Reoccurring Stress

I am supposed to have the paper turned in sometime in the next five hours. The professor had given the class several weeks to complete this project, but I haven’t managed to see the movie yet. My friend and I are supposed to see it together, and he met me to go see it, but we ate lunch together first and then somehow got separated, only I ended up with his cell phone and mine is who knows where. I don’t know how to operate the thing and try to call several different people only to have confused conversations with all of them along the lines of “why would I know where he is? You’re the one calling me from his phone.” I try visiting his dorm, but his roommate is rude to me because he’s had to spend the day cleaning up my friend’s side of the room. It’s getting close to the time the movie starts, and since it lasts several hours, I’ll only have a little while to bang out the paper, which has to be something like a ridiculously unnecessary twelve to fifteen pages. I’m starting to freak out.

And then I wake up.


There’s a customer in the drive thru arguing about his bill, complaining that the whole process is taking too long, and trying to talk me into giving him free sides of ranch. It’s raining, I’m waiting for the guys in the kitchen to get me another crisp meat burrito, and the manager is trying to get me to help with the rush up front while ignoring my pleas for help with the difficult guy. The bossy girl who only has a week of seniority above me is guilting me; that if I’m just standing around I could help make some shakes for the people up front. And the drive thru indicator is beeping loudly to let me know that there’s someone else out at the speaker ready to order. Beeping, beeping in my soul.


And then I wake up.


I step out the door of my new apartment and lock the door, looking around me. The landing my door opens out onto is four steps down from the door of my nearest neighbor, and I can either go straight down a flight of stairs that leads to the basement or up six steps the other direction down a long hallway that opens over the ground floor front hallway. Since I haven’t lived there long, I’m still getting used to the maze of an old house. I pick a direction and head that way, passing lots of doors that might be doors or just walls pretending to be doors. I get to the exit, but for some reason I can never remember which of the two doors in front of me will let me out of the building and which will let me into that crazy lady’s apartment. I grab a doorknob and open it a sliver... crazy lady. Why do I do that every time? I hope she didn’t see me this time. I grab the other doorknob and gain the victory of finally being outdoors.


And then I wake up.


I wouldn’t mind reoccurring dreams if they were about good times and high fives. But I’m not a fan of the “stressed student on an impossible deadline” or the “harrassed fast food employee” or the “lost in an old house that has been converted into apartments/accidentally going into other people’s apartments” dreams.


I’ve had to live these moments. I don’t want to relive them in my dreams. Don’t I have enough stress in my waking hours that I should at least dream of quiet things? Maybe I’m dreaming of them because while those things were actually happening to me, I was wishing that I was asleep in bed. I’ll just try to have more good times in the future with plenty of high fives.


And then maybe I’ll dream about that instead.