I’ve Been Having Dreams
Two mornings in a row I’ve awoken under the same circumstances. I feel bliss—that thoughtless, disoriented morning bliss—but only for a moment. Soon thereafter I piece together where I had just gone all that time, and last night’s dream begins to materialize.
Two nights in a row I’ve had dreams. Dreams that, despite being shockingly clear, have left me with a lot to consider. I don’t always dream. It’s kind of like how I feel everything, so intensely, all at once, or nothing at all. I’ll have visions of acute lucidity or I’ll be transported from the night before to the next morning. There is no in-between. There seems to be no in-between in any area of my life.
I’m locking the door to my apartment, but it’s not my apartment. It’s the version of my compact two-bedroom that I’ve seen in my dreams before, which, oddly, has stayed consistent no matter the context. I’m pulling chairs and logs out of thin air to block my door, in case it gets busted down, of course. My neighbor next door is somehow visible through my walls. But she doesn’t have a face. She’s just a human girl. There seems to be nothing about her except for the fact that she’s there. For me. But she’s also completely irrelevant to me. All she does is simultaneously protect her own door.
The point of view shifts to outside my building, but it’s not my building. It’s a street I don’t recognize. What I do recognize, however, are the voices of my peers. The shouts—not quite decipherable words or phrases—are familiar, but I cannot attach a name or identity to them. I only process one thing: they’re here for me. But not “for me” in the way my faceless neighbor was for me. They’re actually not for me at all. They’re against me. They’re protesting me. But they don’t have specific demands. They’re not asking I do something differently, and they’re not there to protest my actions. Torches and signs in hand, almost like out of a Simpsons episode, they protest me. My existence. Now the perspective cuts back to me. I see my body. I’m not in my own mind, but I’m watching myself from above. The dream ends.
The next night—if you can even see dreams as a specific point in time, rather than associating them with some alternate dimension, untouchable, unquantifiable—I’m at my studio, but it’s not my studio. It’s almost inverted, like someone tried to draw it from memory after only seeing photographs. I’m speaking with a receptionist, but she’s not a receptionist. She kind of looks like Chloe Sevigny. I’m trying to convince her I’m not Campbell Mattus, and that I’m actually an entirely different person. I’m doing this so I can get another free trial, which, firstly, is something I would never do (to someone’s face), and secondly, is unnecessary. I have an ongoing membership. I go to this studio every day. I don’t know if I got the free trial or not—the dream rejects the laws of chronology. I’m in the studio still, but it’s a few hours later. I’m teaching my first class.
I didn’t complete training yet. For some reason, these circumstances don’t feel unusual. I acknowledge that the prerequisite for registering for the Corepower teacher training is to instruct a class based on instinct and instinct alone. But this is untrue. Concepts from reality are too far away to intervene. I am not on planet Earth. I am inside my head.
I begin teaching a class, which, to my understanding is going well. I’ve taken this class over one hundred times. I have the sequence memorized. I’m confident in my abilities and all doubt begins to dissipate. That is, until, a friend from childhood makes herself known. “What even is this class? Do you know what you’re doing?” She shouts from downward dog. The mob quickly joins her. Soon, every word I utter and every song I play is subjected to the criticism of the room. “Alright, that’s our time,” I begin to say. “It’s been ten minutes. Are you serious?” Has it really only been ten minutes?
The simple conclusion for my night-marathon is that I’m stressed. They’re stress dreams. They’re not real. It’s fine.
But they are real.
On one hand, I’m facing extreme repercussions. But I’m not made aware of what I did or said or didn’t do or didn’t say that made for these repercussions. I’m thrust into a situation that has an unknown cause and an unknown solution. How can I appease this crowd without knowing what I’m appeasing? If I’m unable to identify what circumstances allowed for the protest of my existence, how will I avoid the same circumstances in the future? How will I make amends with those who I’ve wronged? How will I go about my daily life without making a mistake, one that will cost me my security—physically and mentally? Am I safe to express myself? Or am I bound to commit irreversible wrongs?
On the other hand, I’m initially confident. But the circumstances aren’t perfect. I’m deceiving the receptionist from my future workplace. This seems too obvious. This seems like a mistake I wouldn’t make. But this isn’t a mistake. This is a deliberately idiotic choice. But I move on somehow. I’m feeling the residual effects of my actions, though minutely—I feel a bit of shame and a sense of impending punishment. But nonetheless, I feel prepared. I can teach this class. I am fit for this. I’m good at public speaking and I’m even better at Corepower. But according to my imagined audience, I’m neither. I’m undeserving and unqualified, and I’m stupid, too—they may not know it, but just a few hours earlier, I was making a lame attempt at identity fraud for a free membership that I already have. I failed. I’m a failure. How will I do anything? How can I approach any situation going forward if I’m this incompetent, and it’s visible to others? How can I be so blind to my own shortcomings? I can’t believe I trusted myself to do the right thing.
The dreams, in their scarily specific details and close-to-home environments, are made up. They’re figments of my twisted imagination. We all have dreams about ourselves that carry no weight in our real lives. There is no basis on which any of this can be my reality. Except there is.