Anxiety Dream

I have had the same anxiety dream for, probably, thirty-five years. Since soon after I graduated from undergrad,

I don’t think that It’s a particularly original dream. I’ve talked to a lot of people who have had some variant of it.

I’m in college. It’s the end of a semester, and I realized that I have completely forgotten to attend one of my classes since the first week. It’s like I’m thinking about finals, and I think…wait a minute. Aren’t I taking organic chem? When is THAT? Wait. Tuesday mornings?

Shit.

I’ve always wondered why I have the dream, what it’s trying to tell me. It’s obviously a product of my anxiety disorder, but what…specifically?

And then last night, the dream continued farther than it usually does. I stayed in the dream for a whole next part. Which was that I was now not going to graduate on time, and I would have to break that to my parents. But in the dream, I think I must have been trying to graduate in December and now it was going to be May, so I was just trying to pass it off like “oh, you know I was hoping to finish early, but since I transferred and all my classes didn’t count, turns out it’s going to be May after all…”

And in my dream, I was holding my breath that I was going to be called out on it, that they would remember that there was a very specific plan that I had put together that was going to get me all graduated a semester early, and that plan did, in fact, involve Organic Chem, and I was just panicked—INSIDE—that they would start picking at my story and it would all fall apart and I would have to confess to letting everyone down.

By, you know, not going to one of my classes. At all. All semester.

And so now, I have to assume that this is less of a panic dream and more of a let people down dream, and while I am still not sure who I don’t want to let down, I guess more information is always better than less.

Dreams are weird. Brains are weirder.

Dreams in my brain are the weirdest.