I have recurring nightmares about going back to school. It is usually that I am in high school again. I can't remember where my locker is and I haven't been to class in ages and I don't know why. It's weird to me that the nightmares are set in high school, but I know that the anxiety comes from my thoughts about going back to college.

Gah, yes. I can even tell myself in my dreams, "Stop it! YOu graduated with honors, you didn't forget that one class all year! You're married and college was 20 years ago!" Doesn't help.

My long-standing nightmares involve being in one of those parking garages with the spiral downramp. In my dream, I go down and down but never get out of the parking deck. Many dreams start out more promising, but always end up in the parking deck. Once I dreamed I was going to class on music theory taught by Bruce Springstein, but then I couldn't get there because I couldn't get out of the parking garage. Occasionally I have dreams in which I am very late to something. This doesn't seem too unusual, because I often have days in which I've very late to something.

Gah, yes. I can even tell myself in my dreams, "Stop it! YOu graduated with honors, you didn't forget that one class all year! You're married and college was 20 years ago!" Doesn't help.

Yes, this. I tell myself in the dream, why wouldn't I go to Ms. R's class? I adored her. I went to school most days just because of her.

In high school I used to have very vivid, very violent dreams. Usually there was some kind of military battle, but sometimes in was action movie-esque with hand guns and hiding for cover. I was always on the losing side and trying to win. Eventually they stopped.

The one that I had the longest was always dogs and wild animals or people trying to break in, or getting in and trying to hurt me. In the dreams I could get to the phone but I couldn't get 911 to work or the people to understand what was going on. I'd always wake up anxious and freaked out. At some point in the last couple of years in the dream I figured out that I had power and got off the phone with 911 and took care of it myself. I've never really had that dream again.

I've never really had that dream again.

I love that feeling. Learning to drive freed me from my trapped in cars anxiety dream.

Of course, I just got another one. Probably the teeth, or being swallowed by meetings.

For me, though, the most uncomfortable dreams are the ones in which I have sex with someone I actually know IRL, and then once I've woken up and I see them the next day, I am convinced that they must know.

I've only had a few of those, but they are seriously cringeworthy.

Before I married, I had recurring nightmares about weddings gone awry. Some involved people I wanted to marry, but couldn't--the aisle would keep stretching out so I'd never make it to the altar, or we'd be on the way to our honeymoon when my husband informed me he had no intentions of ever consummating the marriage. Others involved somehow having ended up married to a stranger without knowing how it happened, and that I couldn't get it annulled because I'd already consummated the marriage and gotten pregnant without actually remembering the sex (somehow a simple divorce was never in my nightmare repertoire), marrying someone I didn't know very well or have any interest in but feeling like I couldn't back out on the morning of the wedding, and getting married, realizing at the reception we'd made a mistake, and going our separate ways, but then my "husband" refused to cooperate when I wanted an annulment or divorce so I could marry someone else because that was sinful.

Creative little subconscious I had back then.

I often dream that I go to my old high school to visit and find myself suddenly dressed in my concert unifirm, french horn in hand, and there's a concert in 5 minutes. One of 2 things or both, happen at this point: I can't find my mouthpiece, I have never seen the music. Everyone in the room is still 17 and knows it, I am the only one who is 30 and doesn't. And when I try to tell people I don't know the music, I get kicked out of the room by my old band teacher.

For me, though, the most uncomfortable dreams are the ones in which I have sex with someone I actually know IRL, and then once I've woken up and I see them the next day, I am convinced that they must know.

Worse are the ones I have of Joe cheating on me with people I know IRL and then I'm mad at them. I about took my best friend's head off one morning after one of those.

I dreamt the other night I was at a film festival and ended up in bed with Paul Giamatti. We were interrupted just before any actual sex could occur, but I was weirded out because in the dream I KNEW I was cheating on the BF and I did it anyway. The second half of the dream was all the other people at the Festival giving me the evil eye in various ways because of my sluttiness.

You know, if I'm gonna cheat and be ostracized for it, couldn't it have been with, oh, Clive Owen?

Growing up, I had a recurring dream about being chased by the Communists who'd taken over America. It usually involved lots of running up and down stairs in some kind of labyrinthine network of safe houses, empty warehouses, and the like. I still occasionally have the dream, only the villains aren't conquering Communists but home-grown fascists.