I Had That Nightmare Again

It's been quite a while, but I had "That Nightmare" again.

There are various bad dreams which seem to be common among groups of people. While it is not the worst nightmare I have had, the most common nightmare I have is one I know I share with many other people:

I forgot to go to class for an entire semester!


For a studious person, such as I was and am, it's easy to see how any anxiety going on in my life might be translated into this sort of dream. For my formative years, the idea that I might get to the end of a semester and suddenly realize that I had never gone to a specific class, so I was bound to fail -- well that would have seemed the worst sort of horror. To be called a failure, to be embarrassed like that, to have let bad memory or bad decisions hurt my reputation -- it would have been awful.

Which means, of course, that I never experienced the kinds of real horrors which would fill my dreams if I had ever had to live through them - disaster, physical abuse, death of close loved ones and so on. I'm sure, if I had dealt with those as a young person, new nightmares would have replaced this scholarship-centered one.

Nevertheless, this is a dream that causes me panic. It has been a very long time since I had this nightmare. I suspect that Sherry attending college again put that academic environment in my head. And then I have two big work-related things surrounding my Thanksgiving vacation, making it somewhat hard for me to just relax into and out of the long break. Given those two factors, I can easily see why my sleep was disrupted.

Sure, it makes perfect sense. Now. When I am awake.

But during the dream -- well -- panic and fear and sweat and grasping for excuses -- it overwhelmed me. It might not be Freddy Krueger, but for me, but it's pretty close.

Sweet dreams, everyone.