August 17, 2012

  • The dream starts off the same as it always had.

    I am in a school. Sometimes it’s my old high school, sometimes it’s an unrecognizable school with white walls and winding halls. Any generic school.

    There’s a test of some sort. And I am always late to it. And completely unprepared to take it.

    There’s the panic and anxiety, dashing past rows and rows of lockers to my classroom to take this unknown test- how I know which classroom is where I am supposed to be, I have no clue as the classmates are unfamiliar and the teacher usually is too, but I always find it.

    And then I awake in a panic, in the darkness of my room, with relief slowly filtering into my consciousness that I was not in high school, nor have been for well over a decade.

    I have had this dream every few months for as long as I can remember.

    The other night, the dream began again. Except this time it was final exams for each class, back to back to back. I had not studied for any of them. I was rushing off to my first exam when suddenly, a faint glimmer from my consciousness arose and I realized something- I was no longer in school. I had been out of school for years.

    I didn’t need to take these tests.

    It’s odd to realize this in your dream. It was the first time I had ever realized that these tests that I had been completely unprepared for and late to were, in fact, unnecessary. I left the class and wandered about in the high school and proceeded to go outside and walked around until reality abruptly called me back and informed me that I needed to get ready for work. I felt as though I had finally beaten the game, as though I had broken through some locked door that wasn’t supposed to be opened.

    I couldn’t shake this feeling though, even in those brief moments after I had woken up and my bedroom began to take shape- that even though I was aware that I was no longer in school in my dream world, the entire time, I had wondered, “Would I still pass those classes if I had failed those exams?”