Body Parts on the Freeway

This post contains dark themes. Please use reader’s discretion.

While I was struggling with my job, I had many disturbing and/or absurd dreams. This is one of then.

A surreal scene

The dream just began, without any build-up, and showed me this: On the freeway, the road was wide and long, but there were almost no cars on it. Instead, there were many body parts. They didn’t look like the one you would see in horror movies, meaning, head was not a head, hand was not a hand, and foot was not a foot. For example, jaws were together with the neck below it, arms were with elbows and forearms. Something bad happened, body parts were separated, but not by the categories defined by textbook.

What I did then

When I saw the scene, I was riding a motorcycle. The thought of stopping never entered my mind; I just thought I didn’t want to touch anything there.

I carefully navigated through the body parts, trying not to run into any of them. At the same time, I wasn’t alone. There were medical staff taking care of who needed to be taken care of. Though the scene looked apocalyptic, it’s not chaotic. The wounded were focused on surviving, the medical staff were doing their work to help, and I was riding.

My interpretation of the dream

The strangely divided body parts may symbolize the unpleasant parts of my job. I worked in the government, and there were tons of messy and illogical things I found hard to accept.

When I tried to navigated through the body parts without touching them, it represented that I was trying to steer my attention away from those things. I didn’t want to think about them, didn’t want to admit how painful it was to be in the position.

The presence of medical staff may mean that care was present in my life, but in the dream I didn’t make contact with them. I just knew they were there, and I went on riding, pretending I wasn’t deterred by the scene. I was determined to go on, didn’t know where I was going. I only knew I had to keep going.