Just from reading too far into exactly what you typed, I would look into seeing how the dream parallels with your school experience. Maybe you are worrying about the future a bit and regretting something in your past. Did you feel you were being held back (mentally, financially, physically) from succeeding in school? It seems like the girl isn't a major player in your life, at least not enough to warrant dreaming about her 2 1/2 years after the fact. She most likely embodies the goals or hope that you had at that time in your life. And the corridors and the flights of stairs, maybe these represent the unattainable, the way you are searching for something you can't reach; namely, your goals or whatever it is you decide she represents. I'd be interested to know what the literal "something" is that happened to make you lose track of the figurative "her" in the first place. So, you are a kid that had big ideas and lots of plans and you're excited about school, then something happens that throws you off and from that point on all you can do is struggle to keep up. Reality sets in and you're not doing as well as you expected. Commonly happens at Uni, right? Things are just not how you thought they would be.

That's it, that's all I have. I'm probably way off, but shit I'm a photoshop girl, not a medicine woman. I'm curious to know what really did happen though!


[Edited on Mar 20, 2004 by Erin]

I know you want an interpretation of this dream as something that has to do with your life, but my belief has always been that dreams are just dreams. Most of the time they're just jibberish. Your brain takes stuff from your life and reorganizes it and it all pops out. I find it hard to believe that there's meaning in a giant metal octopus shooting cans of pringles out of its tenticles or trying to escape from the hotel in The Shining and running a guy I hated in grade school through with a katana. So just sit back and enjoy.

That said, though, I often have the same kinds of dreams as the one you described when I'm really stressed out about something. The whole "not being able to reach something" is common in my dreams when I'm really worried. So what are you worried about?

coming from a psychology major:

there are four main theories to dreaming:

1. wish fulfillment (freudian)-meaning that the things you dream are a psychological mechanism to obtain wants/wishes. the problem with this theory is that dreams are hard to assess properly.

2. activation synthesis-dreaming results as from random activity occuring during rem sleep. the brain creates a story to make sense of the randomness of the signals it is recieving.

3. problem solving-dreaming helps us to focus on issues in our life and find solutions to those problems.

4. threat simulation-dreaming evovled to help us practice the skills we need to avoid threats.

so, depending on which theoretical standpoint you want to come from really will help you to understand your dreams. i, myself am more on the activation synthesis standpoint of dreaming (only because i am an empiricist and brain activity can be measured, giving the the theory reliability and validity in academic research and study.) i wouldn't worry too much about the content of the dream so much unless it becomes recurring and begins to disrupt your sleep cycles.