The first part I remember is that I had driven to CMU to surprise my best friend Jordan. (Pictured along with me in the collage at right.)
I had inexplicably taken with me my high school friend Erin, whom I haven't seen since her grad party, so it's kind of strange that I took her in particular. I don't think she even knows anyone at CMU, she was just with me.
I distinctly remember that she was wearing a black pea-coat and her glasses. Her hair was chin-length, like it was senior year. I was wearing something red, maybe red pants or a red skirt, I vaguely remember a red hat, possibly a beret. I know the only three colors I was wearing were black, white, and red.
When the dream started, we were walking down the first length of the dorm hallway, and I wasn't as anxious as I truly would be were I in the dorms again. I was actually feeling very beautiful, something I usually don't feel in my dreams. (I tend to feel awkward and gross instead.) It may be because I've recently dropped approx. 15 pounds that I've been trying to lose since 2010.
In the hallway, milling around, were people that I very vaguely recognized, as well as a few who I didn't recognize at all, and several of which I didn't recall living in my hallway.
At the corner where I would normally turn to get to my old dorm room/Jordan's dorm, there was a little group of people sitting on the floor. They were some people who I knew I should remember from college but couldn't quite place, and I sat down on the floor to hang out with them. They seemed okay with having me there, not happy that I was back but not upset, either. (I don't blame them for not being happy, I honestly wouldn't have liked me very much in college. Actually, I didn't like me very much in college. Which I thought was a result of other people not liking me, but I'm honestly not sure.)
As I was sitting there, Jordan walked out of his room and down the hall. As he passed us I turned and got his attention. We were both so happy to see each other! It was a great feeling.
I didn't stay for very long. On my way out with Erin, I looked over my shoulder and saw my ex-roommates standing in the hall behind me. They hadn't seen me and I intended to keep it that way, but I whispered to Erin to turn around to see my former evil suite-mates and non-evil roommate. After she had gotten a good look, we left the hallway and the dream changed location quickly.
I'm in my old church. (I wrote this middle section in present tense and I don't know why, but I'm too lazy to go back and change it so you're just going to have to deal.)
(My old church is a common setting for my dreams because I basically grew up there. While I no longer identify or necessarily agree with Christianity, it's still a familiar place.)
I'm standing in a line, wearing a short, dark blue dress and holding flowers. I look around, confused. There are two lines of people with some others scattered around us, and we're directly outside the sanctuary. Farther behind us is a bride. I'm pretty sure she was a girl I knew from when I used to go to church, Julianne.
The two lines of people are pairing off and walking down the aisle. I realize I'm a bridesmaid. I look to my right to see who I'm walking down the aisle with, and see an old woman instead of the expected groomsman. (She's also a member of the church, I remember her face but not her name.) We link arms and walk forward, but we have done something wrong and have to go back and try again.
After several attempts at walking slowly down an aisle holding flowers and not a single success, my location abruptly changes once again. The wedding is gone, I'm instead in a hospital room sitting up on a hospital bed. In a hospital gown, IV in my arm.
I'm talking to my mom and reminiscing about the other times I've been in the hospital. (There have been a few in real life, but these were all purely fictional.) I had three male roommates both times I had been there before, all people I knew from church as well. (Don't know why that's been weighing on my mind so much lately.) I could recall all of them in the dream, although after having woken up I only remember Mike, a big creepy bald guy, Ryan and another Mike, brothers who are 3 or 4 years older than me, and Andy, another slightly older guy.
I was laughing and joking and being sarcastic, as I tend to be in difficult situations when I'm trying to make other people feel better. I said a few graphically descriptive/my-idea-of-funny things that were reminiscent of my two real-life bouts of food poisoning, both of which were graphic and now-kind-of-funny themselves.
After talking for a while I decided I was bored and wanted to borrow the box set of "House" DVDs that the youth group at the old church has. (Again with the church. Also, they don't actually have "House" DVDs, but I really love that show.) I guess the hospital was kind of close to there.
My mom went out and got the DVDs for me. When she came back, I looked through the set and realized that there were only three or four DVDs in the box that were actually "House." The rest were installments of a really creepy series of religious children's shows, which my brain made up and which I will now describe. (After reading through all of the following text again, I can see myself sub-consciously struggling with the religious values I was raised with and my opinion of those who still uphold them.)
The main character of the show was a girl who looked to be around 10 or 11 in the earlier shows and 17-ish in the newer ones. She looked like she was mixed race, with medium-length dark-brown hair, a caramel-colored complexion, and kind of a smokey pallor. On the cover of the first few DVDs, she looked pretty much normal. However, at about the third or fourth DVD, her picture had one distinct, fairly disturbing difference. She suddenly had one real eye and one glass eye. The glass eye, her left eye, fit her socket quite poorly, and seemed significantly larger and bulgier than the real eye, giving her a rather frightening expression whether she was smiling or frowning. I flipped through the DVD covers, looking at the strange photos of her and her replacement left eye and pondering what could have happened to her that would've caused the loss of one of her eyes. In one of the pictures, she's holding the eye directly in front of the socket and looking at a book as if the glass eye is necessary to see the book. In all of them she is smiling, as if nothing about her is out of the ordinary and she is perfectly carefree. The façade is so fake that it is uncomfortable to look at. Her still-living eye is emotionless, as if she has been brainwashed.
I put one of the DVDs into my laptop and start watching a random scene. The girl is just as disturbing on video as she is in pictures. She is in everyday situations, acting cheerful and singing songs about Christianity, but her smile is forced and her eyes are dead. The ill-fitting glass eye is hardly as frightening as her obvious underlying pain, her robotic, even zombie-like dialogue and warbled songs of praise that couldn't have sounded less sincere if I had sung them.
The scariest part of the whole TV series is the fact that is was actually popular. Kids actually watched these and believed that this girl was happy and the way she acted is the way they should act. I was afraid that I was the only one who could see the soulless-ness about her.
Then I woke up.
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