Dreams and reality may actually be the same thing

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.