I try to listen to the New York Times The Daily podcast most every day, so it's often top of my podcast feed. When I read the episode title 'Did Covid Change How We Dream' back in November 2021, I gasped out loud.

IT WASN'T JUST ME.

The episode is fascinating and I highly recommend it, but it's also worth Googling 'Covid Dreams' just to see all the different results that come up.

I'm not talking just people who have HAD Covid, but anyone who has gone through this pandemic. Which is, you know, everyone.

In the beginning, people were dreaming about masks - not having one when they needed one, being the only person wearing one, not being allowed in somewhere because they weren't (or were) wearing one.

They dreamed about being at parties where the room wouldn't stop filling up with people and they couldn't get out. Which would lead them to wake up with feelings of shame and guilt and fear.

Trauma manifests itself in so many ways, including what seeps into our dreams. And regardless of whether you lost someone, had a terrible experience with getting Covid, struggled financially, or skated through mostly okay, this pandemic carried an element of trauma for everyone.

The world shifted in ways that we may never even begin to understand.

I can't pinpoint exactly when my dreams started changing, so honestly can't say if it was before or after I got sick. But for months and months, the dreams I remember have a few common themes.

The first is that I actually REMEMBER these dreams. Not always, and not always in their entirety, but it's like waking up to the replay of a show I can only sort of remember.

The second is that they all involve me trying to do something extraordinarily mundane and simple, but struggling mightily to complete the task and never, ever finishing it before I wake up. If there's anyone else there, it's a cast of characters from high school, college, old friends I haven't seen in years, family members long deceased.

I'm taking out the trash, but the floor is muddy or turns to quicksand. My feet keep tripping up on obstacles I can't even see. I get distracted and find myself doing something entirely different, before remembering the trash is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. But I never make it. I never actually get the trash taken out.

I'm trying to arrange a sleepover at a house my grandparents lived in YEARS ago, but people keep showing up that I don't want there, the food in the fridge is all expired, everyone has to be picked up right after they showed up.

These dreams are maddening and exhausting. They leave me with feelings of anxiety, of being left out of something, of frustration. They leave me just feeling unsettled and unfinished.

They also worm there way into my psyche. Because they're in such regular locations doing such regular things, my brain tries to convince me that parts of them were real.

I was walking through the grocery store today craving chocolate and got excited that I had so many bags of Cadbury Mini-Eggs in the fridge at home. It took me a solid 30 seconds to remember that those were only in my dream, expired in my grandparents fridge.

A few months ago, I spent a good portion of the day irritated with my husband, until I realized it was just an argument we had in a dream.

I'm already struggling with short-term memory loss and continuing brain fog from Covid, so being unable to tell the difference between reality and dreams is cool. Good times. Helpful.

Also, mourning the loss of what you thought was a fridge full of Cadbury Mini-Eggs is tragic.

I'm no dream interpreter, but I can sure take a lot of meaning from these.

Since getting sick, most things have been a struggle. Normal, everyday tasks can feel very hard. I can't always count on a great routine, because I'm often exhausted.

I'm in a sort of holding pattern, waiting for my health to settle into something that resembles "normal". Whatever that might be.

A lot of things feel unfinished and unsettled. There's no one clear answer to anything that's going on with me and it's frustrating. I'm in a constant loop of doctor's visits, piles of medication and supplements, asking the same questions. It can often feel like one small thing will tip the scales and send me spiraling, although I try to be self-aware and manage my energy, my emotional state, my heart.

But I do wonder. As I find myself feeling a bit more grounded and accepting (even if it sucks to accept), will my dreams change?

Have they changed?

Am I a little bit closer to metaphorically taking out the trash and actually making it to the bin?

Am I possibly putting too much stock into what these dreams mean? Potentially. But also.

LET ME LIVE MY LIFE AND FIND MEANING IN WHY MY OLD ROOMMATE FROM COLLEGE SHOWED UP IN MY DREAMS.

Please and thank you.

Either way, I'm fascinated by this subject. Have you noticed your dreams have changed or did change early on in the pandemic? Do you remember your dreams more now than before?

I'd love to hear from you!

Until next week. Or until you show up at my door with your leftover Cadbury Mini-Eggs.