#8: BYOV

DREAM JOURNAL

Happy Friday, freaks!

Thank you for all the well-wishes. For those of you who didn’t send them explicitly, I assume you were mentally sending me ~healthy vibes~ and that I was in your thoughts, prayers, anxieties, worry spirals, etc. I assume you spend most of your time thinking of me. I felt the love, and it healed me! You did that! I am well and feeling good. I love how euphoric neutral feels after you’ve been down bad.

As some of you may know, I am a dreamer. Literally and figuratively. I’ve got big waking dreams to live a beautiful, fulfilling, hilarious life, but I also have intense dream-dreams nearly every night. They are less often beautiful, fulfilling, and hilarious. And more often unsettling, confusing, and…bad?

When I was sick, I had the pleasure of experiencing extremely vivid fever dreams. This led to me thrashing in bed, accidentally clocking Adam in the face with my elbow (sorry babe), and not being able to shake the eerie through-line anchoring each of the dreams.

According to some random wellness blogs, dream journaling can reduce stress (fat chance), increase creativity (I’ll try anything), and help you solve problems (we love an Inception-style plan). So I thought we could dig into these dreams together and maybe, I don’t know, solve some of the world’s most pressing problems plaguing women everywhere? No pressure.

BYOV: Bring Your Own Vagina

In the first dream, I was pregnant and sitting in the kitchen of my parents’ house.

Before you even go there, no I’m not pregnant in real life. I had the delight of being horribly sick while bleeding profusely out of my hoohaa, so no clumps of cells in this uterus. I mean, there are probably clumps of other cells in my uterus? Do our cells normally clump? You get what I’m saying. I’m not with fetus.

As I’m sitting in the sun-splattered kitchen, my water breaks. Everyone springs into action. My mom grabs keys. The girls are saying something, but it sounds like they’re in the deep end of a swimming pool trying to shout up at me from underwater. My vision is tunneled looking for the hospital bag. I need the hospital bag. Where is the hospital bag? We forgot the hospital bag.

I run back into my old bedroom and start ripping open drawers, shoving high school pajama pants into a well-worn sleepover bag. But I don’t have my replacement vagina.

“Mom! I don’t have my vagina!”

She says something about having to make do with what we have at the house, but her voice is also muddled. Like she’s swimming in my water that broke.

“Here,” she gurgles, shoving something into my hands.

It’s a raw chicken cutlet. I’m not prepared for the slime and it slips out of my hands and onto the floor. Except the floors look like the ones in my DC apartment, not in my old room. I bend over and pick up the cutlet. It’s covered in dust and hair and floor bits (absolutely a subconscious reminder that the floors in my apartment are disgusting because I have not mopped in months).

I don’t even bother brushing off the cutlet, soon to be MY NEW VAGINA!??!? I toss it in the bag, and as I turn for the door, I wake up.

What the actual heck.

Apparently being pregnant in a dream is symbolic of another facet of your life being in the growth and development stage. My comedy writing career is absolutely in its first trimester, but I’m thinking maaaaybe my brain was like Ahh! We have to take care of our own reproductive healthcare now and we are absolutely not prepared for that! Ahh! Also add chicken to the grocery list! Ahh!

Snakes For Legs

In the second dream, I’m walking with my dad through a dense, dark forest. We’re straggling behind a larger group, and I’m carrying Vanessa on my hip.

For those of you who don’t know, Vanessa is my youngest sister. She is currently 15, but in the dream, she was a toddler. Vanessa being a baby is a common occurrence in my dreams. Anyone wanna psychoanalyze that? I’m open to theories.

We walk for a while before coming upon a snake. The snake doesn’t appear out of nowhere or wriggle across the path. It’s just sitting, outstretched, red and yellow, across the trail. There’s nothing menacing about this snake. We’re on its home turf and don’t want to disturb it. I’m not afraid as I step into the grass on the edge of the path, skirting around the snake.

As soon as my foot hits the grass, the snake whips around to face me, teeth bared. I start backing down a hill. The gradient steepens and I’m practically running backwards, my legs barely catching me with each step back. The incline flattens, and I stand still in the ravine, Ness still on my hip.

My vision sharpens and I become aware that what I thought was grass is entirely snakes. They are wriggling all around us now, twisting up my legs but stopping there. Never reaching above my waist. Vanessa is safe on my hip.

One snake, striped red and black, makes eye contact with me, pauses, then sinks its teeth into the meat of my calf. It doesn’t hurt, and I’m confused for half a moment before I wake up.

The first Google result says dreaming of a snake bite can symbolize a wake-up call. The Indianapolis Zoo teaches a rhyme about snake safety: Red touch black, friend of Jack. Red touch yellow, kill a fellow. Is any snake a friend of Jill? What does it mean to be bitten by the snake that won’t kill you? But still not want to be bitten at all? Is the wake-up call the fact that we can’t protect ourselves even as we try to protect our sisters and daughters?

I would like the record to show that the same night I had this dream, Vanessa woke my mom up sleep talking and calling out for me. SpooOooOoOOoooky!

Strict Breadstick Diet

In the final dream, I am again sitting at the kitchen table of my childhood home. (Can you tell I’m homesick?) This time, I am preparing dinner for my daughter Elsie. (Great name. Bookmaking it. Thanks, subconscious.) She is maybe 3 years old, sitting in my unofficial assigned seat. Which is totally unrealistic, obviously I would be the one sitting there. She can choose literally any other chair. Moms still need things for themselves!

In the way you can know something only in a dream, I know that my daughter only eats breadsticks. She cannot possibly eat anything else. And so I am baking dozens of breadsticks, far more than any single 3-year-old could ever finish, and piling them on her plate.

I do not feel guilty about this diet choice for my daughter. In fact, I join her in the breadstick-only dinner. It is simply a fact of this life, that we only eat breadsticks, and we are happy that way.

Surprisingly, there are actually search results for “what does it mean to only eat breadsticks in a dream.” Because breadsticks are often served for free at the beginning of a meal, they can apparently symbolize new beginnings. Perhaps my subconscious longing for a fresh start for my future daughter? Bread can also symbolize our most basic needs. Which again are hahaha under attack hahaha.

Do the anxieties of the world seep into your dreams? Was anyone else dreaming abstractly about the leaked draft? Am I interpreting this entirely wrong? Maybe on top of my actual fever, I had subconscious baby fever? (But I mean…in this climate with this economy?)

I would love to hear what you’re dreaming about. We can dissect them together. Reply to this email or leave a comment if you want my unprofessional opinion on your dreams.

If you enjoyed this edition or know someone who likes to get dreamy, please share!

In the words of Shark Boy, “Dream a dream, you little bleep.”

Dreamily,

Ariana