Help Wanted: Dream Analysis

Anxiety dreams are pretty common for everyone. When I was younger I would have dreams about being late for a critical college exam, being unable to get out of a parking garage for an appointment, or realizing I had skipped classes the entire semester and now it was too late to drop the class. I had those long after leaving college.

For the past few years I have been having these recurring dreams where I am in London. I had flown over for a short vacation and somehow just stayed for months. Most of the time it seemed I was unaware just how long I had been there. I would come to a sudden realization that I had been there 3 or 4 months, sometimes even longer. I would think perhaps it would be a good idea to go to Heathrow and try getting a flight home.

I would plan this every day and several days would pass for whatever reason. I could not get back to my flat to pack my stuff. Or I would be on the train to the airport and realize I had left everything in my flat and have to return to fetch the stuff which would delay me another day. Most of the time, in my dream, I wake up one morning in London and it hits me: I need to go to the airport but my hunch was always that the flights all depart in the morning and it's already too late for me to get to the airport, so I postpone for another day. The bottom line is I never make it to the airport in any of these dreams.

Last night the dream returned. This time I had a cellphone. I was trying to call Delta Airlines to find out what time the flights leave. One of the aspects of these dreams is that I never have a clue when the last departure leaves for the US so I just don't bother going to the airport for fear of getting there too late for the last flight. Somehow I managed to get to the airport for the first time. I was told that the only flight was departing at 5:30am. The twist was that the airport doesn't open until 5:30 so the only way to catch the flight is to get there in the evening before the airport shuts down and spend the night there.

I returned to my flat to ponder this a bit longer. I always hated having to sleep in airports. Besides, I always felt a sense of relief coupled with anxiety when I put off leaving for just one more day. It's rather strange -- almost a liberating feeling.

Anyway, I just checked Delta online. They fly out of Gatwick. The last departure is at 1:00 pm. I will be curious to see if I can utilize this information in my next dream -- assuming of course that I really want to come home. I am never sure.