I had an interesting dream last night. I was in a town or world that felt familiar but strange, like I belonged to the society there without fully being an individual. I kept experiencing everything from three perspectives—my own, a man’s, and a woman’s, slipping between them as if they shared one field of awareness.
In the dream, the three of us were living an everyday routine. The man was originally from another place, like someone born in New Jersey who later builds a life in California. He had a home in this town, but his real home, tied to who he truly was, existed somewhere else. The man and woman had met at some point and become friends. Over time, the woman wanted more and hoped for marriage. The man went along with it on the outside but didn’t actually want to get married, not even at a basic psychological level.
They planned to meet at a café they’d been to before, the place where they would “make it official.” The woman went there expecting him. Instead, he ran away, packed a bag and headed back to his original home.
She was deeply saddened and upset, wanting an explanation. She followed her instincts, trying to track where he might be going. In the dream, she never caught up, but I could see her and feel her emotions. I could also sense him—sometimes even more strongly, almost like I had been him at some point, though I wasn’t him.
He traveled back to his old neighborhood. When he arrived, everything felt familiar to me too, but I realized that familiarity was coming from his feelings, not my own memory. He knocked on a door, and the man who opened it looked exactly like him. Then I saw the whole town—every man there looked like him.
At that moment, I remembered (because he remembered) that he had caused this. When he was younger, with straight dark hair and seen as “bright but not sexy,” essentially autistic and misunderstood, he wanted to be loved and desired. Feeling different from everyone, he somehow made every man in the town look like him. That way, the women would have no one else to choose but him. But eventually the whole situation overwhelmed him, and that was why he left. Now that he had returned, the memories rushed back and I was experiencing them through him. The woman was getting close to arriving. It seemed he was the only one in that town who knew something was wrong: it wasn’t normal for an entire male population to share one face. And the woman who had loved him genuinely, for who he was, triggered all of that old fear and pressure inside him, which was why he had escaped again.
After a while, I found myself drifting through the town alone. Then I was suddenly above a river, moving as if walking but traveling at around 60 miles per hour, upright, a few feet above the water. I looked around, then transitioned onto land while still moving at that strange speed. I realized I was now completely alone in a vast, shifting landscape—wild, unfamiliar, changing as I moved.
That was when I realized I was dreaming. I did a reality check. My right hand looked normal. I pressed my index finger into my left palm, but it didn’t go through. Then I looked at my left hand and saw I had two thumbs. That confirmed the dream.
I kept traveling in that upright, gliding way, and the landscape continued to shift. It felt stable in a dreamlike way but was clearly not Earth as I know it. I asked (in my mind) where I was: another version of Earth? Another planet? Another realm?
Right after I asked, the landscape changed again and became more like a small town. On my right was a blue building with siding, two stories tall, about the size of a converted two-family house but used as a commercial space. As I approached, I saw the word in big letters on the front:
IMMIGRATION.
It felt like an answer to my question—this place was “immigration,” in some symbolic or literal sense.
The parking lot was empty. The air was damp, like it had just stopped raining. Evening light. Everything felt paused.
I kept moving and eventually reached a building that felt like a mall. As I approached the entrance, a worker or greeter stopped me and indicated a larger doorway nearby. I went inside and found myself in a cosmetics section filled with rows of makeup, lipsticks, brands everywhere.
While browsing, I tried to remember the name of a makeup brand I use in waking life. As soon as I focused on that memory, I felt myself starting to wake. The dream ended shortly after that, though I didn’t actually wake up until a few minutes or hours later.
Another threshold is always nearby.
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