I have been using various things to help me sleep at night, but had been avoiding melatonin because it gives me vivid dreams, and I am having enough of those right now. (Most common theme: I am somewhere and suddenly realize I’ve forgotten to wear a mask, and/or other people are not wearing masks and I can’t get away.) But I am also nervous about relying too much on any one sleep aid, so last night I took melatonin, and I DID have a vivid dream, and you are going to have to take my word for it that the FEELING of the dream was VERY POSITIVE (I am succeeding! I have had a good idea and it is working! Aw puppy!!) even though it will not SOUND that way to you, knowing me as you do.
The dream was that I was one of many people on a team to try to make our current/outgoing president more appealing/relatable/sympathetic, and in this dream he was WELL-KNOWN for loving peanut butter (I am sorry, this is the worst part of when people tell their dreams, when they start describing the counter-reality premises that exist in the dream, and normally I edit those out but this one is crucial), and my idea was to get a peanut-butter-colored dog, have him name it Peanut Butter in a cute naming ceremony, and then take a bunch of pictures of him and his wife enjoying the darling little dog. And I had to do a lot of work to talk him into it, but I was able to, and the dog was adorable, and we were getting such good photos.
I also keep dreaming about babies, which I haven’t done for awhile. One dream was a stress dream, where I was in the hospital and I was going to have a c-section the next day, but I was protesting that my jeans were barely tight, surely I was not far enough along for the baby to be full-term. But most of them are good dreams: I’m carrying a baby or nursing a baby, and there’s nothing stressful about it.
Okay, I have told you one full dream plus two categories of dreams; I owe you reciprocal listening to your dreams, if you want.
I have also had those “I’m not wearing a mask, NO ONE IS WEARING A MASK, what is happening” dreams! Omg stressful.
I’ve had a few of those myself.
Last night I had a dream that I was attending/helping out at Kamala’s wedding. She wore a really pretty pink suit and I talked her down when she was worried that she should be wearing a dress. I told her the suit was great! Her and I were apparently great friends! The wedding was somewhat stressful but we were handling it ;) (much like, I would think that dealing with this country will be stressful but her and Joe could handle it.)
I know the reason I had the dream though—right before I went to be I watched an interview she and her husband gave to People a few weeks ago. And I’ve been thinking about how great it is that she got married later in life. Like she didn’t meet the right person in her 20’s but she met the right one in her 40’s and that’s OK. ;)
Oh I love it! Can we assign you to somehow lure the outgoing president into actually leaving? I will buy the dog or send vats of peanut butter or whatever you need!
I took melatonin while waiting for COVID test results and I had a VERY vivid dream that I got a call telling me I was positiv.e. It was enough to wake me up and stress for the next three hours about how to proceed with isolating from my entire family in our house for two weeks. It wasn’t until my alarm went off that I had a slow-burn type realization that I hadn’t *actually* received my results yet.
I don’t remember my dreams which it turns out is one of the symptoms of being low in vitamin b6. As I have a whole slew of other symptoms (hi fatigue) I started taking large amounts and lo and behold now I dream. I’m not sure I like it because they’re so stressful lately! I skipped the vitamins yesterday because I didn’t want to dream.
I had a dream that we were past masks and I was in a new town, meeting with some important people (because I was now important!) and all of a sudden I realized that my breath was absolutely horrible. Dream me kept trying to kind of shield my mouth and people were backing away it was so bad.
Then I woke up to my seven year old sleeping next to me and breathing directly in my face and apparently she had forgotten to brush her teeth the night before.
This is going to sound weird, but I noticed years ago that I have vivid, more memorable dreams when I sleep with my arms above my head (like, on my pillow above the crown of my head, not vertically above my head covering my face).
Sadly, I remember them when I first wake up, and for a short time after I can tell people about them, but then I totally forget them within a few hours, even if I told someone the whole plot only a couple of hours earlier.
Oh, the mask dreams! So many variations: it won’t stay on!/Where is it? Let me dig in my bag/No one else has one, and there are so many people!
Anecdotally, I am one of several people I know who have vivid, strange dreams after eating fresh, organic vegetables. Like, CSA vegetables. Why??
