Weirdest dream ever

While I was taking my marathon nap this afternoon, I had a dream. It wasn't a normal dream that I hardly remember when I wake up. And it wasn't the regular recurring dream I get every few months that involves being forced to marry one of my two high school boyfriends. No, ladies, this is the kind of dream that exhaustion and early pregnancy will buy you, so if you want to see how my subconsious really works, read on.

We're on vacation in a foreign country. It might be Turkey. All I know is that it took a long time to get there and I can neither read the writing nor understand the language. But it's morning and I need to take a run. So I leave the kids in the hotel room with Eddie and go to a park that I saw on our way into town. I run and it's uneventful. But when I want to get back, I can't find the exit. Finally, I find a little door and squeeze my way into it, crawl through a tunnel, and eventually find myself in the hotel lobby. Where....

I'm a teenager again and part of a Study Abroad group. It all seems normal at first, like I'm supposed to be there, until we decide to go running again, and when I'm at the park I remember Eddie and the kids, so I take the same weird small door and tunnel exit and find myself in the lobby.

This happens two or three times, and every time, I find that I have a different life when I get back to the lobby, and it takes me longer and longer each time to remember what I'm trying to get back to.

At the park, things start to go south. There's a really scary man there, and I know he's going to get me. I don't speak his language, but I try telling him in every language I know (all two of them) that I'm married and looking for my husband. But I know that if I don't find him soon, I'm going to end up raped, or worse. One time after he chases me and I escape I myself in the hotel lobby, and I'm married to this handsome, tall, African-American guy who is very, very happy to see me. We have three or four gorgeous little girls. At this point, I'm so very tired of running from the scary man, that even though I remember Eddie and the kids, I wonder if I should just stay with the new "husband." Even though it's not my life, it seems like a good life, and that should be enough, right?

Then, of course, I woke up.

--originally published 5/5/06