The Dream Diaries of Teenage Girls
In this Deep Dive on #AgencyOrAge, Anannya Baruah sets out to discover what young girls in Assam and Meghalaya between the age of 15–16 are dreaming of. Little does she know that she’s in for a rollercoaster ride.
I often dream I’m running away from someone who wants to kill me… I run so fast, all the way from the ground floor to the top floor. The funny thing is, every time, it is a different building I’m running up — sometimes they are incomplete flats that are in different stages of construction; or scarier still, empty flats with dead people inside them.
Naina, 16, is from Guwahati and loves Kdramas, music and basketball. This is one of her recurring dreams.
It had seemed like a simple enough proposition — find out what young women between the ages of 15 and 16 dream of, especially if they had had any particularly vivid or memorable dream recently. However, when I first began interviewing various young women, bright and articulate as they were, most initially responded by telling me about their dreams for the future.
S,15, from Golaghat, a large town in upper Assam, said she wanted to become an officer in the administrative services. Prajyapti Gogoi, 16, talked about wanting to be a doctor and to educate people about taboo topics like mental and menstrual health.
The conflation of dreams with hope/ambition struck me as curious, especially when most of them hesitated when I explained that I wanted to know what they saw in their actual dreams. “I rarely dream at night,” was the most common response, often followed by, “I barely ever have dreams, and I don’t ever remember them.”
I was puzzling over it when I watched Netflix’s adaptation of Sandman, Neil Gaiman’s celebrated comic book series. In Episode 4, A Hope in Hell, Morpheus, lord of Dreaming, battles Lucifer in order to win his Helm back. It is a battle of words, but words can wound to kill here, and when Lucifer delivers a near-lethal blow, “the dark at the end of everything”, it has Morpheus gasping for life, unable to respond. Morpheus’s raven reminds him that he is the one thing that can survive the anti-life, because “dreams don’t die, not if you believe in them”. What Morpheus comes back with, though, is, “I am hope,” something that even Lucifer has no counter to. And if Morpheus, the literal anthropomorphic representation of dreams, could conflate the two, I realised that I needed to dig a little deeper into why my teenage subjects in Assam responded the way they first did.
As an older millennial still recovering from her awkward teenage years, I, like this Sarah Andersen comic, might be intimidated by Gen Z’s seeming poise, but it took me a little while to remember that adolescence still is a time of vulnerability when one begins trying to make sense of the world around them and who they themselves are.
Perhaps in expecting my subjects to immediately open up to a grown-up who is a relative stranger about their messy, half-remembered, often incomprehensible dreams, I was asking them to tread far more uncharted waters than I’d initially thought.
Seeking guidance, I spoke to a few therapists and dream workers — professionals who study the formation of dreams and work with their clients to analyse and understand them better. Brinda Jacob-Janvrin in Bengaluru is a movement-based, expressive arts therapist who uses dream work as part of her toolkit. She helped bring my understanding of dreamwork up to speed from undergraduate lectures on Freud and dream interpretation. Brinda explained, “We no longer think about interpreting dreams, which means that each dream has one meaning; rather, we explore dreams to see what wants to open up within the psyche as we work with the dream images… What is interesting is really how the dreamer resonates with these different meanings, how the body responds as we revisit these images, what the emotions are that are held. There are of course symbolic, or archetypal references, but what is more important is how the dreamer resonates at the personal level at this moment. The same dreamer might respond to the same dream differently in 10 years.”
Benjamin Newman, a dream worker with nearly three decades of experience and who had worked with teens in the past, contextualised my respondents’ initial responses for me. He pointed out that the teenage years are a period of major transition — of learning to differentiate from the family unit and develop one’s own sense of individuality in the world — a time for exploration, as well as risk-taking.
It isn’t perhaps entirely surprising, then, that when so much is already in flux, these teens found it easier to define dreams in terms of more tangible, outward-facing dreams for the future rather than what they dreamt of at night, and it would take a little longer before some of these young women could share a few of their dreams with me.
Cew, 16, from Golaghat, is busy with preparations for her Class 10 boards, but planning to make more time for her hobbies and interests, which include playing the ukelele, journalling, painting — especially mandala art and canvases, and reading. She’d initially found it hard to remember any of her dreams, so I suggested she try maintaining a dream diary for a few days, and it was interesting to see how diverse her dreams often were.
