I had the strangest dream last night. I was running through a Beauty and the Beast-esque castle while being chased by a cartoon policeman. A life-long lucid dreamer, I immediately knew this was a dream, not because the law was on my heels in a Disney-inspired castle, but because I was too tall—a miraculous six feet—and also deaf. I was carrying a small grey backpack with a frozen baby inside it. Despite being rock solid in its frozen cage, the baby was somehow alive. My mission was to take it to a magical fridge which could save its life.
As I ran, I got the wild idea that the policeman, who, now that I think about it, looked like Chief Clancy Wiggum from The Simpsons, was chasing me because the baby knew some government secret. In hindsight, he was probably after me because I had a frozen baby in my backpack. Fair enough.
There was also the matter of the ghost screaming at me. Her name was Jessica, and wild blonde hair whipped around her beautiful, pale face as she absolutely ripped me to shreds in loud, angry rants. At least, this is what I gather they were. I couldn’t hear her, after all, but she looked pretty mad. I wonder if the baby was hers.
After stumbling through decrepit old gardens and jumping through a burning bridge, I finally found the magical fridge and—voila, there was another frozen baby inside! Soon, I was running through ruined music halls and old libraries, not carrying just the babies but the entire magical fridge on my six-foot frame. I dimly realised I am too young and inexperienced to be a mother, much less a single mother, but I had potentially kidnapped two babies now. What else was I to do?
The dream ended with us—me and my newly adopted frozen children—jumping off yet another burning bridge. When I woke up, I told my aunts, both of whom are psychologists, about the dream. One of them said that perhaps the frozen babies represented my inner child, whom I was trying desperately to save, while Jessica the Ghost was my self-sabotaging ways and self-doubt. The other one asked me whether I’m still going to therapy. The answer is yes.
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Andrea Tode is a Spanish-Peruvian writer who once had big dreams of becoming not only a nun, but the first female Pope. Considering that she was not raised in a particularly religious environment, perhaps her young self was simply power-hungry and overly obsessed with mythology. Tragically, she’s had to settle for writing novels and plays. Her work has been featured in International Business Times UK and Deep Travel Magazine.