Dreams and reality may actually be the same thing. They simply present themselves to you in different ways.
It is not uncommon for
people to have recurring dreams. In my
opinion, recurring dreams represent something constant in your life that may
not be in the forefront of your mind, but is definitely somewhere in that
noggin of yours.
For the longest time
since I can remember, I have always been fascinated about dreams. I used to record them in a notebook
throughout middle school and high school.
And in college, I almost wrote a paper about dreams and their
significance to the mind and possibly the soul.
I say “almost,” because instead, I had chosen to write about the impact
current technology has on the game of tennis and its equipment. And I also say “almost” because upon
researching about dreams, the mind and the soul, I found it both highly
intimidating and difficult to understand (though nevertheless, still very
interesting.)
But anyway, I’m not one
to throw dreams away in the gutter. Like
I said, I used to record them.
Throughout the years, I found that I have recurring dreams in which,
while the concept of the dream is the same, the scenario is always different.
In the dream, I’m
preparing myself for something big, such as a big event, a party, the first day
of school or of work, meeting someone for the first time. Most of the time, it’s the first day of
school. That makes sense to me because
the first day of school has always been one of my biggest fears, growing
up. The first day of school had multiple
meanings: the end of summer, the beginning of another year of intensive
studying, which of course is daunting, the prospect of interacting with peers
(which, for a person with social anxiety like me back in the day, was a very
big deal,) and inevitably, the idea of being judged by others as school is a
place with many, many people all of whom have the full capacity to judge others
consciously or not.
As the time nears to go
to school for the first day, the procrastinator that I am (even in my dreams,)
I don’t ready myself until the last five minutes. But as I look into the mirror, I find that my
hair has grown back to shoulder length.
I freak out, thinking, “How am I supposed to cut it short before school
starts? I don’t have time! People are going to see me!!” In retrospect, I don’t see why, in my dream,
I never resign myself to going to school late for the sake of cutting my
hair. Anyway, that isn’t the worst
part.
The worst part is
having the huge anxiety attack within me that springs up like an alien coming
out of my chest, like in the movie Alien, you know, that scene. Not only that, I feared in my dream that
people were going to perceive me differently with long hair than with short
hair. That’s where the judgment part
comes in. And the judgment part isn’t
only from the outside; it’s also from within me. I judge myself.
Relative to my hair
now, for the bulk of my life, I’ve had long hair (shoulder length,) and ever
since cutting that into the Mohawk (very briefly,) and then ultimately into
whatever short hair I have now, I think instinctively, I started to associate
me with longer hair with the me as I was before transitioning. So in my recurring nightmare, the long hair
comes back, thus evoking from me the fear that I’ll regress back to the old
ways, back before I started transitioning.
Back before I came out. Back when
I was unhappy with myself but was too much of a coward to admit that to me and
to anyone else until just earlier this year.
That fear is real, and
it shows up in these recurring nightmares.
Ultimately, in the
dream, I feared that people were going to judge me the way people have done in
the past when I still didn’t pass as male.
Because if you think
about it, people treat you differently if you’re female, than if you’re
male. That’s just the reality, the
inescapable and ugly truth. And having
been on both sides so to say, I see, feel and realize this first hand from many,
many personal experiences. Trust me, if
you were in my shoes, you’d feel it like a ton of bricks.
Given the situation
that I am in, with transitioning, my perspective of interactions between or
among genders, has been rendered more astute than it used to be, before
starting transitioning. I feel like I
see things that other people might not catch.
Subtle things that people take for granted.
For example, one time
my mom and I took the civic to the shop, when it needed fixing up. This was before transitioning. When the mechanic was all done, he went to
talk to my mom about what he did with the car.
A handful of months later, we went to the mechanic, and – now perceiving
me as male – instead of going to my mom to explain what he had done with the
car, the mechanic went to me.
To set another example,
at work, we get new workers all the time.
At one point, we got three new workers who were a handful of rowdy
boys. They were treating my friend, who
happened to be a girl, inappropriately. So
I told them to knock it off. All the
while, they never treated me like they treated my friend. They treated me more like buddy-buddy. I know that if I didn’t start transitioning,
they probably – more than definitely, that’s for sure – would have treated me
like they treated my friend.
And that’s the honest
truth.
So while the nightmare
isn’t exactly real, it is based on reality.
I have an intense fear of regressing back to my old life because I’m so
much more content and comfortable in my “new” life that I don’t want to leave
it; I have been on both sides and have developed a fear of the first side.
Of course, that’s not
to say every girl has had the same experience that I had. Everyone’s life is different. It’s just that mine in particular, to me, was
very uncomfortable, discouraging and hurtful, even if the parties involved didn’t
mean it.
