this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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I had a very long and intense dream last night about a month long high school exchange trip to China gone very awry...
descriptions
It was constantly grey and bleak, we didn't go anywhere with nature and had to camp en masse on the school grounds, on large concrete yards under shitty tarps like refugees, fight to use the showers and protect one's own shampoo and soap at all costs. And at least a thousand of the school's own, local students had to sleep in similar configurations but with slightly nicer tents. We had school from 8-5 every weekday, were expected to study and do homework in the evenings, chores all of Saturday, and would only sometimes be allowed out on Sunday. The nearest city looked like it hadn't changed since the 80s and was suppressed under a permanent layer of smog. Come to think of it it's like smartphones didn't even exist in that dream. So maybe it was the communist 80s? Lots of brown, tartan patterns, burgundy... But no matter how miserable we were, the absolute best of us was expected during class, alongside the school's richer students who lived at home and were always very well prepared and neatly turned out.It's now nearly 7pm and I can't shake how subtly unsettled it made me feel for absolutely no reason at all. And the smell of laundry powder just brought it all back. Like I actually went through that? Something in me feels like I really should've done something about the situation but it makes no sense.
Eeeerrrrrkkkk. Not nice. Sending reassurance and hope vibes over the aether to you. I hate post-apocalyse dreams too. Doesn't stop me reading post-apoc sci fi though. Damfino why.
Thank you kindly, accepted with a hug. I find myself morbidly drawn to similar stories or reports myself - sometimes as a way of feeling something very intensely so that life makes more sense again. At some point the brain probably needs to flush out or resolve some of those vicarious experiences....?
Fwiw, I have actually visited China once, on a school trip in the late 90s, and the schools we visited were still relatively impoverished despite being in Beijing (I won't forget how their minds were blown by good quality graphic tees and sparkly pens and butterfly clips). But we had a great time being put up in hotels and travelling around in air conditioned buses. I hardly think about that trip though. Or China for that matter. I wonder if it's some kind of deep internal guilt trip thinking about how the world seems to be inching closer to conflict and instability? Dooooooom...
Urgh. The ‘real’ dreams are the worst. It must have been the night for it.
spoiler
I had a really vivid dream last night about a serial killer and rapist terrorising all of Melbourne. My dream was about the news coverage of it and how he kept evading all the security cameras around Melbourne and all they could capture were shots of his shoes and cap.There was nothing particularly directly threatening to myself in the dream, and the events of dream itself was pretty mundane, but the sense and feeling that I wasn’t safe just living my life was enough to have me waking up in a sweat.
Oh god, it's particularly bad when it hits close to home and you might recognise landmarks around you from the dream. It's that feeling of not being safe that is so discomforting and unsettling, particularly when it's completely illogical but feels so real. It's like your body experienced it on some level and has to process it while asleep?
I don't know if exposure to traumatic personal stories (or experience of such trauma in families) activates some kind of bodily memory, even though we know that threat won't ever be relevant to our lives because of distance and/or time.
I just wonder where it comes from at all? Absolutely nothing that I’ve done/watched/read/whatever recently seems linked. Why did my brain pull that out?
Same with my dream, for the most part. I've been having lots of weird high school dreams lately tbh. Brain's interpretation of how to deal with anxiety juice coursing through the veins?
Your description is vivid, and reading it had a cinematic quality and I felt like I was there.
Thank you (?!). I am blursed with very vivid dreams. Think I'm quite overdue for a nice, fun one like flying over the countryside Mary Poppins-style. Hello brain, I'd like to make a firm request...
I read somewhere once that if you want to dream about something you have to think about it for a while just before you fall asleep. I find my dreams are usually a mixture of what I was thinking about before I went to sleep and some other random stuff.
Sounds like the Xinjian re-education camps.