There isn’t a known explanation for why we dream, but there are many theories. Maybe it’s our subconscious desires and wishes being voiced through hazy, strangely vivid scenarios. Maybe we’re just processing information from our day. Or, best yet, maybe we’re having a one-on-one psychotherapy appointment with ourselves.
One way or another, there’s no denying that dreams are an incredibly weird, deeply unique experience that are best unpacked in a wonderfully weird Halftime series. Come for the unsettling dreams, stay for the psychoanalysis. Welcome to Halftime Leisure’s Dream Journal.
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Maya’s Dream Journal, Thursday, February 13, 2020
An Author’s Note of Sorts:
Sleep is a fickle and elusive creature that I can rarely catch. If I do fall asleep, I normally have nightmares or peculiarly offbeat dreams. Either way, I wake up quite a few times in the night, which means I mostly remember the feelings from the dreams instead of the dreams themselves. Fortunately, I remember most of this unusual dream.
Dream:
I am in Leavey walking to Vittles. I am not sick, but I need to get medicine. The lights are fluorescent in a hospital way, and the hallway from the Career Center to Vittles is much longer than I remember it being. I am now outside of Vittles, but I do not remember walking through the too-long hallway to get there. Vittles has the same lighting as the hallway, which doesn’t raise any red flags for dream me, because Vittles is gross and fluorescent in real life too.
Alas, I have come for one thing and one thing alone: medicine. I walk to the second aisle from the left and locate the MucinexⓇ. I am on the home stretch now. I walk up to the register. Medicine is not food, and I have no debit money on my GoCard, so I pull out my trusty USAA debit card to purchase the MucinexⓇ.
The student cashier who is generic in an indie way takes my card and swipes it without telling me my total. I am not concerned about the price, which is surprising seeing as I spent $5 on a loaf of bread no less than two days ago. No worries, I think to myself, I’ll just check the bank account after. I’ve got my rainy day fund untouched. Medicine in hand, I traverse the too-long hallway of Leavey once more with my USAA app pulled up. The user friendly interface and comforting blue background of the app almost makes me look past the total in my savings account. I have 75 cents, total, in my bank account. I feel tears on my cheeks, but I don’t feel like I’m crying. I feel the cardboard box of MucinexⓇ in my hand. It is much smaller than I remember it being pre-purchase. The MucinexⓇ from Vittles has bankrupted me.
Interpretation:
Quite honestly, I don’t think this is super far off from reality. Medicine is super expensive, and, after reading up on the Democratic candidates’ policies, I think Medicare was really on my mind that evening. Pair this with the recent barrage of illnesses that have been slowly taking over Georgetown’s student body, and the dream makes a lot of sense.
I have also taken the liberty of looking up the symbolic meaning of my dream in Psychologist World’s dream catalogue. A dream of bankruptcy cautions me to “leave speculations alone” and denotes a “partial collapse in business, and weakening of the brain faculties.” Adding onto this somewhat negative interpretation is Psychologist World’s symbolic meaning behind medicine. To dream of giving medicine to others (which I assume is what is happening in my dream, because I myself am not sick) denotes that I will “work to injure someone who trusted you.” What I’m gathering from my Vittles bankruptcy dream is that I’ve got a toxic couple of weeks ahead of me. Maybe the toxicity will come in the form of a generically indie boy who just happens to work in The Corp. Guess we’ll find out.
