wearing circus clothes. I go fill the bathtub (it’s plastic, transparent blue), they all follow me and jump in the water. I start brushing them with soap and they all look very satisfied, like they’ve been trained for this. There is a white cat with a bleeding injury on her shoulder, and a gray tabby with his legs missing. There also a talking toy astronaut.
Afterward I’m walking home from school and decide to visit the local catholic church. I haven’t been inside the building in years and I don’t like religious institutions on principle, but here I go, and the church is packed so I have to sit on the marble steps.
A bearded man stood up and is now giving a speech a few seats from me. Another guy (I recognize him, it’s a local politician) attacks him, a fist fight ensues.I’m enjoying this more than I can say, these religious types and their hypocrisy! The politician notices I’m chuckling ant attacks me too, scratches my face. I say I’m just an innocent schoolgirl! I’m not though, I’m in my 30s, there’s blood pouring down my face and I’m still laughing.
I dream that I’m trying to wake up, I want so badly to wake up but whenever I think I’ve done, it I open my eyes and I know the world I’m in isn’t real.
There’s my sister watching DC cartoons in my room (how dares she?) then I wake up again and I can hear her watching in the living room instead. I drag myself out of bed, find my dad, grab him by the jacket, beg him to wake me up.
I’m still asleep! I tell him frantically. This isn’t real! You have to come to my room and shove me out of bed, it’s the only way!
It doesn’t work. I wake up again and since nothing is real I decide to fly out of the window. I fly over a blue, shiny ocean, I get to watch seagulls up close.
I come across a flying carrier transporting giant containers. I know this is the villains, so I break inside a container using my super strength. I find thousands and thousands of my old books and drawings. I walk around the plane and make people have sex with each other, so I can watch.
Guess what, I dream that I’m at school, but I can’t go to my classroom because there are some students sleeping there. It’s part of their religion, I think. AOC is one of them. As I’m waiting in the street for them to wake up, my neighbor’s mom ask where I hid the presents she bought for her son. Because it’s Christmas, and he’s a child again.
Oh no, I hid the presents in the classroom. The boy sneaks inside to go look for them. I follow, angry at how disrespectful he’s being.
My classmates are waking up and emerging from their sleeping bags. They’ve found the presents I hid, an illustrated book and some Harry Potter stickers. They are teasing each other, asking who the kid’s stuff belongs to. They’re mine! Says the actual kid.
Oh, they say, realizing their mistake. Have you been a good boy?
Yes, he replies. They give him his presents.
I go home and cry because I never get any presents from my parents.
I dream that I’m repeating the last year of high school. Again. It takes me a while to remember I have a job now and my mornings are booked.
Then I dream that I arrive at space station and visit a big store there. I stumble over my feet and a little boy laughs at me. He’s with his dad. Later the boy has some difficulties with the escalators, I help him out because I’m so generous, the boy follows me around the store and his dad is very worried.
I dream over and over again that I’m telling Boss Lady over the phone that I can’t possibly go to work in the morning, I could be contagious, I have an upset stomach, and hear how sore my throat is! (I’m faking it).
(I suck it up and go to work in the morning.)
I dream that I’m sitting in my old classroom next to M. the runner. As usual I don’t have any notebooks or pens with me. I confess to M. that I haven’t been able to follow a math lesson in years, I cannot understand it and I’ve stopped trying.
A new teacher shows up: she has red hair and a red beard, she’s wearing glasses, a white blouse with colorful umbrella prints and a rainbow skirt. On her arm, a rainbow umbrella. I observe every detail so later I can describe her to my penpal.
Her name is Fruddi and she’s our new sci-fi teacher. There’s something unsettling about her.
She writes a poem on the blackboard in her very neat handwriting. I’m sitting front row resting my chin on my hands, looking bored. She demands why I’m not copying the poem down, I say what’s the point? I’ll google it at home. She rants and rave about today’s lazy youth, I tell her, deadpan,
I am smart and I am confident and you won’t judge me.
She looks at me pensively. She knew a boy once, she says, who was so lazy. He was so lazy he never found a job and stayed home with his momma. This makes me angry, I walk straight to her face and hiss,
Or maybe he was severely depressed.
Fruddi looks dumbstruck. Come with me, she says. She leads me to the school graveyard, old tombstones and overgrown greenery. It looks so pretty I wish I had a camera with me.
Fruddi leads me to her family chapel, where a mummy lays on the stone. This is my boy, she says, taking the body in her arms. I’m so scared and she’s distracted, so I run back to the classroom, but the other kids have left.
I track them to the gym. The boys are playing soccer with famous footballer Christian Vieri. The girls are sitting in a low pool, looking adorable in matching swimsuits and caps. I run to them and relay my scary mummy story. They all console me.
I dream that I’m walking to school and it’s raining. I stop to buy some ham. If the dream wasn’t recurring enough, there are two identical supermarkets in the same town area. All I’m worried about is my ham melting because it’s too hot outside.
I come across a Christmas parade, I’m upset and I tell them it’s July! They accuse me of lacking Christmas spirit. I say,
I do have Christmas spirit. In December!
I walk past a crepes stand. My cousin takes me to a huge party in a nearby house, it’s too damn loud and I immediately nope out of it. Cousin is upset.
I go back home and watch a Doctor Who episode with my mom, who is apparently a Michelle Gomez fan. Then we watch Derry Girls, it’s an episode where they ice skate like their idol, Tonya Harding. A little boy falls in love with James and is stalking him.
I dream that I keep being late for school, I’m late in the morning, I’m late in the afternoon. I even waste time cleaning the mailbox outside my house, it’s raining so it really doesn’t make any sense.
Then I dream that I’m hiding a kitten and a little girl in my room. The child is about six or seven. I tell her to not make a sound because there’s a monster in the hallway.
The monster is my father. He finds the kitten and throws it against a wall during one of his tantrums. I eventually have to tell him about the girl too, and to my great surprise he doesn’t get angry. We end up fostering dozens of children to reap the government’s benefits.
We go check the spare apartment where we are storing the children. They all turned into stickers, and a few suffocated inside their plastic wraps. I wonder if it’s morally wrong to still use the stickers, they look real pretty even though they are dead.
I dream that I’m in the car with my dad, he’s angry and suddenly he turns into my cat, her claws gripping the steering wheel.
Then I have the usual dream about believing you’ve woken up but then realizing it’s not true and trying to wake up again and again, going up a level of consciousness until yes, you’re awake for real and you can tell the difference.
(Strange, that usually happen when I set an early alarm, but it’s Sunday today)
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.
DECADE DREAM JOURNAL 