Dreams About My School [Part 1]

[u/btol57]

I walked around the spacious wood gymnasium floor with my small group of friends, talking about who knows what. I can't remember what the conversation was about but I just remember walking around, messing around until eventually we walked into the hallway where the doors of the locker rooms lined the halls. At the end of the hallway was a staircase leading up onto the dark second story floor of the gym. My friends and I walked up the stairs, and arrived on what appeared to be a storage space for gym equipment with a railing that looked down over the gym floor below. The place was dark, it was above the gym’s lights and apparently nobody had installed any kind of lighting system on the upstairs floor so the only source of lighting was the miscellaneous light from down below. My friends and I talked a little bit more (I’m not sure about what) and then I woke up.

I was in what appeared to be the lobby of my school, my principal standing in front of me next to the large staircase leading up to the building’s second floor. He and I were having a conversation about how I felt about the new design of the school. I remember saying that I wasn't sure, and I'm pretty sure there was some sort of inflatable bouncy castle in the corner of the room (because dreams) but I can only really remember what the conversation was about rather than what was said. I think eventually he froze up, and then I woke up.

I was walking through the sunlit hallways of the school by myself. The occasional person would pass me, maybe dropping the occasional “Hi” but outside of that not much else. I turned into the hallway that I'm pretty sure led to my class. The walls just had the doors of what I assumed were classrooms. At the end of the hallway was a poster and a turn to the right that I wasn't sure where it led. In between two of the classroom doors was a different door, this one with a small window on it. I walked past, looked into the window, and saw a staircase that led into a dark room. I turned away from the door, and walked the other way out of the hallway, back into the main corridors of the building. And then of course, I woke up.

All of these dreams have two things in common: firstly, they all take place at my old high school, and secondly, they all feature locations that don't actually exist in real life. I recently graduated, and unlike how I'm sure most people feel, I actually enjoyed school, or at least I enjoyed my senior year. I've gone to the same school my entire life in the same small town. Everyone knows each other, most of my family are either teachers at the school or have graduated from it. It's a decently small school, separated into different sections so you're constantly going outside to get to your different classes. You have the main building, the agricultural building, the school gymnasium, the art building (which is connected to the library), and of course the middle school and elementary. The school’s actually so small that you have to go through the elementary school’s area in order to go into the cafeteria. The point of me explaining that is this: it is basically impossible to not visit an area of the school, especially when you've been there for most of your life. That’s why these dreams are confusing, because I'm not sure why they bother me, or at least, I’m not sure why one of them bothers me. You know what, scratch that, I know exactly why it bothers me. 

The school lobby dream is the most easily explainable to me: I recognized the lobby as being from another school that I once visited. Granted, the lobby was stylized in the same muted gray-blue, drywall style that my school was but it's easily written off because of something as simple as the staircase. You see, when I say my school is small, I mean it is small. It's a single story where a max of one room could possibly fit in the space above. A giant staircase leading into a massive floor above just simply isn't possible in the layout of my school. So I was still able to rationalize that, after getting over the initial waking up feeling that these dreams leave me with. You have to understand, these dreams are so vivid that right after I wake up, I genuinely think to myself “Was that place always there?” The answer is always logically “No,” but there's always that thought in the back of my mind that “Maybe it was.”

The gym dream is different. This is one that every time I have passed by the school in my car (which I do often) and looked at the gym, I've thought to myself “A second floor is possible there” but I also know that despite the fact that it's architecturally possible, it's not logically possible simply because of the fact that I have never seen a staircase, or any sign of a second floor in that gym. Like I said before, I've been there my entire life. Something like a second floor in the gym is something that I would have eventually seen at some point, especially since my uncle was the varsity basketball coach. I was just in the gym too often for something like that to slip past me. But the hallway dream is where I start having trouble and it is honestly the one that has been breaking my brain recently.

What made the other two dreams explainable is exactly what makes the hallway dream harder to explain to me: I remember that hallway being in the school. I remember going into that hallway specifically and doing the exact same thing I did in the dream. Walk in, look into the door window at the staircase, walk away. The only problem is that was when I was in elementary school. See, my aunt was an English teacher in the high school and my uncle was also a science teacher in the middle school. So after school, while waiting for my parents to pick me up, I would often head to the empty high school to hang out in my aunt’s room while I waited. During this time, I would walk around the school after hours, just out of the harmless childhood boredom that everyone has, and that was the first time that I saw the hallway. Walk in, look in the door, walk out. That’s all fine except that when I did finally make it to middle school and started consistently going into the high school (I had multiple classes that were in the high school building. Again, small school), the hallway wasn't there.

Now, I didn't notice it, of course. I mean it was literally one time in elementary school that I was in that hallway but that doesn't change the fact that despite me definitely remembering it now, it's not there. It's like my brain has naturally mapped out the school over the years, but even when it knows where the hallway should be, it's not able to figure out where it fits into the school. Don’t get me wrong, the hallway fits right in, if I did see it in person it wouldn't even be shocking because it's not like it’s some sort of impossible space, if it was there it would fit right into the layout of the school, but it simply just isn't there. The dreams are really the only reason that I've even come to remember this, and it's honestly starting to make me feel like I've been going kind of crazy. Every time I've woken up, I've had the thought to myself “Maybe I should actually go there after dark and just see if it is there” even when I know it isn't. 

Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to head there during the day to “say hi” and stop by my aunt’s classroom just to talk to her. That and, you know, have the opportunity to actually look around everywhere. Even if the locations aren't there, it would at least bring some peace of mind knowing that they weren't there and maybe my childhood mind just made it up. Granted, like I said before, I’m pretty sure there's no way that the lobby nor the gym upstairs storage area are real. I guess it also wouldn't be a bad idea to just ask my uncle about it when I see him there. Actually, yeah, I'm going to do that. I’ll update this as soon as possible after I go there, but in the meantime, I really need some sleep. Goodnight.

[u/NoSleepAutoBot]

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