Sing me to sleep Sing me to sleep And then leave me alone Don't try to wake me in the morning 'Cause I will be gone

Warnings for: depression, death, suicidal ideation

Dreams

I had a dream that I died and went to some sort of afterlife. I had no idea how I died, only that I initially expected to be resuscitated, so I figured I’d just wait for that to happen. I don't know when I died, but someone told me that if I was to be brought back, it would be by March 9th.

I had a little room to myself there and outside there was a yard, and somewhere there was a supply shop. There was also a pond, I think the implication was that that was where the hopeless dead would go - there were efforts to get people out of there but it was a lazy attempt. I only know this because I ended up there once and my advisor made them fish me out. There was a lady who managed the whole thing and answered my questions, and she managed the supply shop.

Because I expected to leave, she’d give me lined paper, little envelopes, and stamps (they were completely white) so I could write letters home. I think my advisor was the one paying for it all (I have no idea how it worked). I was also given a transceiver so I could hear 1 person from the living world - for whatever reason, the person was my advisor. He assured me that I would be able to continue on my research soon enough. We talked for a few days in a row, until I found another dead person to talk to, he’d also studied in my department.

At some point the conversations with my advisor stopped, but I was still writing letters. One day the lady took me to the shop and started grabbing my usual supplies for me when I stopped her and said, “No, there’s no reason to write letters anymore. Someone told me that if I was to be revived, it would be by the 9th. It’s the 23rd now. Not only am I dead, but I assume my body rots now.” And she gave me a sympathetic smile and let me be.

The dream more or less ended at that point; I had gracefully accepted my death.

I dreamed that I was taking the bus somewhere, and we came to a traintrack, so the bus driver slowed down and opened the door. And this one guy stepped forward off the bus, but as he was doing so the bus sped up again and he fell too hard. A second later a woman started shouting for the driver to stop because the man had fallen and she saw blood. The driver stopped and we found out he had died then. But the bus driver didn't seem to care much and started the bus again, and I didn't want to miss my class, so I simply went forward with the rest of my day as if nothing had happened.

I had the absolute worst little dream last night. F had died - I'm not sure how, but he had. For whatever reason we were having the wake for him on campus, and they laid out his embalmed body. It makes no logical sense now, but my dream self was getting horribly upset that his organs had been taken out, that this was only a hollow part of him. Which is true, but that's how preservation works and I'm not sure why I was so fixated on this. Regardless, our prof eventually came to stand beside me and he started commenting on the corpse. How the skin had changed. He even held up F's hand to compare it with mine, how decay was already setting in. And he was so jovial about it! As if the death was a mere curiosity.

At some point I had finally had enough of the prof's joviality, so I left his side and sobbed next to F for some time. And when I was finally too exhausted to keep going, our friends came up to me and said I did a really good job with performing as if I was actually upset. But my dream self was so horribly distressed and sad.

In the dream too I went to check my email and - I think this is a continuation of a previous dream, which happens, fragments reappear and carry on - there was a letter for my Est prof that class would be canceled after the New Year because she was planning on committing suicide. My dream self was resigned and understanding over this, and accepted her death, but then she texted me in current time (April) and was planning our next class time, so it had been a false alarm.

And by that point my dream self seemed to be rather exhausted, so I sat down in my living room. Some maintenance people (?) came and talked to me for a bit, and one tried to convince me to leave academia completely because of how upset I still was at F's death. The guy seemed to take a liking to me, because he offered to get me a job as a criminal investigator or something of the sort - because I like puzzles - and told me to think about it.

In any case, the dream of F's death was too vivid and continuous for me to forget it; I woke up rather upset and I still feel awful over the whole thing. I've never dreamt of a real friend of mine dying like this - usually it's either me or a stranger or someone close to my dream self who doesn't actually exist - and I hope I don't have another one. Death dreams don't normally shake me this badly, but I feel so terrible over this one.

I had a dream last night that I had to go through some sort of initiation process. The process involved me running some tedious errands and then I had to get access to a certain room - the Persian Hall. It took a while to find and I had to get cleared through security to access it, but I finally got to the room and sat down. I had been told that in this room I would receive visions and would find out who I had been in a previous life. At first there was nothing, but then a woman in an old dress walked past me and disappeared, and for whatever reason I knew it was Catherine the Great. So I left the room and told the leaders of the process about my revelation, but they'd already known that I was the reincarnation of Catherine the Great. That's the only notable part of the dream, but it was very odd to have it as I don't think about reincarnation that often. In any case I doubt that it's true.

I think I was already living in Europe in my dream last night, for I was in a new apartment. But more than that, I had a roommate, a romantic partner that my dream had conjured, but whom I loved. My partner was taller than me and Scottish, complete with long, dark red hair. I believe they were meant to be genderfluid, because in the beginning they were presented to me as masculine and later on as feminine, so I'll use they/them pronouns.

The chronology of the dream is lost to me now. I remember it was winter and there was a nearby river that had frozen, so my partner took me to the river and taught me to ice skate. Then that night we sat together by the fireplace and they told me about Highland culture and how they wanted to introduce me to their culture, that there was a place for me in it. I sat and listened to them for what felt like hours, all about the culture and people and traditions. And they kept looking at me so softly and saying how much they loved me -- I believe marriage was in our future. They worked for the community, I'm not sure in what role, but much of my time was spent following them around town.

Towards the end of the dream, I had gone to take a nap but then my partner found me. They were more feminine presenting and the season had turned to Spring. They told me to look out the window and I could see a wildfire starting on a grassy hill near us. My partner didn't hesitate, they were already running out the door to go help, and I followed. But for whatever reason I was exhausted and lagging behind them, and they stopped and asked if I didn't want to be with them anymore. I could see how this conclusion was reached: my dream self mostly listened, rarely spoke. But it made me panic and I started explaining how I was just tired, how much I loved them.

I woke up at that point. It was an upsetting dream, to love someone and then lose them like that. Dreams always feel like forever, like another life, and I wish I could have stayed in that one a bit longer.