Thought Bubble: Anxiety Dreams

If you are lost in your dreams, does it follow you are lost in your waking life?

For many years now I have had recurring dreams involving travel, usually on trains and buses. In these dreams I am trying to get somewhere, to be with someone or some people I love.

These should be simple journeys, but my goals are constantly thwarted: the train platform is switched at the last minute; the bus stop vanishes; my luggage goes missing; my legs stop co-operating, and I can no longer walk; the geography of the world keeps changing; unsurmountable obstacles are placed in my way.

I keep missing the people I am trying to meet or see them when they don’t see me. I shout but they do not hear. I run but cannot overtake them. They board a train, but I am unable to find a way to the correct platform.

Why am I having these dreams? I wake up anxious and sweating, my heart beating fast, unable to shake an unfathomable sadness from my soul.

Is it travel anxiety? It is true I do not travel well. I love visiting new places and experiencing different cultures, but the thought of travelling fills me with dread. I dislike waiting in lines, removing my shoes, having my bags checked. Timetables alarm me. I am not a good travelling companion. I sulk and become obstinate. I expect the worst to happen. I insist on arriving for every connection absurdly early. If science invented a way for me to teleport directly from my front room to my destination I would not hesitate.

But I do not think these dreams are simple reflections on my fear of travelling. When I lie in the grey hours of morning with the melancholy tentacles of a dream still wrapped around my waking mind, I dwell upon my life. I remember the faces of people I no longer know; recall crucial turning points in my career; recollect discarded dreams; re-live conversations that did not go as planned. The feeling in my breast is one of sadness and loss: I am lost in my life.

My dreams tell me I am lost and that I am searching. Here, in my subconscious, there is a yearning for completion: to find a part that is missing. Who it is or what it is or where it is to be found I do not know. It is an existential loss, intangible and ungraspable, perhaps never to be located.

Outwardly I am happy; I have been hugely fortunate in my life, and yet these anxiety dreams continue. So, even if I have had a good day, I will find myself travelling by night on a train that is pulling in the wrong direction, or on a bus that has lost its driver, and I will feel anxious and frustrated as the elusive thing I am trying to reach slips further from my grasp, and I will know that I am lost and alone on the journey.