My Old Friend

In my dream, my bestfriend of 20+ years and his wife and kid visited me here in the USA. It was just a little weird, he hugged me and asked if it's possible for me not to go to work and I said it's okay. We could all spend the day somewhere else. What's weird about it was I was worried about missing work -- which actually was like school, because I was going to miss my PE class and I might not graduate. Something like that.

Then there was so much randomness in the images that followed -- us going to a hotel and I got lost. All the furniture were big, like exaggerated big, I felt like Alice in Wonderland. Then another fleeting image of us being in a house somewhere, I think it's in PI. But there was some comotion next door at the neighbor's house, someone was murdered. I saw the cops carrying the body and it was in a very crude plastic bag. It brushed my leg, and I saw it, and I realized it was a dead child.

The first scene with my bestfriend (well, first of all I just looked at their photos in Facebook, so maybe that's why they figured in my dream) shows a recurrent theme in my past dreams. Being worried and overcome with anxiety about forgetting a homework, coming to class unprepared, taking a test without studying, waking up late for school or work because the alarm clock didn't go off, or just completely forgetting a responsibility and being so scared that it would get me in so much trouble.

I guess I grew up having that fear and so much pressure in my environment in my real life. My grandmother neatpicking on my spelling...comparing me to my cousins...my fleeting attention (Attention Deficit?) and artistic nature, trying to cope with it by catching myself and usually failing to do so. Having so many ideas in my head while being stuck in a paradigm that other people -- like my parents (though they didn't have bad intentions and were merely doing what they know best) -- have defined for me. And trying to live up to it. Trying so hard to the extreme that it was rather maddening. It always felt like not being where I have always wanted to be and forcing it in because of fear. I'm far away now, with a complete reign on my life (I'd like to think so), but that fear still comes out sometimes. It took me a while in my adult life to realize that it's okay to be out after dark because I was already an adult. I was just too scared of my grandmother.

The next random scenes? Watching too much Criminal Minds on CBS and A&E (staying up too late on marathons) is responsible for that.

Or is it?