Pandemic dreams
(Pandemic Diary - day 310)
From my journal: 2 January 2021 (Saturday)
I had a crowd dream last night.
I call it a dream because I don’t think I ever progressed from discomfort into the panic/fear/horror I get in a full-blown nightmare, but it was close, and it was disturbing.
I can’t recall the context, but I was waiting for someone (my family, I think) and it was a public place of some sort, with an open, grassy mall, sidewalks, buildings, etc. There was a crowd, walking about like at a fair or an amusement park, and there were buses disgorging more and more people. I was on the edge of this crowd, maybe standing there are they moved toward me and around me.
None of the people were masked, and I wasn’t masked, and I remember thinking “this is okay, we’re outside, there’s a breeze”. But then there were more and more people, and they were closer and closer together, and at some point I was just thinking of this cloud of contaminated air that I couldn’t see but that was surely there above there heads, and there was no way that breeze could disperse or dilute it enough to make it safe.
Then I was in front of a home, maybe a place we were renting, still waiting for my family to arrive. I felt safe because I was outside, on a low, concrete porch, and the people were still out there, flowing by, and at least at first they were distant.
Until they weren’t.
They were there next to me in front of my porch, standing there looking out into the crowd the same way I was, like waiting for parade, or watching for your traveler at an airport exit. I noticed there was a line of folding chairs on the grass next to the house, also as if for a parade.
At first it was okay, but then some of the watchers were right there at the edge of my porch, even on my porch, and I wanted to be polite and just ask them to move away, give me distance, and I also wanted to command them to back off, and I wanted to physically push them away.
I might have looked for a baseball bat.
I forget the rest. But this is clearly a pandemic dream, and I’d be surprised if it doesn’t foretell a problem I’ll have when the pandemic is over and it’s “safe” to go back into crowds and exchange breath with all those people.
I doubt I’m the only person to dream like this, and I won’t be the only one to feel that “problem”, either.
Some people will feel it badly, some will surely have phobias and PTSD and all sorts of issues. This will not just go away, things will not be instantly normal, and the period of fade will be different for each of us.
Reentry will surely be an interesting process in so many ways (but I’m still looking forward to it).