Why I Wake Up Still Exhausted: The Dream Life of a Crazy Person

To all those friends, family members, community mates, and random strangers who have listened to the rambling accounts of the crazy dreams I had the night before... thank you. Here´s a list of the condensed versions of the best of my dreams from the last year and a half (Yes, I journal about my dreams. Sometimes I worry that I´m unconsciously inhaling drugs before I sleep; some are pretty strange). 

The Hunger Games Dream

I’m Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games and I have two boys competing for my affection. “Gale” gives me two boxes of Girl Scout Thin Mints which I think are a gift, but then he demands I pay him for the cookies. Meanwhile, “Peeta” is trying to kiss me, but he’s glued lentils all over his face and it looks like he has barnacles growing from his skin. Then I’m at a 50’s Themed Formal and my eighth grade social studies teacher is running the show. I refuse to dance because I’m too busy planning a revolution on my “iPad” (which is actually the base of a trophy). The ceiling opens up and I see the stars… which is the signal I’m waiting for to know I’m the Mockingjay.

The Fountain Dream

I’m a famous singer and after my concert I head back to the sorority/fraternity house I live in at the university. All the members sleep in one giant room. Two of the frat guys come home from a party and one of them is dripping wet from head to toe. His eyes are glazed over and he has a bemused smile on his face. When I ask what happened, the dry friend begins to explain that they went into the fountain on campus. We turn to the wet guy for affirmation but he just says, “The freshmen in this frat….” then shakes his head gently and whispers, “… dreamers.”

The Rockstar Dream

I’m on a pontoon boat and when I stand up I lose my balance. I’m about to fall in the lake but Bon Jovi nonchalantly reaches out his hand and catches my arm. I stammer my thanks and he suavely replies, “No problem. You did give me that stick of gum earlier.”

The Runaway Bride Dream

I leave my groom at the altar on our wedding day and run to a park where I’m set to meet someone else. The groom I’ve just left at the altar happens to be in the same park, kissing the women he was going to leave me for! We laugh about it and decide there are no hard feelings but, secretly, I’m angry that he was going to leave me.

The ACL Dream

I tear my ACL again and have to get surgery here in Tacna. I don’t get any painkillers and my crutches are made out of wire coat hangers. I don’t have any bandages on and my students keep touching my oozing scabs.

Another Hunger Games Dream (Yep, I was rereading the series)

There’s a Hunger Games that takes place in our neighborhood and a huge tidal wave (that travels 60 kilometers from the beach) wipes out all the video equipment and therefore ends the games without killing everyone off. We decide to celebrate the end of the chaos with a community-wide dance where each of the survivors is honored with the chance to ballroom dance with a former Jesuit Volunteer named Greg.

The Grass is Always Greener Dream

I’m back home in the United States after spending two years in Peru and I’m sitting on the floor of my bedroom. Even though I’m admiring the wall-to-wall carpeting of my room I’m still sobbing hysterically because I miss my life in Peru so much.

The Class Warfare Dream

I live in a huge hotel where the population of the people inside the hotel represents society as a whole. Rich businesspeople live in one sector, people who cook and clean live in another sector, and artistic, creative people live in a third sector. The tension between these classes of people is exacerbated by their self-segregation on the moving sidewalks inside the hotel that carry the patrons from one place to another.

The artistic people are tired that their creative works (literature, poetry, sculpture, paintings, fashion design, architecture, etc.) are considered less important by the businesspeople who value productivity, efficiency, and profit above all else. One of my friends from high school, Avery, is a fashion designer who decides to ignite a revolution and liberate the oppressed classes. She’s on a moving sidewalk one day and takes out a gun to give the signal to the artists around her that the war is about to begin.

In this moment I am transported into a time warp and I watch the war take place in high-speed around me – I see the battles, destruction, and death. Then I am transported back to the moment when Avery takes out the gun and with my vision of the future I can decide whether I want to prevent the war from beginning or use my knowledge to influence and direct the war in the future.

