July 16: Just a Dream

In honor of Inception opening today, I thought I would tell a story about an incident involving a dream that took place in December of my junior year of college.

It was the final week of the semester and if the students weren't studying or taking their last finals, they were preparing to take a month off before the Spring semester would begin. Because I was a Resident Advisor, I had to stay on campus until the end of the week even if all of my finals were over.

I can't remember what day of the week it was, but I must have been up late the night before because I was taking a nap in my dorm room in the middle of the afternoon. I was in one of those sleep cycles where I wasn't really dreaming about anything worth remembering, but I was in a state of deep relaxation. My breathing had slowed to a crawl and I was very comfortable when someone knocked on my door.

I remember calling out for them to come in. I remember her head sticking into the room. I remember not getting up or even turning to face the door (which, by the way, is very unlike me). She told me she was heading home for the Winter Break and she just wanted to say goodbye. I remember her coming in and leaning over my bed and giving me a hug before leaving. That's all I remember because I immediately fell back to sleep.

Aside from my extremely rude actions and her forwardness, this story doesn't seem very far from ordinary, does it? Well when I woke up from my slumber, the whole interaction was such a blur that I questioned its very existence. Did I dream of her coming in and saying goodbye or did that really happen?

I wrote that not getting up was unlike me and that's very true. When someone calls me and wakes me up, I do my best impression of an alert human being when answering. I always have and I always will. Because I mask my true state so poorly, I'm always asked if they had awaken me to which I try to convince them that they hadn't. I can't imagine me just lying there and not making any effort at all to be more cordial to this poor resident.

The weeks following that day were filled with confusion. I never mentioned it to the student because of embarrassment of not knowing if it actually happened or not. Everything about it felt very real. I just have no idea if it was.