My Dreams Are Different Now

By Shelby Hamilton, October 29, 2019

Read time: 3 Mins

My Dreams Are Different Now Image

I don’t think dreams are important at all. I think they’re almost nothing.

I like that about them. Dreams have no alternate meaning but they can have meaning to me if I so wish. My dream could be someone else’s nightmare. I don’t care. Dreams are just YouTube videos that your sleep self watches. And YouTube videos are pointless.

Some believe that dreams are another version of you, living in another place. Like a portal. Another reality. But I find that SO hard to believe because I’m boring. Dreams are just thoughts you’re having all day but you’re too fucking busy to notice them.

But if I’m in another world when I sleep, I must be in many places. So where am I really?

I find it hard to admit that it’s all this complicated. Dreaming is dust caught in your brain pipes. 

If in my other world – where I go when I fall asleep, there is still a Kmart but in this Kmart, my teeth fall out and I can’t leave because the door censor isn’t recognising my tiny body, what’s the point of an alternate reality?

I’ve got enough hullabaloo in this plane. Why does there need to be two Me’s worrying about unimportant things like having teeth and making sure they don’t fall out on me.

Teeth don’t exist where I wanna go. And no one is trying to disect anything there.

Dreams are worms eating through our apple heads. Making dreams have meaning is for feeling purposeful. The aspirational kind of dreams are for practicing hopefulness. Like money and fame and a big bossy job. 

I blame the internet for ruining my dreams. It’s like I know too much. Because it’s been getting harder and harder to be blissfully unaware. There’s too many things to know.

And I just want to do things for myself. Not what other people see for me. Because there is apparently a Big Future ahead and Big Dreams to have.

But it’s hard to daydream. Hard to pretend something BIG is gonna happen when you don’t want to try and make things mean something.

I don’t really have dreams I can explain in money terms or timelines anymore. 

Instead I dream of Spring weather. No clouds in the morning. I can still wear my jacket. Light showers in the afternoon with a rainbow. Sun hasn’t set yet. I am painting on the walls.

I don’t want to be a magazine editor. Or star in a movie. I don’t want to go to fashion week. I couldn’t be less bothered to own a designer bag.

I want my shoulders to not ache. I want to read excellent stories. I want faces not to matter. I want to bleed purple. I want to write something good again. I dream about it. 

Was it the other me in my dream plane that wrote all of those good things? All those things about the dust?

Is it important at all?

Return to issues