Sour dreams: Strawberry shoelaces, lost luggage and potential strokes

Cape Charles, VA. May 23, 2020. (I'm trying to avoid stock images because they look like, well, stock photos. I'm not saying that I won't use them in the future, just that I'm trying not to.)

Editor’s note: I rarely remember my dreams. The only reason I’m able to retell these is because I happened to immediately wake up and type the details in my Notes app each time. I’m fascinated by dreams, the brain, too, like how does my brain conjure this bizarre, illogical nonsense that actually makes complete sense while I’m dreaming? But while I do wonder about their source and their meanings, I’m no neuroscientist, researcher or interpreter. I’m just a participant. And like the dreams I can never recall in the first place, these scenes have slowly evaporated from my mind because as I retype my notes many months later, I can’t even trigger a memory for 90% of what I wrote. In fact, I’m like, “Did I really dream this? Is this really accurate?” And now I’m asking you: Do you remember your dreams? Are they as bizarre as mine? Do you know what your dreams may mean?

May 7, 2024

This young manager is hovering over my desk rearranging trinkets. I don’t like for folks whom I don’t have a close relationship with to invade my personal space or touch my personal shit. I feel violated.

He refuses to stop.

I walk off in a huff ‘bout like the time I gathered my purse and keys and exited the building in real life fall ‘22 after two male owners tried to berate me in a tiny, windowless closet for a conference room. This was after one of them actually opened his mouth to say, “You get one meal a day” because I made coffee on the company Keurig and ate a muffin at my desk while I worked and after he slid a printout across the table and said, “Read it to me.” In my mind, I was like, yoooo, who TF you think you talkin’ to? I wasn’t reading shit so I got up and walked out. I still wish I held up my middle fingers as I left. Talk about a wasted opportunity to stick it to mediocre white men.

In my dream, I go to the restroom. I attempt to make a call but it won’t connect. I can’t get a dial tone. 

“You coming back?” asks the voice on the other end.

It’s my manager. Somehow he’s on my phone.

The morning I walked out of the cozy conference room, I said, “I’m done.” One of the managers asked me, “Teronda, is this your resignation?” I didn’t respond. In fact, I didn’t utter any other words after that except to say goodbye to the two astonished coworkers who were in the office that day. Surely this wasn’t a surprise. Didn’t they notice I started taking my personal effects home weeks prior?

I hang up and try to redial a number.

“You coming back?” he asks again.

I hang up and try two more times.

He. Is. Still. On. My. Line.

I exit the restroom with the intent to return to my desk and gather my belongings only to find the young manager standing directly outside the bathroom door. I fly into a rage. 

I cross a street to enter another building. I walk through sliding glass doors and now I’m suddenly trailing young manager, flailing my arms and struggling to form coherent words and sentences.

Here’s the one consistent thing about my dreams that I do remember. When it’s time to stand up for or defend myself, I can’t speak. It’s not a stutter. I can open my mouth but it takes a whole lot of physical effort to get my words out and even then it’s only a syllable or so. I can never make myself heard.

While I try with all my might to curse him out, I notice he’s holding up his cell phone, recording a daggone ussie. I look like a maniac, arms flailing, spit spewing. I walk away.

I return to my desk to start packing my things, my trinkets he touched, my supplies I bought. 

None of my colleagues speak up or look in my direction, not even when my knickknacks become large totes of clothing and intimate wear.

Now this ain’t what I brought to work.

Naturally, I wake up.

July 12, 2024

I ate a small piece of the sour strawberry shoelace candy—the 21+ kind—a few hours before 2:30 a.m. That’s the last time I recall checking my phone display. What I really wanted was an uninterrupted window of deep sleep. I hate waking up at 2, 3 in the morning as much as I hate not being able to fall asleep right away. So I enlisted a sleep aid. What I got was two or so hours in an alternate universe searching for my luggage and purse.

