I think that because I don't let myself get stressed out much, my subconscious must feel the need to cause me stress in my dreams. Last night I had a particularly rough dream.
I was granted a small roll in the second act of a play. It wasn't much, but it did have a fairly sizable monologue--in fact, that one monologue was my only part. But for some reason I kept putting off learning my lines. And I never had a rehearsal. I kept thinking "I'll learn my lines tomorrow", then, the morning of the play, I think "eh, it's a small part, I'll learn the monologue on the way to the theater"--though I didn't. Then I think "I'll learn it during the first act.". But I sit down with my parents to watch the first act of the play and I don't bother with the lines (why I'm in the audience watching a play I'm about to be in in the first place is beyond me). When the first act is about to wrap up a page (or she might have been an assistant director) comes and gets me. It's about now that I start to panic. I'm about to go on stage and I have no idea what to say--in fact, I never even once read over my monologue, so I don't even know what it's about. And I realize I left my script at home. So as the page (or AD) is pulling me backstage by the arm, I whisper to her "do you by any chance have a spare script I can go over real quickly?" And she responds "it's a little late to be practicing your lines--you go on in just over a minute." So at this point I'm just about having a full-fledged panic attack, and I tell her "okay, hang on a sec", and I dart away from her real quick before she can stop me or say anything. I quickly run back to my seat, grab my backpack, stuff my sweater in it while telling my parents "I'll meet up with you later", and I run. I slip out the side door, find a sewer entrance, and run as fast as is humanly possible through a drain-pipe. I keep running and running until I can't run any more, and then I push on further. I know I just ruined the whole production, but the only thing I can think of is that I have to get as far away as possible. I could've gone on stage and ad-libbed, or told someone, or something--but no, I ran.
All I can say is that my fight-or-flight response has always been heavily weighted toward flight. Whenever, throughout my entire life, I have felt like something is just too much--I leave. I run, or I quit, or I move. I don't try to resolve the problem, or improve somehow, I just vanish. Eventually, in the dream, the page-AD lady catches up to me in the storm drain. And I've never felt so ashamed in my life. I can't even look her in the eye as I apologize and try to make excuses. Never in my life have I been as stressed out and miserable as I was in that dream.
I can only assume I had this dream because I was feeling unprepared for my audition today--which was an epic failure, by the way. They advertised the audition as an open casting call, but when I got there they told me it was by appointment only. They were nice enough, though, to take my headshot/resume and tell me that they might be adding another day of auditions and they'd see about maybe having me come then. And they didn't laugh hysterically at me (at least not on the outside), which was nice. If I had gotten to audition and never been given a callback, I would've been totally fine with that. But to get all prepared and not even be given the chance to read left me with a sour taste in my mouth.
Within the last week or so I've actually had two other really stressful dreams--I can't remember one of them, but the other one I still remember clearly. It was my wedding day, and I was going to marry this nameless, faceless, beautiful girl who I was madly in love with. I've never been in love with anyone in real life half as much as I was in love with this girl. I would've done anything for her. I remember I was wearing my tux, and she was in her wedding dress (why I saw her in her dress before the wedding, I couldn't say), but she was missing this broach that she planned to wear. She thought she left it in her car, and asked me to fetch it for her. I jumped at the chance--just being given the opportunity to do something that would make her happy was ecstasy for me. So I ran to the car, got the broach, but by the time I got back, she was gone. Her mom stood there with a smirk on her face. Now, her mom never liked me. It was never anything personal against me, I know, but her mom was Korean (which was odd considering she was Caucasian), and she really wanted her daughter to marry a Korean boy. In fact, she had already picked out the Korean boy and brought him to the wedding (what's even more odd is that my subconscious chose the mom to be Korean--I feel no ill-will toward Koreans, so I can't imagine why that ethnicity was chosen to be causing me consternation). But she didn't just bring him to the wedding--she and the boy had kidnapped my fiancee in an attempt to keep us from getting married. I still didn't dislike the two--I understood it on the mother's part as just her wanting what was best for her daughter, and the Korean guy was more or less an unwitting participant that just did whatever my fiancee's mom told him to do. But I was worried about my future wife, and wanted her back desperately, but I didn't want to attack her mom (because I feared that would make my fiancee mad), so I grabbed the boy and started beating the crap out of him until he would tell me where they took her ('boy' may be misleading--he was as old as I am). I distinctly remember squishing the boy between a glass door and a wall and punching the glass at his face (I didn't want to do serious damage to him or anything), and then I woke up.
It was a very odd dream. I can't for the life of me imagine where it came from. I am not currently in love with anyone, nor do I have any interest in getting married any time soon (and very little interest in getting married ever). So it's strange to have such raw emotions--especially when they don't exist for me in the real world.
I wish I could remember the other stressful dream I had last week--the only thing I remember about it was it was much more violent...and bloody.
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