I don't know if this can be considered lucky or not but I dream almost every night. I also wake up remembering what my dreams were about. For the most part my dreams are completely random but there are a few topics that frequently happen in my dreams and this particular one is something that kind of fills me with dread in the dream and I wake up feeling very relieved that it was only in my mind.
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Too cute to not include this image
For those of you that don't know much about me I'll give you some history so that it makes sense what I am talking about. I am American but I decided to move away from that country in 2004. I have never entertained any notions of going back to live there either. Don't get the wrong idea, I don't have anything against my country but the way of life in USA is something that just didn't appeal to me. I did the college thing, I did the career thing, and the "rat race" didn't appeal to me at all. It was just random chance that I met some locals when I was traveling around Thailand and their way of life, although it was far more spartan than life in the States, was more my speed.
I have lived in South East Asia ever since and provided they are willing to let me stay, I will likely continue to do so for the rest of my life. I have lived in Thailand, Singapore, and now I live in Vietnam. All of these places appeal to me immensely but Singapore is waaaay too expensive and is basically like living in the United States.
So, back to the recurring dream or at least in my case, it is a bit of a nightmare.
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In my dream I always find myself back in the United States. I am fully aware in the dream that my home is actually in South East Asia, but for whatever reason, I have decided to move back home. The reasons always differ in the dreams but I find myself back in the rat race and in many occasions I am living off of my family member's generosity. Basically I am freeloading.
I find myself needing to find a job and frequently the jobs that I end up getting are jobs that I actually did have in the past. For some reason, I am frequently re-employed by Pizza Hut, which was one of my first jobs after high school when I went off to college. The job is always complicated as hell and we are always busy. I also am not making very much money and continue to need to survive off the generosity of my family members.
In this dream I am unable to get back to Asia and only recently have these reason for my inability to go back been related to Covid travel restrictions. The reason doesn't matter, but there is always something that is in the way of me getting back over here.
The dream is really depressing because I find myself in the same situation that made me want to leave the USA in the first place: Everything is really expensive, you have to have a car, and your work is basically your entire life. This is the opposite of the way life is over here in Asia although yeah, we still have to work but not in a "slave to the clock" type of way.
When I wake up I have a new appreciation for the life that I actually have so in that regard I suppose I am happy that I have these dreams even though they are frustrating and scary. I think that a lot of the time I take my life for granted over here and since I can't actually go back to the States at the moment to visit my family - well, I can go back, the problem is that I wouldn't be allowed to return because of Covid restrictions.
I very rarely have dreams that involve something truly scary such as monsters, ghosts, or zombies. My dreams are a little more frightening because of the fact that they involve actual possible situations such as me ending up trapped in a place that I do not want to live. This dream happens I would say around once a week and it takes on different forms but always has the same underlying theme.
I guess we could say that this dream helps to re-enforce in my mind that I am very lucky to have the life that I do or at least that I made the correct decision by deciding to become and expat at a young age (I am not young anymore.)
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NO!
I think that a big part of the reason why I have this dream is at least in part because of the fact that I do sometimes worry about what the hell I would do if I suddenly needed to go back to my home country. I know that while I have zero desire to rejoin the workforce in USA I also know that people would be hesitant to hire someone in their 40's who has over 15 years of undocumented work experience.
Let's just hope that this day never comes for me :)
Do you have any recurring dreams? Let's talk about them