The Dream – You Probably Have It Too

There is something strange that happens to me all too often.

I am in a very public, unfamiliar place, and suddenly I really gotta go. I search and search and finally locate a restroom, only to discover that everything that could possibly go wrong in a bathroom has gone horribly wrong.

Not only are the toilets missing seats, covered in urine (or worse), clogged with toilet paper (or worse), and just downright filthy and disgusting in every imaginable way, but there are also no doors on the stalls (or no stalls at all) and there are hordes of people milling about. So I end up precariously teetering above the tainted porcelain while trying to shield my goods from all the potential onlookers.

Thank God this only happens in my mind, in the form of a bizarre recurring dream.  (And, well, perhaps also at the occasional small town truck stop…)

Apparently, this is actually a super common dream for people to have. There are even forums on the Internet dedicated to the discussion of the awful bathroom dream, as I discovered in my googling attempt to unlock the puzzle of my psyche. Turns out bathroom dreams signify that you’re holding onto burdens or negative emotions and need a release, and the inability to get privacy in the bathroom indicates that you are afraid of being criticized for those emotions.

Fascinating.

My husband doesn’t have the bathroom dream. He has a recurring dream in which all of his teeth are falling out. Oddly enough, this is another popular recurring dream that supposedly signifies a fear of failure or lack of control.

I know – I sound so wise. But I’m no dream interpreter, people. I’m just telling you what the Internet told me.

Personally, the dreams I find most fascinating are not the recurring ones, but the ones that stick with you forever, even though you only had them once. Like the time I dreamed we had a baby girl, and her name was Rupus Milton. Yes, Rupus Milton. And I was so angry because I just knew that Clint had named her.

It must have been a prophecy. Years later, when I was pregnant with our daughter, he tried to convince me that her middle name should be Menodora. Thank you, Psyche, for the foreknowledge that my husband couldn’t be trusted with baby naming.

And thank you for letting me know that I need to release my emotions. I haven’t had the bathroom dream in quite some time, so perhaps I’m getting better at not keeping my feelings bottled up. I’m worried, however, that I may be getting a little too open with my emotions. Last night I had the famous “naked” dream (a version, anyway – I was just topless), and it didn’t really phase me. In fact I never seem to be bothered by missing clothes in my dreams.

Now what does that say about me?

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Today's post was inspired by the 'Dreams' prompt at Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop.