Worry Dreams

I had the same dream I've had over and over last night. I'm back in college, and I haven't gone to a class, or maybe multiple, all semester. Can I still drop the class? Did I miss the deadline? When are the exams even? Are they today? Did I miss them?

I'm happy when I finally wake up. I'm not back in college. That isn't really happening.

But over and over I re-live something that didn't really happen, but it's in my subconscious like a bruise. Something that needs to be touched over and over.

This is an anxiety dream.

I also have dreams that I'm traveling home and can't seem to get my travel arrangements right. I'm always wandering in complex airports and train stations in slow motion. Everything is vaguely familiar, like I've been here before. And I have, but only in my dreams.

Then I'm back in high school, socially awkward and getting nothing right. Alone at parties wondering what I'm there for. Now that one really happened, but 20+ years ago. Why isn't my brain over it?

I imagine my brain with well worn tracks of worry, carved roads dug and re-dug by anxiety over the years. It's never built a road for COVID-19, so it's going down these better known paths over and over again. It's processing the worry, digging the tracks deeper.

I wake up relieved I'm not in college. Breathing deeply, I exhale and realize I didn't fuck up and not go to class. Inhaling, I remember I have my family all close to me, as close as possible, at home until...Until. I breathe in for 3, out for 3. I try to sleep again.