I decide to hide in the industrial kitchens and avoid being killed in the total anarchy of the first days of battle. I’m biding my time until I can emerge during a lull in the violence and lead the artists to victory in the most peaceful manner possible. While in the kitchens trying to find a good hiding place I realize….

The Royal Sloth Dream

… that I’m now at a nature preserve for sloth-rabbit hybrids but the animals are mistreated. I want to smuggle the animals out of their cages but I know that I will be searched on my way out of the cages. Prince Harry gives me a pair of large, fluffy, plaid slippers and tells me to hide an animal in the toe of each one and then put my feet in (because the guards will never be suspicious of my giant, fluffy slippers). I get the animals situated and am about to make my way out of the cages when I wake up.

The Racially Insensitive Dream

My community mate Allie is not home yet one night and I tell Brittany I’m worried. She says, “Don’t worry, Allie’s probably just hanging out with Naveen.” I ask her who Naveen is and she takes me out to our patio and points to three doors on the side of the patio (which absolutely don’t exist in real life) and says, “Naveen is one of the new volunteers, remember?” It turns out that Naveen and two other volunteers are living in our house but no one can remember where they came from or when they got to Tacna or where they work. Furthermore, we can’t actually remember any of their names and can only agree upon the fact that “there’s an Indian guy or something” and “he has an Indian name or something.” At which point we perpetuate horrible stereotypes and throw out incredible racist-sounding names while trying to figure out what our new community mate’s name is.

The Playboy Centerfold Dream

My former community mate, Colleen (who is perfectly modest, polite, tasteful, and demure in real life), shows me a calendar her mom made for her with photos of Colleen from a photo shoot in the US. Colleen is traipsing through a shadowy glen at dusk with her back to the camera; she’s wearing nothing but fuchsia soccer shorts and her blonde hair glows in the setting sun as she glances back over her shoulder. We’re all impressed by the beauty of her modeling photos but a little taken aback when she insists that Allie and I strip down in the middle of Brittany’s birthday party to take more nude photos for a new calendar. I go to my room to strip and when I open the door again, instead of seeing our kitchen, I see a moss-covered, foggy forest.

The Power Tool Dream

I win a race in our neighborhood in which I had to carry Jesus’ cross. The prize for winning the race is that I get to construct the cross that will be carried for the final station in the Stations of the Cross for Holy Week. I’m coaching two small, neighbor girls in the use of power tools so they can help me build the cross. The men of the neighborhood keep trying to take over but I yell at them in Spanish that I earned this honor and they can’t take it away from me. (Note: this was one of my first dreams where I spoke fluent Spanish!)

The Indie Band Dream

I’m holding my cousin Kristin’s daughter Kate. She’s actually seven or eight years old in real life but in my dream she’s just a little baby. Kristin and some other family members are telling me about how Kate’s band is starting to make it big and is really successful. The name of the band is “I’d Follow Nana to Middleburg.” True fact: we really do call my maternal grandmother “Nana.”

The Favorite TV Show Dream

I get home from work one day to find Brittany cutting up NCIS Valentine’s Day Cards that her mom sent her from the United States. She´s gluing the photos to a poster to take to school.

The Double Dream

I take a bus back from Lima to Tacna but when I get to Tacna I discover that I’m actually in the United States. My parents take me to a new church but I don’t like it because it’s not painted turquoise. So I take matters into my own hands and take a bucket of turquoise paint to church and paint it myself. There are no pews inside, just hundreds of cushy rocking chairs. There are large, ornately-written Bible verses on the walls but it’s all in archaic Spanish and I’m struggling to translate it for my parents.

Then my brother and I are arguing over what to name out new schnauzer-poodle puppy and I’m advocating for the name Franco.

Then I “wake up” from my dream because there’s blaring rock opera music coming from next door but when I go into the kitchen it’s just Allie and Colleen listening to a rock opera version of “The Wizard of Oz” in Spanish and trying to translate the lyrics from Spanish to English. When I try to explain to them that the show is originally in English and that they can look up the original lyrics, they get really confused and continue to listen to discuss translations.

Then I woke up for real and was really, really confused.

The Copycat Dream

Once, my mom had a dream about an art exhibit and she described it to me with such vivid detail that I dreamt about seeing the exhibit! The façade of a modern art museum was covered with metallic plates and small, clear, plastic domes that emerged from between the metal plates. On the surface of each dome was a hologram of famous inventor, philosopher, composer, or politician. As the holograms moved around and looked at the world around them, their facial expressions reflected what this person would think of modern society.

The Kelly is Overly Competitive Dream

I’m on the TV show Fear Factor and each contestant has to paddle across a lake of blood while the boat slowly fills with blood and while blood drips down on us from above. We are told that the blood is a mix of shark blood and mobster blood but the host admits that he thinks that it’s fake blood. It takes me 10.5 seconds to cross the lake which puts me in second place; I start screaming and cursing that the game is rigged because I’m so upset that I’m in second place and not winning.

The Famous Writer Dream

My cousin, Katie, and I are discussing Haruki Murakami and she tells me that he was a psychic who predicted terrorist attacks and natural disasters. She shows me a video of herself with the author and about ten college friends. They’re posing on a hillside for a photo when Murakami predicts that a disaster is about to occur, so they move down to the bottom of the hill and ten seconds later a bomb explodes exactly where they had been.

The Garlic Bread Dream

I wait in line for ten hours to enter a haunted house and am disappointed that the haunted house is not scary at all. In the final room of the house, the attendees are forced to sit down and listen to a representative from a food company give us a spiel about the special breadsticks his company has produced that are made especially for children with Down Syndrome. He offers us a deal on our first purchase but I exit the haunted house in disgust.

The Priorities Dream

Instead of sending me a package, my mom used packing tape to tape together a box of cake mix and a tub of frosting. Then she wrote my Peruvian address on the side and stuck on some stamps. The cake mix and frosting made it all the way to me without being destroyed or eaten!

The Animal Farm Dream

Our house is actually a charming, crumbling farmhouse in the rolling valleys of the French countryside. One day as I leave to go on a hike I realize that I’ve forgotten my camera. As I’m already a few-hundred yards from the house I decide to not go back and get it and assure myself that I’m not going to see anything worth taking a picture of anyway. But as I walk, I see the animals doing crazier and crazier things. With each sighting, I decide that walking home is not worth it and that by the time I’d get back the animals would have left. But the farther I get from home and the longer of a walk I’d have to go get my camera, the crazier the antics of the animals become. First I see chickens sleeping in a comical manner on fence posts, then I see an absurd cat orgy, then I see a chicken sleeping on top of a dog that’s sleeping on top of a goat which is on top of a horse which is atop a cow. But, still, I refuse to go home and get my camera.

The Old Woman Dream

I’m trying to break into my university’s dining hall in order to eat ice cream but once I break in, I run into my friend, Brian, and instead of eating ice cream we decide to make a grill out of a cardboard box and grill some hot dogs. As we play with matches and paper, I hear my own voice echoing throughout the large, empty dining hall. I’m an old woman recording my autobiography by watching videos from my life and reflecting on the kind of person I was at that point of my life.

The New JV Dream

The new JVs are Ryan Gosling and Jodie Foster. I ask Jodie if she won an Oscar for the movie Citizen Kane, but I can’t remember the title of the movie so I mistakenly call it “Rosebud.” I’m proud of my pop culture knowledge but Ryan and Jodie make fun of me.

The Tough Love Dream

It’s my first day of college and I have back-to-back classes. After my first class ends, I go to ask the professor if she knows the room number of my other class (because as of that morning the room number had still not been posted). She takes my back to her office, where every item (desk, bookshelves, chair, sofa, and floor) is covered in thick layers of decoratively-dripped candle wax. She explains that she can’t tell me where my class is or I’ll never learn to be more responsible. I start to search the building for the right room but get swept into a passing tour group and then escape into the personal museum of an eccentric professor who is an avid lepidopterist (he studies butterflies). 

