The End of the World

I’ve been having very, very vivid dreams lately. I don’t know if it’s because of the meds I’m on or what, but they’ve been so vivid — and almost weird. Every morning when I wake up, Leanne and I debrief what it could mean, analyzing every little detail, and it honestly makes me think a lot. Anyway, she said it would be really good to write about them, and I honestly think she’s right, so here’s one of the weird dreams I had the other night.

To set the scene, I was sitting at the beach — alone, but still surrounded by lots of people. There were huge waves, and all of a sudden there’s this loud announcement happening, almost like it’s coming from the sky, as if there are hidden speakers behind the clouds or translucent megaphones emitting sounds from above, secretly placed by the government. So there’s this loud announcement stating that the world has now reached a catastrophic political, social, and environmental state, and that it’s now every man for themselves against whatever is to happen.

Since I’m at the beach, everyone is panicking that something bad is coming — and sure enough, the tide starts pulling way back. We’re now amidst a tsunami, and everyone is running rampant across the beach. This beach is more enclosed, guarded off by a cliff, so I’m assuming I’m still in California in this dream. The tsunami hits, and everyone is getting swept away — people are dying, and nobody knows what to do. Once the tsunami dies down and people swim to shore, there aren’t many who have survived.

After the tsunami and as things settle, people start killing each other — so I guess I’m now part of a real-life purge. I’m still alone, trying to find my family. At one point, I find them. I’m in the back of the old van my family had — Dad driving, Mom in the passenger seat — and I’m trying to signal for my brother and sister to get in the car because people are being killed left and right and they’re walking as slow as turtles, with no care in the world.

Following this part of my dream, I assume we all lost each other (or maybe I turned over in my sleep), because I’m now alone again and lost in thought. I’m suddenly in what seems like Greece, in an era old enough to feel like I’m part of the Roman wars. There are statues and pillars around me, but it’s deserted. I’m enclosed in a private-ish area, but I can hear from a distance people killing each other — the purge still going on. I find high ground where I can hide and take refuge, holding a spear I’d found from one of the statues.

I remember feeling so scared, especially because I now had to kill people in order to stay alive. I hadn’t killed very many, but I was doing so with the spear in my hand at my hideout. Every kill left me with so much guilt and a terrible feeling. After a while, I heard from a distance a woman — someone I felt a motherly connection to. I heard her mumbling to others that she planned to create a new democracy, one that functioned for everyone and could provide safety for all citizens. When they made their way to me, I came face to face with this woman, about to strike her with my spear, but instead she offered me a place in her democracy. I took it — mainly as a way to stay safe longer, but also because, in that moment, joining an alliance felt like the only way to bring back this dying world.

So I’m now in this new alliance/democracy, and we’re scavenging for more people. We come across a religious alliance also on the hunt for others. Because we’re skeptical, we come up with a plan for how to proceed in case they’re planning to attack. We find ourselves inside a burned-down Catholic church, where we start to pray with them. The next thing I know, my alliance starts attacking and killing every single person with their head down, praying to whatever God. It was horrific. I didn’t like it at all, but I remember thinking it was the only solution. That’s where my dream ended — very abruptly, too.

The next morning, when I was in the kitchen debriefing with Leanne, we put the whole thing into ChatGPT to see if we could get any kind of answer as to what it all meant. It didn’t help much, to be honest, but based on my own thoughts and what I’d been doing day to day, the dream made sense to me. I think it was related to the fact that I’d been watching the news nearly every morning, and everything going on was making me feel anxious and scared — fearing for the current state of the U.S., but also where we might end up. Duh — what else could cause a dream about the end of the world and a collapsing civilization?

But the killing — and the anxiety I felt from it — I think that had to do with my fear of dying. Maybe I’m so scared of the idea of dying, or just giving up, that I’d do anything in my dream to stay alive. Maybe it’s not even just about survival — lately I’ve been fighting so hard to keep things afloat academically, socially, personally. I don’t know; I just feel this urge to keep fighting for everything I have because I don’t want to lose it — or lose myself. Super deep, I know.

All this to say, I think I often have dreams that resonate closely with how I feel about certain things I experience in life. It’s really cool because I think they reveal a lot about me — but also really scary, because sometimes they leave me feeling so shaken that I don’t even know how to feel from them, you know? I’ve also just never had this many consecutive dreams before in my life, and the fact that I can remember them so clearly is what scares me. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this story.