I dream that I’m going grocery shopping with my cousin; we pick the usual supermarket, always the same one. We get bread, squid, beef. The police is waiting for us outside, I wear my Falcon wings (yes, the Marvel one) and fly away. I get home and find out my mom has been arrested; my dad and brother are waiting for me in the living room, they explain that the country is now under a dictatorship and we’ve lost our freedom of speech. How long have I been out, I wonder. And also, is the police listening to us through our phones? Dad gives me a green glowy sticker, he’s acting like it’s very important. I stick it to my mug and drink some tea; I’m now transported into a magical dream world where I can talk to my mom. I’m a small boy and she is Princess Leia.
Tag: stickers
In Which I’m Stingy
I dream that I’m walking in my neighborhood, an old man stops me and asks me to return his Peanuts comics. I tell him honestly that I don’t remember him ever lending me any comics, when was it? 14 years ago, he says. His mom tells him to stop bothering me; she’s much younger than him, but I don’t find it strange at all. I take out my journal and say I’ll give something else in return, a sticker sheet, maybe? I regret suggesting it right away because all my stickers are precious to me. What about trading cards? I grab a deck, does the old man likes Lord of the Rings? No, he doesn’t. What about… I look through my cards frantically. What about Clint Eastwood? Yes, he does like him!
I give him two Clint Eastwood trading cards.
I Wanna Go Hiking And I Can’t
I dream that I’m going to the mountains to see snow, but there is no snow. Instead, a beach of sand that looks like garden dirt and rough, deep lake water. People are sitting under umbrellas, children are playing and swimming, a journalist is interviewing an old man: he says he likes the sea but this is a good alternative. His son and daughter-in-law laugh as they say they threatened the owner to get a spot on this beach, it was worth it to see Dad happy. This angers me and I yell at them. A storm comes.
Then I dream that a friend from the other side of the world sent me an envelope full of stickers. As I go through them my dad asks if he can have some and tries to grab one, I say hold on, lemme check them first. He’s disappointed. I find in the envelope a bottle opener, then more and more stuff. I prepare a plastic bag with all the stuff, cleaning supplies I share between my mom and grandma, (Gran is enthusiastic, mom suspicious about the foreign labels,) DIY items that end up with a neighbor. Nothing for dad, he’s disappointed.
My Family Has Lived In A Mountain Village For Generations
I dream that I’m staying at a hotel. It’s pretty quiet until a mom with a bunch of kids arrives (or maybe she’s a teacher?). Nobody in their group is wearing a mask and I’m pissed about it. One of the kids, about eleven years old, brown hair, gawky, eats one of my stickers. I forgive him.
Next morning I’m roped into shooting a documentary. The film crew drives me to a town sitting on a hill, they go on about how it’s much smarter than building on a taller mountain. I’m pissed about that too. I stop at a local store to buy some snacks, everything is outrageously expensive. I’m told we are going to shoot on a beach next, I’m upset because I just want to go home. Plus I got my period, along with the snacks I have to buy pads. I go looking for a bathroom and can’t find one. The crew is growing impatient.
Hatred For Cousin And Love For Dark, Two Constants In My Life
I dream that I’m staying at a friend’s house somewhere far away. His mom starts packing because we’re apparently leaving in the middle of the night, she stuffs inside the bag two boxes of cherry ice cream. I sneak to the apartment above where Katharina from Dark and her children are fast asleep. I whisper to them that they are perfect, never ever change.
We leave and my friend’s mom stops the car in some random city. We go to a famous vet that needs to cure our cat, or possibly our owl. There are a bunch of people in line, all pissed because the vet turned out to be a scam. My friend’s mom, who is now my Aunt M., breaks down the door. The vet is cowering in a corner, terrified. My friend who is now my cousin sits at the table and is now using all my stickers on a postcard. I’m extremely upset at this. My aunt is disappointed at the both of us.
I Begged And Begged But My Parents Never Took Me
I dream that I’m visiting Disneyland with my mother and sister. It’s already late in the evening and the park is about to close as I get to the little train that circles the whole area. The characters walking around are children wearing creepy, lifeless masks. They look so sad and exhausted I suggest them to unionize. They laugh.
The train ride is short, the park is smaller than what I imagined. We visit Santa Claus land, it’s full of cute animatronics but it feels wrong in July. At the end of the ride there’s a gift shop, I immediately go look for stickers but all the packets are open and half stolen. The young shop employee is blind and he can’t help me. How could Laura Bailey betray me like this? (The place was recommended by her, somehow).
I finally locate an almost intact package and demand a discount. I pay it 4 bucks.
A Little Morbid
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.
Mall Trip With The Rich
I dream about meeting an old French woman. An aristocrat, maybe? She takes my siblings and I to the mall, wants to buy us presents. I settle on a Disney board game, but I realize my siblings are picking really cheap presents and I put it back.
I notice an aisle with pretty stickers and go examining them. A little boy is staring at me. I stare him back, angry. He says,
I guess you’re cute, even though you’re old.
I find a little book of Chinese stickers. The old lady wants me to translate them, I start scribbling with a pencil as fast as I can, it’s getting late and I desperately want to go home. The old lady won’t let me go until I finish.
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 