Troll dreams

It's weird how sometimes you have a dream where some fundamental aspect of your life is changed and the dream is about you dealing with it.

Sometimes you remember what it "should" be and sometimes you are just rolling with whatever the change is. Often it's bad, like the classic dream where you're in school and realize you have a final exam on a class you forgot to attend all semester, or the career version where you're back at a job you left ages ago with all your built-up work waiting for you. You're late for something and couldn't possibly catch up. You're in a relationship you left for a good reason and you're trapped in it again. A child you never had is calling you mom. A person you don't have contact with in real life is suddenly in your life badgering you for something and you must react.

And then there are the catastrophic and/or impossible ones: where you're in a post-apocalyptic world trying to survive, or it's like a horror movie and you're trying to escape a supernatural creature, or you have to complete a fantasy quest that threatens your life, or you're in some nightmare scenario that you lack the resources to escape.

You're relieved when you wake up, usually. You're glad things are the way they are and not the way the dream cooked it up.

It's worse the other way.

It's worse when you dream of a return to something you miss, or a reappearance of a person or pet who died, or the acquisition of an ability or accomplishment you've always wanted. You feel so secure in the dream, and you almost feel like it's so silly you never realized everything's fine, and you feel so fulfilled and content.

Then you wake up and you realize again what you've lost or what you'll never have.

Sad that what I dreamed was that my mom was okay.

Not a fantastical dream at all, and yet in this broken country it's about as out of reach as wishing on a lamp. She didn't get medical assistance when she needed it because she can't afford to pay the hospital. It's awful seeing her clothes falling off because she's lost so much weight, being so fragile, saying she doesn't feel like she's even human anymore. And my brain thinks it's helping by cooking up a nighttime scenario of "lol what if everything was actually fine?"

No thanks, brain. Don't remind me, okay?