Before I start analyzing my own dreams, I think it’s important to have a little more background information. When speaking to Ms. Alimonti, a psychology teacher at EBHS- who just happens to teach a dream unit in her class- she directed me to this resource which includes the different types of dreams and the common symbols that tend to appear in dreams. I’ll be referencing this website a lot, especially when I look at my own dreams.
Ms. Alimonti told me, ‘Although not all dreams are meaningful, or helpful, some dreams have been extremely helpful in people’s waking life, in important aspects such as problem-solving, emotional healing, memory consolidation and creativity. Many people credit their dreams with helping them in achieving these things that they were not able to achieve while consciously trying to do so during waking hours alone. So whether we remember our dreams or not, it’s important to dream, even if we don’t know for sure what the actual dream story, as a whole, may mean.”
For me, analyzing my dreams is important because I feel like I dream a little differently than most of the people I do talk to about my dreams. For one thing, I tend to dream in third person- meaning that when I dream, it’s like I’m watching myself do things instead of just doing them myself. I also dream in black-and-white sometimes. Called cinematic dreams, third person dreaming is actually more common than people think and might mean a number of different things such as that I may feel out of control or disconnected from my life, or that I just feel equal to everyone else around me so I don’t need to be the main character in my dream. What’s interesting about cinematic dreams as well is that they sometimes play out like an actual movie with zoom-ins and different scenes. As for dreaming in black-and-white, only about 12% of people dream with no color. What’s interesting about that is that in the 1940s, studies showed that 75% of Americans actually reported that they rarely or never dreamt with color; those numbers are now reversed. Many scientists attribute this to the amount of exposure to black-and-white media in the past versus the new technology now, which is why my frequent black-and-white dreaming confuses me. Maybe I’m just an old soul.
In the next few chapters, I’ll actually be reporting my dreams and then painting them. Stay tuned, and happy dreaming!

This dream occurred the night before prom and it also centered around prom and prom preparations, so I think it’s fair to say that this dream was a manifestation of all the anticipation surrounding the big senior dance.

The dream started off with me arriving home after the half-day. Keep in mind that I mostly dream in third-person, so I am watching myself just as you, the reader, might be imagining this dream as you read. As I walked into my house, I saw a black cat walking through my front yard. A black cat is a well-known symbol of bad luck in many pieces of folklore and urban legends, but according to Ms. Alimonti’s dream resource, dreaming of a black cat can also mean that I am “experiencing some fear in using your psychic abilities and believing in [my] intuition”.

After seeing the black cat, I immediately went inside to eat my lunch and get ready for prom. I’m not sure why, but instead of getting ready in my bedroom, I was getting ready in my basement- but my brain made it feel like my room. After I was done getting ready, I went upstairs to show my mom the final look and put my corsage on. However, when I went to put the corsage on, I noticed that there were bugs crawling in the white roses of the arrangement and the petals were withered and browning. This itself seems like a bad omen, but dreammoods.com confirms that “to see withered or dead flowers in your dream denotes disappointments and gloomy situations.” I am afraid of bugs in real life, dream-me is too, so I tried to shake the bugs out of my corsage, but as I did, some of the petals fell to the ground. As the petals touched the ground, weeds sprung up from the tile floor in their place. They slowly wrapped around me, holding me in place and rendering me unable to move and leave my house. The more I struggled against the weeds, the tighter they wrapped themselves around me, almost like they were alive. Weeds are another bad omen, they can be interpreted as a sign of neglect or despair. I think that describes perfectly what I was going through during this dream.

That’s about all I can remember from this particular dream. I’m sure more happened or maybe the scene completely switched and I somehow ended up happily dancing with my friends at prom. That’s what I like about recalling my dreams: they throw me into crazy situations where I’m forced to analyze my own behaviors and think about myself and my personality in a different way.

What would I do if crazy monster weeds trapped me in my house right before my senior prom (which, in reality, was a really fun experience)? What would you do? That’s something I’ll leave you to ponder as I move on to recording to my next dream.

The first part of this dream took place in the terminal of the high school. For some reason, the tour that the seniors give to the incoming sophomores at the end of summer was happening in the middle of the school year, and the tour was being given to fellow seniors instead. I don’t remember many specific details about this dream or about who else was in it, but I do remember a strange series of events.
The dream started with me finishing off the tour of the high school and waving goodbye to a group of students. I headed to the parking lot and unlocked my car (which was white instead of black in this dream). When I stepped inside my car, there was already a student inside. They didn’t really have a face (or I just can’t remember it), but I knew they were a senior. They asked me for a ride home, and I remember being confused as to why they would need a ride home when they were also a licensed driver. Just when I was about to give in and say yes to the student, they pulled a bright green water balloon out of their pocket and broke it over my head, indicating that they were participating in senior assassin- which I was not. I tried to look up what certain symbols might mean: for example, a car can represent navigating or traveling into a new phase of life, which makes sense for where I am in my own life. But the color of the car changing from black to white is supposedly supposed to represent a change from evil to good, or from negative to positivity, which I’m not sure has any distinct meaning to me. According to dreammoods.com, “to dream that someone throws water at you implies that you need to show more of your emotions. You have been too disconnected from others. Alternatively, it may mean that you need to cool off.” While this is an interesting meaning, I was actually surprised while reading this description of water because I feel like I’m actually a very open person who shares her feelings a lot. Maybe it was just really hot in my room that night?

This dream was another one of my cinematic dreams, and right before the student dropped the balloon over my head, there was a zoom-in on the balloon, and then another one on my face, like we were in a sitcom. Another thing that was interesting about this dream was that it was a recurring one. There are 8-10 types of dreams, which you can read about here. A recurring dream is one that occurs over and over again with barely any change in storyline. Usually, they are negative and may be repeating because of an unresolved conflict. For me, this was the third time this dream had occurred and as I write this about a week later, I’ve had the same dream two more times. Needless to say, I’m tired of getting ambushed by water balloons.

This is a dream where I remembered less of the details of the dream and more of the vibes and what I was feeling. The setting of the dream was sort of like Agrabah, the fictional land in the Disney movie Aladdin. I was some type of secret jewel trader or merchant, wearing a large beige scarf over my head to hide my face. Hidden in the pockets of my very baggy clothing was a satchel full of shining gems. As I was walking across the market that I was hoping to trade in, a huge green lizard crawled onto my foot. I tried to shake it off, but instead it crawled into my robe and nestled itself inside my bag of jewels.

The lizard somehow stuck a few jewels onto its back and ran off. That’s the last thing I can remember, but this is a dream I keep coming back to because of the vibes of it. There was a mystical atmosphere in this dream, kind of like I was in an enchanted kingdom and there was some sort of magical force surrounding me. This was another cinematic dream, and it definitely felt like I was in a movie following a pre-written plot. There was also a distinct color scheme in this dream, which was white, a royal purple, magenta, and emerald green.

This dream may have also been influenced by the fact that I read about 300 pages of The Kingdom of Copper that day, which is the second book in an epic ancient Islamic fantasy trilogy where the setting looks a lot like Agrabah. Because I can barely remember the dream and I can see where most of its elements came from, I don’t really see a point in trying to interpret the symbols.

Keep reading through the next chapter, though- because that one is a little more interesting! Happy dreaming!