The other night I had a Schitt’s Creek inspired dream, but with several inaccuracies. I was looking for my boyfriend, and I was so pleased, he was so nice! Where was he? Finally I found him, on a high floor of an office/hospital building. My boyfriend was Patrick! But his name was David! And I am a lady, so when I woke up I felt a little bad for stealing him back to the hetero side of things. But he sure is nice.
Hahahaha I love this dream! Patrick really is super nice!!
I have not had memorable dreams, but I have been waking up unrefreshed and already feeling like I’ve put in 12 hours of work, but that is the pandemic. My Fitbit says I wake up several times through the night.
A few weeks ago I watched The Way I See It, which is a documentary about Pete Souza, who was an official photographer for President Reagan & President Obama. I was afraid that I would sob through the entire documentary because I love & miss President Obama SO MUCH, but I didn’t and THEN I had a lovely dream that night where I was hanging out with Barack & Michelle (obviously chummy enough to be on a first name basis). It was awesome and I wondered if watching the documentary every single night for the rest of my life might trigger similar results (haven’t tried it yet though).
This is so interesting because last night I had crazy and vivid dreams!! Most prominently I was riding on a motorcycle with Joe Biden, and it was so much fun! In another part I was great friends with Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds and was present when they got engaged. And in the third part I had a bunch of people working for me just to organize my house and it was absolutely lovely.
I would give up the first two scenarios in a heartbeat for the third to come true! And I like all the people you mentioned!
For years now (it might have started pre-Trump era, I can’t pinpoint the beginning, but for sure for the past four years) I dream every night that I am being murdered. It’s not as bad as it sounds. I only remember the part where I have accepted that I am dying and am at peace with the fact.
Then on Saturday night my dream began at an earlier stage and I was fighting back. The murderer then grabbed a baby monkey which appeared from nowhere and told me I could not hit him because he was holding the monkey and it would make me look bad if I hurt the monkey. I screamed “I will crush you and your monkey too!” And did. Then spent all morning finding symbolic meaning to my dreams, which I don’t usually do.
I have been having vivid dreams since the pandemic started. They often include people I don’t interact with regularly. I take it as my brain telling me I should reach out to them so I do. I did dream about someone I went to high school with and I haven’t thought about him in years, much less talked to him since high school, so I gave myself a pass on contacting him.
Your dream makes me wonder if you have recently been watching BoJack Horseman. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Peanutbutter]
I too have the “other people aren’t wearing masks and I can’t get away” dream several nights a week. The fear it raises in me is zombie apocalypse level. This week a house in my neighborhood burned to the ground and there was a real (brief) fear of the fire spreading to the surrounding dry brush and trees between my house and theirs. Now I’m having dreams where I smell smoke and then waking up thinking I’ve smelled smoke and then I have to go check outside.
The day before the election my husband had a dream that Biden came to him and told him everything would be okay. Apparently, it made such an impression he still totally believes it to be true.
Isn’t it fascinating how many dreams with political figures we are having? Well, considering the level of emotion and angst in the last week/4 years, perhaps not surprising but it is still so interesting.
Swistle – would this be something you can turn into a poll question on Twitter and your blog(s)? Maybe too complex for a poll? I’d love to see if people are having more dreams or nightmares and which politicians are showing up.
I love that Biden came to Sooboo’s husband to let him know it would all be okay.
I had a very vivid dream last night about an old friend from my post-grad course I drifted away from. I suspect it’s a symptom of the wider ways in which I’m wondering about my life choices and second-guessing myself this year – and feeling my age and the passing years. 2020, man. It’ll get you a questioning everything.
During the week of the election I stopped dreaming or didn’t remember my dreams because my sleep was so broken and terrible. Saturday night after they announced Biden was the winner I got the first full night’s sleep in awhile only to have the I’m not masked/no one is masked/PANIC dream. I commented to my husband that evidently now that I stopped panicking about the election I could get back to stressing about COVID. Give it a break, 2020.
Oh my god. The dream where you’re not wearing a mask and why don’t I have a mask on and how could not have a mask on and wait why doesn’t anyone else have one on either… this is A THING. A BAD THING. Maybe it’s the 2020 version of my standard anxiety dream — the “I can’t graduate because I forgot to go to X class and now have to take a test I’m not prepared for” dream.