Inside an airport, I run from one front desk to the next, ignoring whether it’s Southwest, Delta, JetBlue or whatever, asking the same questions. No one can help me but there’s a young man running alongside me offering his assistance. I had left my carryon items on the plane. Another young man—or is it this same one who’s pretending to help me—was flagged for potentially having a weapon so we quickly disembarked.

Just leave it, someone says, they’ll contact us.

But I want to know if we can get our possessions now. Will they be in baggage claim along with the checked bags? Has the plane left? Is it still at the gate? Can we get back on to retrieve our items?

Approaching New Orleans, LA. July 29, 2024. And, nope, I didn't lose any luggage.

I realize I have my phone so I call my old manager, Tam. I never saw her on the plane but I spotted her and our friend, Jung, inside the airport upon arrival. That’s when I learned they also left their luggage. We split up once Tam and Jung saw a salon spa. We didn’t cross paths again after that so I assume they’ve tracked down their bags and left the airport. Perhaps they could point me in the same direction. But they haven’t found theirs, either. 

Tam tells me that she used her card—I presume she’s referring to an AMEX—so that perk (or privilege?) enabled her to speak with someone knowledgeable about the situation. But she never gives me an update. Instead she informs me that first she needs to get some boots.

“Some what?” I ask.

“Some boots!” she repeats. Some red boots, I think. Her voice suddenly sounds muffled so I can’t quite hear.

I’m baffled. Kinda. It’s typical Tam. And Jung and I, too. And not “typical” that she shirks responsibilities for clothing. But we all spent many lunch breaks shopping at Tysons Corner, Tysons Galleria and Reston Town Center. Nordstorm. Anthropologie. South Moon Under. Neiman Marcus. Mango. If there were awards for best dressed at work and happy hour, we’d scoop ‘em all. So it isn’t exactly a shock that they temporarily abandon the search for their luggage because they spied some baaad ass red boots. Under normal circumstances, I’d go peep the boots, too!

But I pass on this shopping spree. I like what was in my bag and I have important shit in my purse. I approach a desk that I previously passed. It’s called a screen something. I bypassed it the first time because it was stationed with all men and I assumed they would give me inaccurate information so I walked away. But now that the desk is manned with all women, I still can’t get any help. I’m bewildered. Each woman turns her head to look at the next like who is going to help this chick? I turn around and use my right forearm to swipe the contents off of the desk that’s behind me and storm off. If I had their names, I’d report them all to corporate.

I remember the name Quadre, though. A man. Go figure. During his shift, he finds my belongings. He finds everyone’s stuff! 

Upon my departure from the airport, I end up wandering inside some mechanical room between two men and a refrigerator. One of the men lunges towards me and I attempt to kick the door back open. Only I kick in this universe. My achilles hits the side of the bed. 

I wake up. 

My damn heel hurts.

“You didn’t need that candy,” I say to myself.

I limp to the bathroom. 

It’s 4:33 a.m.

October 2, 2024

I’m packing boxes to move out.

The man I’m leaving, who belittles and berates me as I pack, has a meltdown as my moving crew of girlfriends listen out for my whispered instructions. My intent is to pack everything, gather it and move everything out in one swoop. Once we exit the residence, I ain’t coming back.

But this fool throws my stuff.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!” I yell.

I wake up with a pounding headache. I swear I hear and feel tiny blood vessels popping and bursting in the back of my head.

This happens a lot. My dreams often involve some angst, some fear, some conflict, some crazy drama. I know because they often startle me awake to a head that feels like it’s about to explode.

I fear I’ll have a stroke in my sleep.

I fear this is how I will die.

April 15, 2025

I fell asleep shortly after 2:30 a.m. I’m always checking my screen when I’m lying wide awake. In my dream, I’m supposed to pick Angie up from her new job at 1 p.m. Angie is one of the two astonished colleagues who watched me walk out of that job less than three years prior.

I stop at Walmart. Or it could be Roses, a discount retail store you may see down south. I need breakfast sandwiches for the next morning and there happens to be a McDonald’s build-a-breakfast kiosk at the entrance where the shopping carts normally reside. But there’s only one sandwich option as there are only oversized English muffins, sausage patties, sandwich wrappers and bags. 

