The Amnesia Dream

I had an amnesia dream the other night. In the dream I’d woken up one day and didn’t know how I’d gotten to the particular point in time. I was in high school or college – can’t determine which one exactly, it was more like a mixture of both. I had been an active student, but I remember thinking ‘this isn’t the school I went to. I went to Marian Catholic (HS)/Saint Xavier (Univ).’ There were pictures of me hanging up around the school with other students on a trip to Ireland – or was it the Netherlands – no it was Ireland. I know it was because I regretted not being able to recall visiting the land of some of my ancestors. Looking at these pictures I realized that the last grade I last remembered attending was the 3rd grade. After the 3rd grade everything was blank. This is interesting because in real life the 3rd grade was the last grade for which I attended private school; it wasn’t until high school and college that I returned to Catholic institutions.

I decided that in the third grade I must have gotten amnesia and gone on living my life not realizing who I was. So I’d gone down a completely different path. But how did I know the path was different. How did my dream self know that my real self went down a different path. I must have been looking in on the dream from the outside at some point. My conscious and unconscious collided. I think that the amnesia was caused by real-life me falling into the middle of a dream. Real-life me couldn’t remember attending the dream school because it’d happened in the dream. This would also be why I could only recall things that happened in real life – changing schools in the 3rd grade, going to Marian Catholic HS and St. Xavier University. I spent much of the dream contemplating this. Walking the halls of my dream school (which eventually became the path down Jackson Blvd that I walk every morning to work – it must have been getting close to wake-up-get-ready-for-work-time usually as the morning progresses my dreams will shift to a work setting) wondering how I knew of a different path at all if I couldn’t remember anything.

Then people in the dream began saying that I must have amnesia now. That would explain why I didn’t remember going to that school or on the trip to Ireland. So a debate ensued as to whether I was just waking from amnesia or had just fallen into amnesia. I was convinced that I’d just woken up from it. How else would I remember the 3rd grade, but nothing else? Everyone else thought I’d just fallen into amnesia. I woke up not knowing what to think.

My favorite Dream Analysis website had the following to offer: to dream about amnesia suggests that I am trying to block out the rejected or negative aspect of myself and that I am afraid of change. (http://dreammoods.com/cgibin/dreamdictionarysearch.pl?method=exact&header=dreamsymbol&search=amnesia)

Interesting…around the time I had this dream I’d finally decided to go back to school for my MBA in Marketing. And not to follow my fashion design aspirations by returning to the Illinois Institute of Art until I’ve completed my marketing education. Because, let’s face it, nowadays a higher education isn’t complete without an MBA; at least for my generation it’s not. This is a scary thing: paying for college. I have no idea how I’m going to do it. My parents did it before and I’m still paying off those loans. The best I’ve been able to come up with is cancelling cable and that’s not going to get me very far in some of the most expensive MBA programs in the state. Maybe that’s what the dream was telling me. It was making me recognize my fear because I certainly am not feeling its full wrath during the day. I’ve buried my head in my determination to get accepted to these schools and doing well on the GMAT and all the great things I’ll learn and people I’ll meet when I get there. I’m trying to ignore the 300 lb. gorilla in the room wearing a big, red sign that says TUITION.

Now this negative aspect about myself that I’m trying to block out… I’m not so sure I’m ready for that yet…