The Dream

I'm half awake as I write this. Usually I have no interests in transcribing my dreams down, but I've had this same dream for years now and I'm starting to think maybe it means something significant.

The dream requires me to be walking through a vaguely familiar intercity neighborhood. Not quite the Fairmount section of Philadelphia, but more like the chunk of town right to the North of Fairmount. I usually begin the dream already walking towards my destination which is a house that is not exactly familiar to me. I have a sense in the dream of where it is, but my self in the dream never really "thinks" about the house too much. I don't know whose house it is, who lives there, why I am going there. All I do know is that is my destination. When the dream repeats every couple of months, I know right away where I am and what this dream is all about. The locations always look the same, and more times than not I'm running in the dream. The dream me is not more physically fit, and I'm now convinced that the running aspect of the dream has to do with fear of the neighborhood not a fitness program. There I am running through a sketchy area of town and I know exactly where I need to get to, a house located between 19th Street and 20th Street. I don't know the street name, but I'm oddly aware of what hundred block the house I'm after sits on. The thing is that in this dream I never actually find 19th Street, I find 21st, 22nd, dead ends. The dream consists of me just running and running through this section of the city, alone, exhausted and lost. The worst parts are when I make a wrong turn and get to a dead end in an alley. Or when I try to take a short cut through someone's house and they almost catch me. I never see anyone chasing me, but my dream self is convinced that some one is. Every time I wake from this dream I am still running and I never wind up where I was headed. There is no odd climax or happy ending.

So there it is, the repeating dream. I assume it's a metaphor for my life. That I'm searching for something that I haven't found yet in life. Or that I cannot find the destination because I'm trying too hard to find it. I am not one to consult dream analysis books or anything like that, but if you have an opinion to offer, please do. I'm not scared by the dream, just kind of spooked by the repitition of it in exact detail.