A Strange Dream (and a Bad Case of Poison Ivy)

In my dream last night, it was the spring semester of my senior year in high school. I was friends with someone I no longer speak to. (The weird thing is in real life I didn’t meet this person until college.) So in my dream it seemed as though we shared some kind of temporary dorm room because we knew we were both attending a particular college in the fall. It wasn’t going to be our dorm room once we actually enrolled in school; rather, it was a temporary room we could come and stay at while we took care of our college preparations. (In the dream these preparations were extensive and required several visits over the spring semester.)

So we shared a room but we were rarely there at the same time. And in my dream we were having some of the problems our later friendship would face. Here’s the weird part. During one of my dream visits to the dorm I saw some of her belongings, which meant she was in town at the same time I was. Somehow I could tell by what she had left in the room that she had gone on a date. She left a notebook on her bed (not expecting I would be there the same weekend) that was filled with letters and pictures of her boyfriend. Some of those pictures were x-rated in nature.

In the dream I found myself reading all of the notes and looking at the pictures even though I knew it was wrong. Of course, she came home while I was reading and we ended up having a discussion about it all and clearing up a few things.

In real life, nothing like this ever happened. But what I think the dream means is that I perhaps I feel like I knew too many personal things about her, perhaps things I shouldn’t have known (in real life I didn’t discover these things through snooping, but in day-to-day life). I equated these things in my sleeping mind with sex/x-rated photos/very personal letters, etc. which, again, does not directly correspond to real life but I understand why those things came to mind.

This is going to sound a little strange, but sometimes I think you learn things about people that you don’t necessarily want to know. And they don’t want to tell you. But, like in poker, there are “tells.” There are some things you just can’t hide. And I’m not saying you should, but that once the knowledge is out there, knowing something can change a relationship.

I also find it interesting that the dream took place during my last semester of high school as I was preparing for a new phase. Because in real life, our friendship ended as I was going through a transition from one part of my life to another.

To me the dream means some things should remain private. Any other theories out there?

***
OK, this is more important than my dream but if you can’t tell, my dream really freaked me out. Nate has a serious case of poison ivy on his face, neck and arm. We think our cat is going into a neighbor’s yard that is seriously overgrown. We’ve seen a large poison ivy plant in the back. Our theory is the cat is going over there, rubbing against the ivy, and coming home and Nate is getting it on his hands. He’s had three serious outbreaks within the past year and he seems to have above-average sensitivity to poison ivy. So I think I’m going to go over to her house and volunteer to bring some roundup.