Dream a Little Dream

I’ve always been oddly obsessed with the meaning behind dreams. To the point where I’ve long-hankered after a dream dictionary of my very own. But I’ve never actually gone down the route of purchasing one as I feel sure they are all written by thieving charlatans (laughing behind their hands as they profit from our insecurities. Not that I’m cynical or anything). But I still secretly want one. When I lived in a student flat-share many years ago, one of my fellow flatmates had a dream dictionary (which is probably where my obsession sprang from). After having an unusual dream, at any ungodly hour of the morning, I would march into her room without knocking and proceed to look up the meaning of said dream. Usually I would be rewarded with the bad news that my dream foretold my untimely death (dream dictionaries always tell you stuff like that – particularly if you dream of all your teeth falling out in the bath which is full of goldfish, be surenever to dream that). But this last week or so, I have been having fairly regular weirdly-vivid dreams. And this has rekindled my need to purchase a dream dictionary. Or I could save money and just use my trusty old freebee-friend, Google (please note, the interpretations were the closest I could find or were the only ones which were literate and not written in pidgin-English by some thieving charlatan laughing behind his hands).

Saturday Night:

In this dream I was married to two people; one of whom was my actual husband and the other was some nameless, faceless fictitious person created by my subconscious. I did not see this bigamy as unusual until somebody in the dream pointed it out – when I was caused to question why nobody else had two husbands. Oh, and as a sub-plot, we were brewing up some illegal moonshine/vodka-based alcoholic beverage which was so potent, it had killed two people in previous year’s batch.

The Dream Dictionary says if the dreamer sees himself in a dream as a bigamist, then this is an indication of his inability to decide between two possible courses of action. The dreamer has two options, which are of equal value for him. To dream of selling alcohol is a bad omen indicating the dreamer may have friction with friends or family.

So all in all, I have an inability in deciding which friend or family member to start a fight with next? Yes, I’ll go with that. No honestly, I think what my quick look at Google thorough research has taught me is that the dream is never that literal (i.e. I do not want to be married to two people or start an illegal deadly-liquor business) but two husbands = two choices? Not exactly rocket science either.

Tuesday Night:

In this dream I was to attend a wedding but every dress in the wardrobe I tried on was far too big (and in real life, that never happens). It was too late to buy another dress and we didn’t even manage to get to the wedding.

To dream of clothes that are too big for you indicates that you are lacking in confidence or have been placed in a role that you do not feel ready for. To dream of attending a wedding indicates there is an occasion approaching which will cause you bitterness and delayed success.

Excuse me, what? So not only am I unconfident and am ill-equipped to cope with my situation in life, I am also very resentful about some impending fortune (which is a bit late). To be fair, this was one of those interpretations I was talking about that I felt were near-illiterate. There was little to nothing on the internet about getting dressed for somebody else’s wedding that you never actually managed to attend. Which is annoying really because I have a staggering amount of dreams about trying to get somewhere and never actually making it (usually in a car, and you know I have issues with driving in real life, let alone in dreams).

Wednesday Night:

I am dressed as a ballerina (tutu and ballet shoes, the works really) and am walking through a forest. I am leading a large elephant behind me.

Having a dream involving a ballerina will mean you are seeking spiritual harmony or healing in your life. There is something within your life that is in pieces and you are trying to find unity. Elephants can signify something important or vast in our lives that we are missing. It is something that is obvious to others but the dreamer hasn’t yet addressed.

Well, they’ve clearly derived this twaddle from ‘the elephant in the room’ methinks (sorry, it may not be twaddle but I’m starting to lose patience here). Dream of an elephant = something big. Brilliant deduction my dear Watson! The ballerina, on the other hand, has denoted something within my life that is broken and needs fixing (I’m not feeling that interpretation myself). Perhaps this stems from the broken feet of ballerinas constantly en-pointe (I don’t know, I’m spit-balling at this stage)? Probably a better explanation would be that if I did indeed dress up like a ballerina, I would look like an elephant. Yes, that’ll be it.

Friday Night:

In this dream, a group of people (who I don’t think I know) are being held captive/kept prisoner by another group of people (who I also don’t know). I am only watching this and am not one of the prisoners or captors. One prisoner has all their hair shaved off as a punishment.

Dreaming of being held captive or taken hostage denotes a feeling of being ‘gagged’ or unable to express yourself (you don’t say). If you are particularly dreaming about somebody else being held hostage, you feel that person is in some kind of danger (but I didn’t know any of the people in the dream! Gahh!). Shaving off hair may reflect your desire to free yourself from habitual thought patterns which keep you from embracing the real you.

Sheesh! Can’t I ever have a dream that just means I’m feeling super-happy and am in a very fulfilling place in my life right now? All I have managed to dream about this week is being in conflict with others, feeling resentful, broken and unable to cope, not being true to myself and a sense of being trapped and wanting to be free (goddamnit, I am just full of the joys of sodding spring, me!). Oh, and I’m pretty bloody annoyed about my ‘success’ being delayed too!

Anyway, I could go on (count yourself lucky, because I really could) but I’ve belatedly realised that, from experience, the re-telling of dreams is in actual fact very boring…oh, right…sorry. And some night’s dreams are promptly forgotten on waking so those dreams evidently don’t mean anything. So I think the upshot is that dream-interpretation is a fairly inexact science. The majority of what I found on the internet was written by somebody who had learned English from the scraps of paper found in fortune cookies. When the foretelling was coherent there were usually five different interpretations to choose from. More often than not, the dream explanation was so childishly literal that you (or an actual child, for that matter) could have concocted the meaning yourself. And if you believe that dreams are just your brain’s way of trying to make sense of the day, then I have made sense of absolutely nothing. I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking I’ll save my money and buy an actual dictionary instead. At least then I can look up the meaning of words and possibly learn something (I know what you’re thinking, ‘yes, I didn’t like to say but she could do with that dictionary’...). And these weirdly vivid dreams? I am just going to have to put them down to watching too many bizarre movies and TV series’ before bed. It’s either that or the cheese.