I see an old classmate, another top-10 student who always makes me wonder why she stuck around after graduation. Instead I ask if the sandwiches are okay.

She shrugs.

“I get them all the time,” she says.

I put them back.

There’s a salon in this Walmart-Roses so I get my hair done. A shampoo and some color because these grays around my edges are disrespectful. They like to be seen but they hide from dye, only to pop out with a snarky “Ha Ha!” once my hair is completely dry.

Afterwards, I’m browsing khakis when I feel a man watching me.

“You need a blessing,” he says.

I do.

We all do, actually.

I realize it’s now 1:06 so I call Angie. I tell her that I’m at the plaza and that I assumed she wouldn’t be ready at 1 p.m. anyway. She works at a funeral home so her working hours can be…unpredictable. I tell her I’ll be there shortly.

The man and I head, not to the cashier, but to the service desk, where he’s supposed to be paying for this little khaki and denim fitted blazer that I picked out.

“I need $2,” he says.

I immediately think he stole my purse because I don’t see it but I shift a bag—a bag that shouldn’t be in the cart because where TF did it come from—and find the black mini leather barrel in the seat part. I don’t own a bag like this in real life, by the way. I don’t question why I have to contribute funds to my blessing. I retrieve the two bucks, grab my purchase and leave.

Fort McDowell, AZ. August 30, 2021.

It's now storming outside. Water is pooling and it's muddy everywhere. I no longer have to pick Angie up because she comes to me. In fact, she stands next to me. But it's not the Angie I know. She tells me to leave the shopping cart in the mud. Passersby yell at me.

“Our car is right there!” I yell back.

As we exit the plaza, the stoplight is green but I don’t go through it. I sit there as if it’s red. Cars begin to line up behind me but no one honks their horns. They just patiently await the lights to cycle through to yellow, red and back to green. This time I press the accelerator but the car only moves a few inches, no matter how hard I press the gas. It’s kinda like those dreamy moments where I try to speak up for myself but the words never come out. Metaphor, much? Once again, no one blows their horns.

Later I’m at home in my terry wrap. I scroll Insta and run across a post talking about folks blessing other folks at the store.

“They’ve been getting good stuff, too!” Christina, the owner of a wellness and travel company, says on her live. 

“We sure do!” I type back.

I go unroll my blessing bag, the one that that gentleman mostly paid for, probably because I want to take a picture and share it. The jacket is really adorable. I flip it over and see a center pleat with two laced bows on either side. But I also see these…splotches? 

Wait, is this BLEACH?! 

And why are the spots getting bigger?!

I go in the bathroom, perhaps to put some water on my blazer to somehow stop the stains from spreading. But my reflection captures me in the mirror. My freshly done hair is suddenly a frizzy mess! I remembered my first facial that felt good but didn’t look so good in my bathroom mirror. I was ashy, chalky, as if the products were way too harsh for my skin just like these chemicals were way too harsh for my hair. It’s a brittle puff tinged with yellow where the gray is that feels like I could crumble it and pull it out by the fistful. I search for my receipts—for my jacket and for my hair—but I can’t find them.

I return to Walmart-Roses anyway but not to confront the beautician. Instead I’m standing in a main aisle rummaging for oils and hydrators at a standalone display of Black haircare products. But none of the products that I grab are right.

I look up long enough to see my homegirl Tamika with younger versions of two of her children. We have a seat at some table and chairs some feet from the haircare display. She tells me a story about her kids catching the school bus to their cousin’s house but the bus driver won’t allow her son to disembark the bus there because the driver doesn’t know her son. She then notices my hair. 

She just stares.

She used to keep my hair laid back during our Nextel days. But she doesn’t say anything now. I never remedy my hair or blazer fiasco.

I hear a thump and a rumble above us.

“Oh, we must be having another thunderstorm,” I say.

I wake up. It’s around 5:30 a.m. All is silent.