I’ve heard of people having recurring dreams before, but until recently I didn’t think I had them. Now, I rarely have a dream that isn’t one from a collection of templates my mind traverses. There are a few forms: one about neglecting my dog, another where I break up with my ex-wife again. In real life, the dog went with my ex in the divorce, so in certain ways these motifs are related.
The dog dream is an iteration of this setting: I’m traveling and staying with people who have been taking care of my dog for years. I discover this once I’m there, and I realize I haven’t been walking him this whole time, that perhaps no one is. I always wonder how he’s still ok, how he’s still alive, but there he is. I have intense guilt, and attempt to give him a walk, but I find I’m incapable of getting the leash on or getting him out the door. I wake up feeling wretched with guilt.
In the ex dream, I usually move to a new apartment, or I’m in the process of moving. Somehow on the way from the old space to the new one, I have to re-establish with her that I can’t live with her anymore, or that I can’t see her anymore. Usually I have to explain my reasons to her again, although in the dream we’ve already broken it off. Last night, I told her about my (real-life) girlfriend, and the reasons why this relationship is working out so well in ways I need. “She’s simple,” I kept saying, “I need a relationship that’s simple. You were always so complicated.” I feel like this dream has been progressing forward in baby steps over the past two years. In the earliest versions we might have been living together while not a couple, or I’d ask her to move her stuff out of a place I still lived in. In early days I found out she was cheating, and screamed at her. These days she doesn’t tend to live with me at all, but she might ask to move back in. Even though my dream breakup is moving so much slower than my reality breakup (which was very sudden & fast), the dream is definitely progressing. I find it interesting that my main issue is the need to assert myself. I have to claim my needs out loud to ensure the outcome I need.
In all my dreams, whether they have recurring divorce stories in them or not, I always dream about real estate. Homes, houses, and apartments always feature prominently in every dream I have, night after night. Sometimes I discover I own a home that my parents bought me, and I move in. Other times I move in to a floor of my parents’ home (their houses are always never-ending mansions, where room after room unfolds the farther I walk). These dreams also seem to progress: recently my parents have not been involved, I simply move to an apartment, or buy an apartment. I wonder if this means I’m starting to claim ownership over my intense real-life desire to own property. Maybe buying a home is starting to seem within my grasp.
Within the last year or so, I’ve started to recognize places in my dreams from previous dreams. The dreams themselves are starting to blur, so that instead of entering separate stories in my REMs, I often revisit the same invented spaces night after night. There’s an ongoing saga about an apartment I bought for dirt cheap in a funky neighborhood in Brooklyn. It’s very out of the way, and a major fixer upper, and lots of off-the-grid hipster people also live there. It’s an alternative space, and in the dream I always wonder if I made a terrible investment. Sometimes when I wake up, I yearn to explore my dream life more, and sometimes before falling asleep I find it comforting to know I might return. My dreams are starting to feel like an actual 3-D life, a shadowy counterpart to my waking life. I wonder if as people age the shadow dream world becomes more prominent, and if it makes death less frightening a prospect.
