Guess I’m dream journaling now
Just had one of those dreams that makes you spend the whole day getting weird flashbacks of it, since when you first wake up you usually don’t remember much. In it, I was with my friends in a place that was both a house and a university??? I met a guy that is quite far from my type, but he was really sweet and liked me. I lived a whole romantic story in that quick nap, and that usually is enough to make that longing feeling haunt you for some days whenever you remember the dream.
The strange part about this one, though, was that I was really comfortable. Normally in my dreams I tend to behave just like I do in reality, really awkward. I opened up easily to this guy without any anxiety or insecurities, and my body felt really light. That is nothing new for dreams, but I had never noticed before how I was physically feeling in one. In this dream I seemed really aware of not having any pain, which I usually have constantly, at least a little, because of a variety of minor health issues. I wasn’t tense, I walked not with forced confidence but really relaxed. I can’t remember ever feeling like this. I don’t know if I’m supposed to feel sad because it’s so far from reality, or relieved because at least in my head I can be free from my body.
It sparked this feeling that was asleep in me. People usually associate this with self-esteem or body image, but for me it goes much deeper. I feel very disconnected from my body sometimes. The closest I got to hearing someone else describe the same feeling was transgender people talking about dysphoria, but I don’t have any relevant identity issues and don’t find any part of my body particularly unpleasant. I just feel like I don’t belong inside it, like wearing a really tight and restrictive shirt where you can’t move properly. I don’t know how to act inside myself, therefore I don’t really know how to live.
The other thing I observed in this weird-ass dream was that, for the first time while dreaming, I looked at myself in a mirror. Along with the other realization, it made me think about how much this dream was about myself, despite the other very present person by my side, taking a role I never had in my life because of my lack of romantic experiences. A role that I always thought could overshadow someone’s sense of self a little, but on the contrary, it seemed to make me more aware of myself. Weirdly, I was not how I am today, I was me from 3 years ago. Nothing changed much really, just the haircut. Now looking at pictures from that time, I think it really suited me. I was really happy with how I looked, maybe I should go back to that sometime.