No matter how stressed I became or how much I screamed, begged or cried, the bystander wouldn’t help me pack two IKEA EXPEDIT shelves and a few IKEA FRAKTA bags
I dream every time I sleep, vividly. Every sense is the same as in real life - touch, taste, seeing, hearing, smell and every emotion felt as strongly. Sometimes my dreams are supernatural but most of the time they are more like an enhanced reality where my senses and responses are more powerful.
True nightmares don’t visit me often but I suffer from recurring anxiety dreams. There are two kinds. One kind is centered on water, usually a natural body of water. Although the water dreams are bad dreams, they can feature moments of fantastical pleasure, like swimming deep in the ocean with a whale, or running across the park with my long-dead brother on a stinking hot afternoon, headed for the better swings in the far corner, where the grass tree forest begins.
The other kind of anxiety dream is centered on rushing to catch a flight, and usually focused on packing. Sometimes I’m packing normal luggage like suitcases and backpacks, and sometimes I’m packing absurd luggage like a tall carry-on bookcase full of books. In every flight dream, someone is standing by the whole time but never helping me now matter how desperate I grow. There are no fantastical moments of pleasure in the flight dreams.
In the flight dream I was having when I woke up, a new element had popped up. I was packing, as per usual. I was packing two 5-cube IKEA EXPEDIT shelves with clothes and things from the fridge and the bathroom of my real apartment, and a few IKEA FRAKTA bags, with the same.
In the dream’s history, I’d traveled with IKEA EXPEDIT shelves before. I pulled them behind me, one with each arm, half dragging them and half carrying them on my back. In the dream, nothing fell out of the open cubes when I did this, which is very much the opposite of what happens in real life with fucking IKEA EXPEDIT cube shelves like, all the time.
As per usual, someone was standing by the whole time and never helping me. It took the form of my husband this time, which I deeply resented of my brain. But - back to that later. No matter how stressed I became or how much I screamed, begged or cried, the bystander wouldn’t help me pack two IKEA EXPEDIT shelves and a few IKEA FRAKTA bags with items from our fridge, bathroom and wardrobe, so that we wouldn’t miss our flight.
In James form, standing tall over me as I collapsed on the floor in a tantrum, the bystander would tell me to calm down every now and then, or ask me, “What the fuck are you doing?” but mostly the bystander ignored me and carried on a conversation with a third person!
A third person had never been a part of a flight dream before. There were often people in the background of flight dreams but there were only two players - me, packing and running to catch a flight, and the bystander. Who the fuck was this?
The third person was there but I couldn’t see their face or make out anything about them. I believed the third person wore suit trousers but that was no indication of gender or anything. Everything else about it was blurred. I could hear James’ side of the conversation and the sound of the third person’s replies, but I couldn’t make out the words the third person said. I felt grossly exasperated that now here there was another person to not only standby and never help me, but to carry on a chummy talk with one another while they ignore and dismiss me.
I woke up at midnight when the real James got into bed. James is always handy with an amateur dream analysis, so I told him everything. As I told it, I felt suddenly like I finally understood the flight dreams. In them, I would pack and load myself down with burdens. No one did this to me but me. Often the bystander would tell me to stop doing it, or ask me why I was doing it, and the bystander would never encourage or assist me in weighing myself down, just the opposite. The carrying of the two IKEA EXPEDIT shelves was too cross-like for comfort. Talk about Cold Comfort Farm.
He agreed that the flight dreams are about things I’m making myself haul around, things I can’t define. Probably, they are things that don’t really need to be defined because they are the usual lot of humankind - guilt, remorse, grief, pain. They are part of life, and don’t need to be cherished or feared, only endured when they are strong. So why the recurring dreams?
We theorized that the bystander was another part of myself in another form. The bystander would always refuse to help me hurt myself, and would try to stop me. The bystander talked and behaved the way I do in real life when I’m at my most annoyed and judgmental.
Were the flight dreams about me groveling about looking for more and newer ways to pain and burden and bury myself like I was raised to down on Cold Comfort Farm, and the other part of me that is separate from my family and their Gothic traditions of generational suffering?
Your own cross and assembly required. Ikea is ultimate refinement of torture.
Brilliant