The Creepy Wedding Dream

I’m visiting a park with a Columbian volunteer, Lili, and she’s trying on wedding dresses from a vendor’s cart in the middle of the park. We’re standing near a little chapel that is covered in floor-to-ceiling, really reflective windows. Lili is using the windows as a mirror to see herself in the dress and she lifts up her arms to get a good look at it. From my angle, I can see her reflection in the window and see into the church at the same time. Her reflection, with arms raised parallel to the ground, is exactly aligned with the statue of Jesus on the Cross and it looks like she is on the cross.

Then a fellow JV, Jamie, some other strangers, and I are apprehended by the police in the park for trespassing. They have to hold us in the park overnight but Jamie begins crying because tomorrow is college graduation and we won’t be ready. The cops say that they can’t let us go but that they can help us get ready and they pull out a whole manicure kit and begin to do the girls’ nails. 

The Peanut Farmer Dream

I’m watching a scene of a movie where an aged, Mexican groundskeeper recounts his journey to the United States and how much the university where he works has changed in the last sixty years. Then he begins talking about his life and the university when he first came to the United States. His face stays in the center of the screen but rapidly becomes younger, a kind of Benjamin Button reverse-aging thing. The old man’s voice is still narrating, but I’m watching a young, colored version of him walking around the black and white campus (as if I’m watching as old black and white movie and he, in color, has been put inside it). He tells me the story of the time President Jimmy Carter visited his hometown in Mexico (at which point I see black and white “video” footage of President Carter shaking hands with the mayor of this Mexican town). Another video then begins which the old man narrates. We see President Carter riding a gondola up the side of a mountain to a famous look-out point when the cable “accidentally” (so the old man emphasizes) breaks and the president falls to his death inside a churning cement mixer.

The Daddy-Daughter Duo Dream

My dad and I are in Bed, Bath, and Beyond trying to find Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook. Then we decide to race around the store balancing things on our heads. I have a CVS bag full of my asthma inhalers on top of my head and my dad is balancing a ceramic plate that holds three hamburgers. The management stops us from running and the plate falls from my dad’s head but it lands, patty-side up and doesn’t break. We high five, but the management kicks us out of Bed, Bath, and Beyond forever.

 The Vengeful Justice Dream

The newly-appointed Supreme Court Justice (who is still waiting on the Congressional confirmation) is found dead, violently strangled, in her apartment. There is grainy video footage of a woman dressed in all white exiting from the Justice’s apartment spattered in blood. Within hours, the killer is apprehended – it’s former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. She’s interviewed on TV about the crime and before she answers any questions she seductively removes her white gloves and then calmly explains that she just doesn’t like the new appointment and doesn’t agree with the woman’s politics.

The Jam Equation Dream

I’m taking a tour at Centro Cristo Rey (where my community mate Thomas works here in Tacna) and at the end of the tour, Father Emilio, the director, announces that we’ll be sharing a gourmet meal together. I realize that there are many wealthy Americans in my tour group whom Emilio sees as potential donors. He tells me that Roger (a Frisbee friend), Sean (a study abroad friend), and I can pick out one jar of jam to serve with dinner. There are three possible selections and Roger and I immediately begin a thorough and lively debate about which jam to select. Sean gets fed up after a minute and chooses strawberry jam and opens the jar, assuring us that you can’t go wrong with strawberry jam. Roger and I are horrified and angry because were leaning towards a “jungle fruits” jam that had a detailed description on the jar label of exactly how the jam should be consumed, complete with quadratic equations, to maximize the consumer’s enjoyment and the longevity of the jar (including exact mathematical instructions for the volume of jam needed per volume of each jam accompanier).