dream sequence

I usually have pretty vivid dreams, but when I wake up, I can only really remember bits and pieces of it, and rarely can I articulate the plot to myself, much less anyone else. And on occasion, I've been known to get so involved in the dream, that I start to act out pieces of it, usually sitting up in bed and shouting out some incoherent sentence.

Last night was a particularly involved dream and I remembered it completely as I woke up. Rick had asked me how I slept because in the middle of the night, I sat up straight in bed and said something to him that didn't make any sense.

In my dream, Rick and I went back to where I went to college. Going back there, it had been ten years since I graduated from school -- which made me realize this dream was set in today's time frame. We had a truck with us and were going back to collect my belongings that I had left there, stored in an old upstairs apartment.

It seemed that other people were there too, coming back to collect their belongings. There was a sense of urgency to packing up everything and hauling it out to the truck. A slow burning fire was consuming the building, but it wasn't enough of a crisis for us to escape without moving things out. In fact, it seemed that we'd be crunched for time, but we'd be able to move the things out before the fire took over.

In my dream I couldn't explain to myself why I'd left my stuff behind and that I was now coming back for everything. Rummaging through things, it was partly nostalgic (Oh, I remember this or that...) but also annoying (I already have one of these at home. Where am I going to put this?)

It was a whole apartment of things, essentially everything I needed to live and be comfortable as a single, poor college student. A twin bed frame and mattress, old clothes, shoes, boxes of random stuff like a camping tent. Everything was a reminder of Michael (my ex-boyfriend who I dated from 1999-2002). Which was really weird since I had long left college before he and I ever met or dated. But yet, I'd find camping gear, and it was camping gear we used together.

The things we moved to the truck had no personal significance to me any more. They were old and outdated. But I had paid for them once, so there was something that tugged at me to remove them from the apartment before the fire consumed them. At the same time, the things were dusty, moth eaten and no longer held functional value for me.

I guess if I had been more lucid while dreaming, I would have thought to donate the things. But I never really got resolution on what happened after we moved the things out of the apartment. Other people were still around us moving things out. Almost a reversal of what I remember my first day of college, moving into the dorms was like. Except that parents were older, the other kids were older like me, and all of their things had been shut away for ten years to collect dust, just like mine.

And so the alarm goes off and I wake up exhausted. My body feeling as if I had been active all night moving boxes and things. After the reminder from Rick, I vaguely remember waking up in the middle of the night, sitting straight up in bed.

In some ways, I feel like I'm trying to put closure to a certain era of my life. Although I feel like much of this (college, ex-boyfriend) already live in the very distant past. Who knows what it's really about. Dreams are just funny that way.