Ever since I moved to Florida back in 2003, I occasionally have this dream where inexplicably everything is reversed and I’m back in my job at the warehouse in Michigan where I worked for six years before moving away.
Last night I had the same dream again.
What was strange is that it wasn’t as panicky as it normally is … when I first moved, it was honestly more of a nightmare where I was back up north pulling orders for auto parts and when the thought of Florida would come up, someone would explain that it just didn’t work out and I was back now, and that was it.
But this time it was almost more of a temporary visit, and things were different from how I remember them in reality. We had just gotten bought by our competitor – which did happen in reality – and a bunch of new employees had been brought in from another branch who were presumably going to be replacing many of us who already worked there … something that also happened, but not nearly to the extent that it did in my dream.
And so what was different this time was that abruptly I just made the decision that I was going to quit and go back to Florida – that was going to be my last day – and I told my friends and my boss, and everyone understood.
I don’t know what made things different that time, and it was hard to piece together within the dream what/where/who I had memories of that I was going back to, but unlike most of the other times I’ve had this dream as a nightmare indicative of failure where the one thing I had wanted so much for years had fallen through my fingers and was just gone, this time I suddenly had some control of my own and it was no longer an absolute that I just had to accept.
An interesting evolution after 12 years of living in Florida, indeed, though it does beg one other question – will I ever find myself at a point where I don’t have the dream at all anymore???
Or then again, if I finally do have some control into my own fate, maybe having this dream just isn’t such a nightmare anymore after all…