I have this reoccurring dream, maybe once a month or so. I’m in someone’s house, but they aren’t home. I’ve snuck in while they were out and I’m usually in the basement or the bedroom or the attic. I’m looking through their photo albums and boxes and books when I hear them come home. I start panicking, looking for a way out through a window or trying to come up with some explanation should they catch me. In the dream the fear and anxiety are as powerful as any nightmares. I always wake up before I’m caught.
I don’t often pay attention to my dreams or try to make sense of them but this one seems pretty obvious. I long so much to know things about people in ways that I’m willing to take risks. I always want to know about the things that make them who they are, the things they don’t want anyone else to see.
Who do you miss? What are you sorry for? Where are you going, where have you been?
In the dream I have to sneak in to the house without their knowledge to get this information. I can’t ask for it or put myself in a position where it might be offered freely to me. The people in my dreams may or may not want me to know these intimate things, but being caught trying to steal it makes me feel afraid.
This dream always makes me laugh a little when I wake up. Am I really so blindly hungry for intimacy that my consciousness has to tell me in a dream?