Also, there’s nothing in the whole universe that could ever spark in me the tiniest ounce of sympathy or positive feeling for our current president, but a peanut-butter-colored dog named Peanut Butter is indeed a very good idea.
This was a dream from a few years ago that is now my plan if the situation ever actually occurs.
I am meeting the current president, I tell him my name and we shake hands. While shaking hands I exclaim “your hand is so much smaller than I thought it would be!”
In my dream I was escorted out by secret service.
Dream You is my hero
I am jealous of everyone dreaming of famous political figures! If I have dreams with famous people, I almost never remember them.
I don’t remember details, but in the past couple of days, I’ve had more than one of what I consider “action movie plot” dreams, which usually involve many many bad people that I am trying to escape/rescue children from/fool in some way so that I don’t get kidnapped/murdered. They’re the type of dream that is very stressful when you’re in it, but when you wake up, you wish you’d gotten to the end because it could have been so satisfying (as opposed to a true nightmare, where you’re just glad you woke up before the really bad thing happened).
And I wonder how long we’ll all have “I can’t believe I forgot that I’m supposed to be wearing a mask/where is my mask/ why is no one wearing a mask?” anxiety dreams. Like, I did theater for three years in high school 25 years ago, and I still have occasional dreams about being in a play and realizing on opening night that I didn’t learn any of my lines nor go to any rehearsals. Likewise for dreams about having a final in a class and discovering that not only did I not study for the final, I learned none of the material and maybe didn’t ever even go to the class. Maskless dreams feel very similar, and I will think it hilarious and also horrible if I’m still having them 25 years from now.
I missed a minor scholarship by one percentage point in one class in high school. To this day (almost 30 years later) I dream about going back and redoing that class to raise my mark, but then I start missing a bunch of the sessions and end up failing the final so I never get that one point bump I needed…
I wonder about this too. I haven’t been in college in 30 years and I still occasionally have the dream that I forgot to go to any of a particular class (ok it’s usually French) but now I have to take a final exam. I sincerely hope that 30 years from now the mask panic is only a bad dream too.
Last night, I dreamt about returning to work part-time and being really frustrated because they kept giving me things that weren’t really desks to use as desks. All very detailed and realistic – except I left that job 10 years ago and almost all the people in the dream have left the organization, retired or in one case died. And I have absolutely no intention of working there again.
I just had a dream last night that I was at an Elizabeth Warren rally and everybody was wearing masks but I was hit with a sudden realization that the crowd was still waaay too big and I needed to find a way out.
My dreams/brain are apparently having a hard time catching up to the current political reality.
Also, I am SO GLAD that dogs are coming back to the White House. I don’t trust a President who doesn’t have at least one First Pet (barring some sort of, say, legitimate medical exemption).
The night before the election, I had a crazy dream involving my sister. Luckily I texted it to her in the morning, because I usually forget my dreams pretty quickly. Here it is:
We were at a restaurant, and when she went to the bathroom, the restaurant moved to another part of town (like on RR tracks or something, that wasn’t clear or very important). So she called to ask where I ended up and said she’d walk there, but I told her it was too far and too dangerous, so she should definitely take a rickshaw. I felt very strongly about it being the safest option. She hadn’t made it by the time the restaurant was closing, so someone (also not clear or important) invited me to their home near the restaurant to wait for her. They said I could sleep on the chaise lounge on the patio. I went out there and there was a crocodile in a little pond. So I went back inside and said I couldn’t sleep out there because of the crocodile, and they said that there were actually 2 crocodiles and set me up on the couch. I was getting pretty uncomfortable and thinking I should probably leave, but I wasn’t sure where to go because my sister wasn’t there yet and my car was back at the first restaurant. Then I woke up.
I’m not sure how I missed this post! Similarly, I’ve been having mask dreams, not often but the latest was a double whammy – while searching my bag for masks after realising we weren’t wearing them, my kids wandered off and then I was frantic searching for them!
One of my friends said her husband has been having nightmares lately that usually involve someone shouting at him. His job is resolving disputes between students and professors at a university so I can imagine they’re directly tied to the increase in stress he’s seeing.
Anyways, hooray for dogs back in the WH, and rescue dogs at that!