I was trying to find the right search words to see if other people experience their dreams the way I do and discovered this thread on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dreams/comments/13x1duc/do_your_dreams_take_place_in_a_consistent/

And Google's AI Overview brought up this, though I would not use the word "recurring" so much for my dreams:

Recurring Themes:

People often experience recurring dreams with consistent elements, which could be interpreted as a link to a specific parallel reality where certain situations repeatedly play out.

I do have the kind of recurring dreams that are considered textbook (i.e. haven't gone to class all semester, teeth fall out), but I also have dreams that pick up from the previous night's or contain the same places. 

For instance, there is a thriving mall that is often in my dreams and I saw it so vividly the first time that I mapped it out the next morning and saved it so I could compare it to the dreams that followed over the next days and weeks.

My dream life is often far more vivid and exciting than my waking, real life, but it is so extreme and so vibrant that it scares me more than anything else.

Even the bookstore and record store I frequent in my dreams scare me (the mall looks like it could be from the 1980s, but it looks nothing like the mall near me that I have been going to for more than 40 years).

In the bookstore I am often handed (aggressively, I might add) scores of romance novels (often Harlequins) when I am not asking for them and in the record store I am often finding "new" Carpenters albums, which might sound neat on paper, but is exhausting and sad.

My family history is often even more distorted from my real family history, but is chronological from dream to dream. My coworkers appear a lot as well.

Someone I terribly wronged (good intentions or not) decades ago shows up, too, but unlike with what happened in real life, she always seems glad to see me and we are friends. Those are some of my best dreams, but are somehow worse than my most frightening ones, because those good dreams are so far from the truth it's heartbreaking.

 It's my seventh day of not drinking and so far I'm doing well. I was averaging two glasses of wine pretty much every night since March of 2020, with the exceptions of when I had Covid and when I had surgery last year and was on painkillers. (And also when I could not get out to buy any wine during either of those times).

I thought I would miss wine more than I do, miss the buzz and the ability to sleep two or three hours in a row, dead to the world.

Maybe I do miss it some, but I can't afford to miss it. The Surgeon General's warning about alcohol causing cancer scared me. Of course, I never kidded myself that drinking as much wine as I was could be good, but I supposed I had my head in the clouds or chose to be purposely ignorant about it all.

Other alarming factors include how much weight I've gained since I began drinking and how much my acid reflux worsened and how I had nightmares even stronger than my pre-drinking ones. 

Two things are helping me stay on track: chamomile tea and (more importantly) my cat. I discovered that if I tell my cat each morning before I leave for work that I will not go the liquor store, I don't go to the liquor store. And being a certifiable homebody, once I'm at home I stay there and resist the urge to use an alcohol delivery service.

It may sound silly that I do this. After all, my cat has no clue what I'm saying nor what wine is nor the damage that it causes. But if there is one being in this whole world I have never lied to, that being is my cat. He is also who I am responsible for and whom I want to be there for as long as humanly possible.

There's a very good chance I'm lying when I say "maybe" I do miss wine. I know I miss it: I miss how it numbs my pain about the world and about difficult family situations and how it mellows out some of my horrible edges. But I can't afford to miss it and I won't miss it.

I just won't.

I'm finding I have less and less energy and heart to be angry about Trump and 2025. I wouldn't quite call it giving up or depression, more like any feeble attempt to fight is immediately toppled over by something as simple as a feather. 

I can't even get worked up over reading (and I'll take this with a grain of salt as I haven't seen this happen in the library I am a part of) that LGBTQ+ books are being ordered by librarians at a significantly lower percentage. Not even seeing that Disney is pulling a trans character from an upcoming movie has upset me, at least not like it would have in the past.

Instead, there is this detached resignation that has bled into all areas of my life, so that I really don't care about anything anymore except my cat and (if I can find the oomph during the day) a good book to read.

These issues are still important to me and it's not that I'm giving up because they don't directly affect my life (I'm a celibate asexual lesbian with no partner nor interest in dating nor do I have any queer friends). I still care about queer issues because they are human issues and I see people out there who do have partners and are in love and happy and they deserve to be able to stay that way.

The reason the fight is gone in me and that I no longer get riled up like I used to is that all of those reactions have burned out. It's almost impossible to live life 24/7 outraged and devastated by a world that is so hard to bear.

Even so, the small but not insignificant part of me that still feels things deeply is a bit gutted by this from a recent article on Disney's decision:

“The episode in its final form was so beautiful — and beautifully illustrated some of the experiences of being trans — and it was literally going to save lives by showing those who feel alone and unloved that there are people out there who understand. So it’s just very frustrating that Disney has decided to spend money to not save lives.”

https://movieweb.com/trans-pixar-employees-reveal-disney-conservative-views/

 

I feel like I go on and on about how it wasn’t until the 1984 NBC show Double Trouble came along that I even began to wonder if there was something wrong with me because I found a girl so cute and adorable and attractive. (Kate Foster, played by Jean Sagal, was absolutely fascinating to me.)

It felt so wholesome and yet I knew it wasn’t normal ...because in real life, at the same time, I was starting to have a crush on a junior, I barely knew but found very appealing, even though she and I could have come from two different planets.

So many things and feelings I thought I had forgotten are rushing back in my mind right now...not just the bad stuff (maybe if I had had straight crushes and liked boys instead I wouldn't have experienced so much unwelcome-ness with my emotions) but the good stuff too...like how a simple nighttime sitcom could make you happy and have something to look forward to when your daytime life came with lots of crappiness.

I have more to say, but need to get my thoughts together about it all...yet also avoid the overwhelming power of chronesthesia (mental time travel).

Late at night, when I get on social media and see my Facebook friends’ posts I realize just how much I have screwed up my life and how much they have not theirs.

And I’m happy for them because I know them from high school or college and know that the ones that are happy are also the ones that were nice people, decent people so they deserve every single good thing that’s happened to them.

I never had someone like me in high school or college and even if I had tried to pretend and gone ahead and played the straight life, there was no one who wanted to play the straight life with me 

I have really really really messed up and it’s just really hitting me right now, more than it ever has before. I first wrote this after having two glasses of wine, but it's now the next day and I'm not drinking and I still feel the same exact way.

It doesn’t matter that I was bullied in middle school and part of high school. Maybe I even deserved it. 

I should’ve risen above it.

If I were a really good, decent person, I would’ve met someone who would want to marry me and I would have had marriage and children 

No wonder my mom is so disappointed in me

It’s not so much I’m pining for the life I don’t have, but that I know I really messed up when it comes to what society expects of people, even now in 2024.

In that regard, I have failed miserably and I beat myself up over it more than my mom ever could.