Well, because just look at him! Mwahahahaha!

Seriously though, I have been having very vivid dreams of late. What’s more curious is that I have been remembering the details of these dreams for a longer period of time. It used to be that I’d remember a dream when I wake up, but forget about it during the course of the day. It’s different these days. I would remember my dream long after I’ve woken up, and I don’t forget it as easily as I previously would. In fact, I still remember a dream I’ve had several weeks before like it was just last night.

I am walking around Glorietta, window shopping, when I get zapped somehow in front of a children’s fair. It is bright, and colorful, and there’s a carousel. Unfortunately, I don’t have a mask with me, and they only let people in with masks. I run to the nearest drugstore to purchase a mask, but they wouldn’t let me in because I’m not wearing a mask! Mwahahahaha!

There is a lot to unpack here.

Apparently, I am not the only one doing some hardcore vivid dreaming these days.

“This is global. I’m working currently in the U.S., Australia, India, China, and Japan. Story is the same everywhere. People are dreaming up a storm,” says Robert Bosnak, a psychoanalyst and past president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams for an article published in InStyle.

Collectively, it seems, we are processing the anxiety/grief/frustration/anger brought on by the pandemic when we hit the sack.

“We’re dealing with a very intense cluster of very primal, existential anxieties right now — fear of loss of loved ones, fear of our own potential death, fear of suffering, fear of watching other people suffer, loss of contact with people we love. We’re trying to keep our lid on and contain ourselves during the day and so at night, dreaming is the way we release that repression mechanism and start processing how we are making sense of these things,” adds Martha Crawford, a licensed social worker.

Not only are we vivid dreaming, but we’re vivid dreaming some bizarre stuff.

Harvard researcher Deirdre Barrett started asking people about what they’ve dreaming about in an online survey, and she collected so much information that she had enough data to come up with a book.

My I’m-not-wearing-a-mask dream is quite common, and has replaced the I’m-walking-naked-in-public in the embarrassment/shame continuum.

But I’m glad that that’s the strangest I’ve had in relation to my pandemic dreams. Barrett has documented people dreaming of insects attacking them, from cockroaches and grasshoppers to bed bugs and stink bugs. One person even dreamt of people wearing masks for so long that they didn’t have mouths anymore.

Picture Keanu in that interrogation scene where he can’t speak. Oh, and they insert some kind of bug on him, too!

Barrett observed though that when the vaccines started rolling in, people began to have happier dreams. They started dreaming of seeing friends or going out at night.

My most recent dreams are way happier, too.

I dreamt of Hyun Bin. I interviewed him, though I have no memory of what questions I asked, just the memory of the event having happened, in the dream of course. The setting changed in the next scene, and I found myself walking along Station 2 or 3 in Boracay, daytime, and Binnie was hanging out in a bar, and he smiled at me. I smiled back. Fade out. No soundtrack.

A week or so later, I dreamt that I made Hyun Bin mashed potatoes. I remember that I made mashed potatoes IRL that week.

My most recent dream is way more fabulous. I live in a farm with friends, and we’re making essential oils out of roses while a chef teaches us how to cook a pasta dish. Delicious!

Barrett says you could try to train yourself to dream happier by placing a photograph of your desired dream scenario near your bed.

So you know what I’m going to do tonight, right? I am going to stare at these photographs before going to bed, and dream of Binnie at the farm with the roses and pasta and yes, mashed potatoes!

Sweet dreams!