Anxiety dreams are draining! I imagine that during this strange and uncertain time, we’re all having them. Our minds will be working in over drive, trying to process the reality of the situation and how it effects life moving forward.
I woke up this morning feeling disturbed, confused and full of sadness. I had a ‘What if?!’ Dream. What if I’d made different choices from secondary school onwards. I had created an alternate timeline! The disturbing part was that I had lived most of my life in this timeline, as me now, a musician, during a pandemic, about to have a kid and full of uncertainty about the future. I was away on tour somewhere. I was hating everything. Hating playing music, hating being away…….hating everything about my work environment and the life I had. The flight home transported me into an alternate reality. I was dropped off in a different home. It was so unfamiliar and disturbing. The sights, smells and atmosphere were not any that I recognised. As I moved from room to room I felt more and more aware that I wasn’t where I was meant to be. I saw pictures of people that I didn’t recognise, rooms that smelled of cigarettes and a ghostly atmosphere as if I was a Watcher, observing from an ethereal plain. It was haunting! I ran out of the house, into the street. I was in a delirious state of panic. That’s when it hit me. I wasn’t home. I wasn’t where I was meant to be. I ran into a shop and asked the people where I was, they replied, ‘England’, to which I screamed……‘England!’. I ran out of the shop and took my phone out to call Kevin, my screen saver was of a freckly, ginger kid…….this was my son…….the photos in the house, they were my wife and 3 kids!!!!! Where the FUCK was I?!?!? I started to think about how big the house was. If I had a big house in England, with a wife and 3 kids then I wasn’t playing Bagpipes for a living. Not only was I realising this shocking new reality but I was also heart broken for the one that I’d left behind. I ran round the streets looking for a pub to settle my nerves and gather my mind from melting down the back of my neck. I entered through a small door way with clouded glass……..I awoke. It was like I had stepped back into my own head.
Now none of this is that shocking. It’s not a horror filled dream. I wasn’t battling unimaginable monsters, my teeth weren’t falling out of my head, I wasn’t in a haunted house. These are all dreams triggered by general anxiety, we all get them. The dreams that cut me the deepest are the ones that involve real people, people that you know and love, past and present. These are the ones that leave me feeling drained and full of great sadness. They can be a stark reminder that you should really appreciate what you have or that you should find a way of making peace with the loss of loved ones. I have a lot of hang ups attached to people that I’ve lost. Regrets that I didn’t spend enough time with them, didn’t see them before they passed or didn’t tell them the things I needed to tell them. These are the ghosts of our past, the lingering, unresolved emotions. These are the things that haunt us.
So, some of us may be experiencing heightened levels of anxiety, emotions and stress, causing our brains to go into panic mode. We should perhaps just slow down, take a minute to breath deeply and appreciate what we have. The life we have, our Health and the loved ones that we’re trapped in our houses with!! We can spend our lives letting the question, ‘What if?!’, torture us, or, we can open our arms and embrace what the universe has gifted us!
Peace oot!! X
Disclaimer – this is not an anti – English dream, or an anti – having a wife and 3 kids dream, or an anti – anything dream. Just my brain reminding me to appreciate what I have by putting me in a situation that is the complete opposite of where I am. Although you can tell what may have been seeping into my head that helped the design of this dream.
Reference material –
The daily coronavirus update
The drawing of 3 by Stephen King
Netflix
My insecurities
❤️🙏🏻
Ali Hutton 