My dreams follow a pattern: someone is waiting for me, I have somewhere to be or a task to get done; essentially, a clock is ticking and it’s my job to beat it. Never happens. Every dream is a cosmic conspiracy to mire me in failure. Now, lest you get the impression I’m having some groovy James Bond Mission Impossible action adventure in my head, here’s what was going on just before I woke up this morning:
We were rushing to get ready to go somewhere important, “we” being, perhaps, my family when I was a kid. People in my dreams tend to morph between past, present, and imaginary. I could not find my one and only good dress shirt. I found a pile of shirts and knew I had to take each one off the hanger before I could see the next one. The first shirt, red rayon or thin cotton, Hawaiian print, had frayed buttonholes. The buttons caught in the threads and it was torture getting each one undone. Every button was buttoned.
Trivial, eh?
At this point in the dream, I’m having trouble breathing, my chest is pounding, I’m in full blown panic, beyond reason, flailing and raging internally like an animal, but carefully stifling any expression of emotion lest others, already tense and frustrated and blaming me, become offended.
I never finished the shirt because I had to put the fish in the freezer. I’d told everyone else to go ahead and I’d come on my own because I knew I’d never be ready on time. They chose to wait for me, but still expected me to be ready on time.
Walking from the kitchen to the bedroom, something was wrong. I went back and walked it again, some giant package which was apparently frozen fish (though it wasn’t cold) in my arms.
The freezer was gone. I’d been walking back and forth through the space where it had been.
At this point the panic reached the point of madness. If it wouldn’t have disturbed the people around me I would have cackled maniacally, knowing my mind had entirely lost its grip on reality. Vague thoughts of doing grievous bodily harm to myself or others hover in the back of my mind; I can no longer bear the madness of confusion, frustration, obligation. I would surrender if I could, but the thought of all those people waiting on me drives me on in my useless, fruitless, hopeless quest.
I could picture my shirt. I kept seeing flashes of the pattern but it always turns out to be that blasted red shirt with the frayed buttonholes.
No one knew where the freezer was. We were all late.
I woke up.
Why can’t I have flying dreams?
Oh, the fish? No idea where it went. Before the dream ended it was just gone.
They say dreaming of buttons indicates security and trying to unbutton clothes is a hint that you’re trying to open yourself up in some way. Frozen things, such as the fish, can mean something repressed, not fully developed…or it could just mean you’re hungry for fish!
Flying dreams are hard to ‘schedule’ and for me, just happen when I’m feeling ‘free’ in my life. Used to happen much more often than it does now. Sounds like we both need a trip to Red Lobster to de-stress!
I’ve never had a flying dream. (And I’ve tried for over a decade to work that into a song and it just won’t come.)
Does Red Lobster do fish tacos yet? Though our local brewpub does excellent chorizo and egg sliders during happy hour.