I have several different “dreamscapes” so to speak. Ones where I’m lucid dreaming, ones where I have sleep paralysis and ones where I’m passive dreaming. In the last scenario I usually wake up with the “feeling” the dream evoked but no real memory of the events.
But, a month or so ago I had a passive dream that shook me to my core. I’ve shared it with friends and I’ve shared it with family. The whole story is so cinematic sometimes I catch myself thinking maybe I accidentally did a Helen Keller with “The Frost King”.
The set up:
I’m a very directionally challenged person. My sheltered upbringing meant I was chaperoned everywhere, I never ventured out in the streets myself. I would be completely lost two streets from my house is how bad it is. It was only after I left the city for college did I even get permission to take ubers to places. In my country ubers aren’t as pricey as they are in America so I ubered everywhere often.
I returned home for summer break and I took an uber back home from a close friend’s house once. For the first time I noticed the streets and shops on my journey. This stuck with me quite a bit so much so that I dreamt about them.
The dream:
I’m taking an uber to my friend’s house. The familiarity of these streets that I just recently memorized lulled me to comfort. I didn’t question the reality of the “dreamscape”. I get to her house. It’s a 3 storey building and they’ve rented out the ground floor to another family. I make my very familiar way up the stairs. And then another set of stairs after greeting her mother. The stairs lead to the same two rooms that belong to her and her sister and one last door leading into the terrace.
So far so good. Absolute familiarity. In fact even more so because the anxiety of having traversed a path that was unknown to me until now has subsided after entering her very familiar house. I stepped in excited to greet her but am instead faced with someone unfamiliar. I smile a polite smile and open my mouth to ask for the whereabouts of my friend when the other girl greets me.
Greets me in a manner so eerily similar to my friend. The inflection, the word, the dorky nickname she uses for me. Every single word is that of my friend’s but the person saying it is a stranger. I feel lightheaded. I feel the anxiety I felt out on those streets that I didn’t know until very recently except much worse.
I don’t know if I should sit down and see if it plays out into a sick prank. A prank that’s uncharacteristic of my friend. A prank that is virtually impossible to pull off to this level of perfection.
Instead, I mutter that I’m sick. And just like my friend would this girl—thing that sounds like my friend—asks me to lay down on my friend’s bed as she does her chores. My friend’s chores. Again I’m struck by the familiarity of her actions and the unfamiliarity of her form. I feel unsafe. So I insist that I return home and text her when I feel better.
And I bolt. I take another cab. This time homeward bound. I don’t need newfound familiarity. I need familiarity that’s been with me for decades. My whole life. I need my mom. I’m shaking in my seat as the cab rushes home, I’m not paying attention to anything. I’m ignoring the text that’s from my friend.
The cab halts in front of my apartment. I enter the building. Noticing my dad’s car. I notice my neighbour’s cars. They’re all here. The same exact ones I remember. I alight my rickety old elevator. The build of it is modern but its little more than a tin bucket in an old well attached to a rusty pulley. I step out into the familiarly messy foyer. Our shoes littered about, strewn around a shoe rack much too small to hold our plentiful footwear. Good. But no. Here’s the real test. With shaking hands I ring my doorbell.
My dog goes into overdrive at the sound. As he always does. I wait for someone to get the door as I always do. I know everyone in my house is waiting for someone else to do it. My dog’s barking becomes more incessant as I ring the doorbell a second time to indicate my urgency.
The door opens.
And relief washes over me. It’s my mom. The same lines on her face. The same clothes dirtied from various food stains. The same frizzy hair, too thin and tiny, braided without a hair tie. I almost sink to the floor in relief. The fear I held in waiting to gush out as tears and she speaks. Over my dog’s barking. Behind the grilled door.
“Yes? Who are you here for?”