Building a College Fantasy

5/6/2008 Tuesday morning/Monday night

I arrive at my old college, EWU; I am going to start going to school there again (maybe for another degree?). For some reason, I am disguised as a boy. I have my hair styled so it looks like it is short and hanging over most of my face, with a bandanna and a white tee shirt with an illustration on it that is mostly green. This makes my eyes look green.

I walk up to the dorm from the outside, it's apparently my old dorm (although it looks nothing like it, but in the dream I am familiar with it). I have arrived on the very first day, and although I haven't made the necessary preparations in advance or picked up my key, I know that the door will be unlocked for all the students moving in, so I am able to get in. The door leads to steps immediately going steeply down, and then going up again on the other side, then up up up further. I follow them and when I come to the top there is a large gap to step across to the doorway, which if you didn't remember to step across would be dangerous to put your foot in. In the dream I remember needing to step over this gap when going out and down the stairs, from when I was there before.

The door opens out at one end of the hallway in the dorms. There are students wandering everywhere, moving their stuff in and out. In the first room on the left, the door is open and the occupant is seated at the computer, and another person is sitting next to him in a chair with his back mostly to the door. It is my old friend S-, who I haven't seen for so very long. I knew/hoped he would be here, but I wasn't sure. I suppress my excitement and walk past (he will not recognize me in the initial disguise, I think, plus he is looking the other way). My heart is pounding.

I go down the hall looking for an open room. Rather than having rooms assigned, people just choose them and move in on the first day, and many people are already moved in. I realize that this is a bit of a problem, since I am kind of getting back into this at the last minute (I haven't registered for classes either or anything). A girl that I apparently knew before at school recognizes me and says hi, how's it going, etc. and I respond in kind. I realize that my disguise is totally ineffectual if she recognized me anyway, so I may as well take it off. I duck into the nearby bathroom.

I look at myself in the mirror, I don't think I am recognizable in my disguise but apparently I am, so I take off the bandanna and put my hair back where it belongs. My eyes look very green, which I attribute to the influence of the green on the tee shirt. Even the whites of my eyes look tinted with an almost florescent green, apparently a reflection. I wonder if S- will recognize me like this.

I use the toilet, being in some gastric distress. It appears that I have consumed a lot of long plant vines like pathos and onion greens, and I'm in quite a bit of discomfort.

That taken care of, I go back down the hall. People have cleared out a bit. I stop in the doorway of another room near the end of the hall, but on the other side from where he was before, and S- is sitting there, waiting for me. He did see me go past before, and he smiles and is happy to see me after so long. We say hello and other small things. I want to rush forward but I hang in the doorway, unsure of his reception. Now I can't picture him exactly as he was in the dream, but it was very clear then.
I say "well, it looks like I may not get a room on this floor after all, I should have come earlier," or something like that, ruefully, since everybody is snapping them up. He says that he reserved one for me, just a couple doors down from his. I say "Ah you're such a sweety," surprised and pleased. He just smiles, but I see that he has tears sparkling in his eyes, he is, like me, choked up with happiness and emotion at our meeting again. I've never seen him like this before. I know now that it is not just me aching with the fulfilled longing of seeing each other again, and this makes me deliriously happy.

I go down to the room he saved for me to put my stuff there. I am thinking, feeling slightly guilty at our meeting and the fact that I am here with him and enjoying this time and feeling so good. But then I think, it's just a dream, after all. I don't have to feel guilty, I'm not really cheating because it's not real and it's out of my control. Strangely even though I actually THINK to myself that it's a dream and use this to justify my time with him, the dream doesn't become lucid and I can't control anything, plus everything still feels completely real. It's a strange setup. I feel a little sad thinking that it's only a dream, and I'm not going to be here with him all the time. But then I tell myself I should be happy it's a dream. If it were not, he wouldn't be all welcoming to me and certainly wouldn't have gotten me a room right next to him, he would be trying to drive me away instead, rather than acting like I'd always hoped for. Plus I would be cheating on my husband since I'm married now. I think, in real life this is impossible and I'm happy that I have such a better relationship with my husband than things went in the past with S- in real life. At least because this is a dream I can come back and visit it again and again and spend some of my time here, under the dream conditions of our affection. (Even though generally you can't just choose to return to and keep going on the same dream at will, in the dream I think this will work).

I leave my bag in my room and tell S- that I'm just going to go back out to my car and get the rest of my stuff, we will meet up then and go eat or register or something. I go back out to the parking lot. When I get to my car, I see that there is a NEW large dent in the side. It is quite large, and looks like somebody fell out of the sky and landed on the car crushing a dent the shape of their head and upper body. A person standing nearby in the parking lot points it out to me and says that some people were having a fight nearby and one of them must have been thrown against the car. Also for some reason my trunk is open.

I'm somewhat perturbed by this but still in a pretty good happy mood because of S-, so I close the trunk, and hop in the car to get my stuff. I think I will straighten it up a little bit in case S- and I go somewhere in the car later, I'm not sure if he has his car here or not. Then I realize that there is a person in the car, of an unsavory sort... dirty looking with long stringy hair and bad intentions. I don't think he was expecting to see me, just stealing stuff, but the guy pulls me in and locks the doors. I think he has some kind of weapon, but I'm not sure. He starts driving. I am being kidnapped! I am a bit panicky. He goes through my stuff but fails to find anything useful, although he takes my cell phone.

I grab a paper with financial information when he isn't looking and put it into my purse. He drives for a while, it looks sort of like the area near where I grew up, but it's not. I am thinking how I can get the cell phone back and call or message for help while he is distracted. He shows me the phone where he has downloaded additional ringtones and I pretend that I like one of the tunes and want to set it as the default on the phone. He buys this and I fiddle with the phone. Unfortunately while I'm doing this he finds the financial paper in my purse, and tells me so, but I pretend not to be disturbed. I have to call or message for help. He has rearranged everything on my phone though in the course of downloading stuff, and so the normal keys don't go to the same places. I pretend to be setting the ringtone but frantically search through and find recent calls. But S- of course is not in the recent call list, since I haven't called him. My husband is there but I don't call him becuase he is far away and wouldn't be of much help in this situation. I go to the address book on the phone, and S- is there (Not sure when he got there though). I was going to call and whisper but then I realize this will be really obvious and the kidnapper might retaliate, so I send a message saying I'm kidnapped, call the police. Then I just sit back and hope.

I end up being taken to some kind of farm that has dog kennels, and the kidnapper locks me in one of them, presumably while he makes off with the stolen goods. But in a very short time S- arrives with the police and rescues me. I'm impressed since I hadn't actually been able to say where I was. Then I wake up before anything else happens.

Somehow I'm able to enjoy the fantasy of this unrealistic reunion even though I know it's not real (and that I don't even want it to be real since that wouldn't work), and most of the dream I'm just indulging in that and the feelings that accompany it