Okay this might sound a bit off the track but yeah once I saw my sibling choking me💀 Like I’m really obsessed with a YouTube channel (Jombae’s diary) where a [Darjeeling] guy showcases his academic life, I mean his college life and how he enjoys it and travels with his friends… [It’s] basically a vlog and I love his vlogs…
So I saw in my dreams that me and my sibling were going somewhere and I saw her texting him (the vlog guy). I requested her to show me what they were talking about since I was a bit jealous💀 and she refused. After asking her for the 100th time I was really pissed off and I asked our driver bhaiyya that I don’t want to go with her anymore so I requested him to take me to my [parents’] house and when I told him that, he was returning back (sic) and then she started choking me and our driver bhaiyya was just driving💀 and the choke was so real that I really felt it on my neck and woke up shouting… and my sibling who was sleeping right next to me that night asked me if I was okay and I was half-asleep and all I could think was that she will choke me again now so I punched her which was barely a punch and my confused sibling just went back to sleep. The next day at our breakfast table my sibling told my parents about how I first shouted and then hit her and they started to laugh and that was embarrassing🐽.
Prajyapti Gogoi, from Dibrugarh, also maintained a dream diary for a few days in the middle of her busy schedule of higher secondary classes and prep for medical college entrance examination, and her dreams ranged from teen detectives and Pride and Prejudice to zombie apocalypses.
“Surprisingly, I had a pleasant dream today. I dreamt that I was a character of the book, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Unfortunately, don’t remember everything… but I do remember attending the ball where the two protagonists met for the first time.
“Today’s dream was both fun and strange. Apparently, I was a secret detective who was trying to solve a mysterious case. One thing I can confirm is that the dream was a very scary one, because I woke up with a heart that was beating very fast. The case was about a few girls who had gone missing without any trace. The scenes I saw were extremely gore (sic). Secretly hoping that I was second in command to Sherlock Holmes.
If directors of horror movies want a new script, they should contact me. Today’s dream was terrifying. I saw that I was going to a park with my friends when suddenly a zombie apocalypse broke out. Me and my friends had to run and hide to save ourselves. I’m pretty sure that if this dream, more a nightmare, was to be turned into a movie, it would beat all the zombie movies out there.
It turns out that if you’re a teenager, you can run, you can hide, but you can’t escape academics — not even in your dreams, and both Cew and Prajyapti dreamt of horrible results. When it rains, it pours, and Cew’s nightmares about her studies were no different.
This one time I saw something related to my academics and this was a really terrifying one… I saw that my Social Science and English teacher scolded me because I didn’t do my practicals well and my Biology teacher told me I messed up my papers when I respond the most in the class and guess what… when my results came out I did worst. I think I got 80 or something I don’t remember but something with 8. And then all the teachers surrounded me and asked me why my marks had deteriorated and all I could possibly think was to give up. Then to spice up my already beaten-up condition, my Headmistress called my parents and I saw that along with my parents my entire family just showed up to my school within a second💀 and I was so freaked out that my over-serious family when it comes to studies will throw me out of the family. And then I don’t remember what happened next. Maybe I jumped to some other inexplicable dream without any conclusion.
Similarly, the night before her board results were out, Prajyapti had a nightmare that she had disappointed everyone with her grades, and it was a huge weight off her shoulders when her actual results were very different.
Not all teenaged dreams are horrific, and romance often pops up in them, albeit in unexpected ways. Naina told me about one such romantic dream, with a twist.
I was on a bus with my best friend, A, when we saw this boy who is our senior. He boarded the bus, and made his way to us, and whispered in my ear that he was going to marry A. In my dream, I was a little surprised, because I thought I was the one he had a crush on, but I totally encouraged my friend that she should marry him. And then he took us to a Bibaah Bhawan (a wedding hall) where her parents were already waiting to marry them off. It surprised me so much that I woke up, and I couldn’t stop laughing!
For Cew, it was a family history of crushing that cropped up in her dream.
The other day I went to my grandmother’s house which is some metres away from my parents’ house to study history about Assam’s revolt for independence and I knew my grandmom would have many stories about that… so I went to her and I did some research myself. And as expected she told me many interesting stories… she [said] by the time she graduated from her college India already got her independence so it was a great feeling for her to go to her college with the great feeling of self-rule and my great-grandfather, who was also a Judicial Officer, used to invite many people to celebrate their victory and hard work. And she also mentioned that among the British people a few were on the good side too… and she used to flex in front of her friends that her father was a graduate from Cotton College and that the white people used to come to their house and one of them was a very handsome one🤣.
These discussions were quite interesting for me so that night I saw my great-grandfather in my dreams… I didn’t see his face clearly but I knew that it was him. He was talking to some of his colleagues and some people were serving something. Most probably they were having dinner or something. I felt good when I woke up, I even told my grandmom that I saw him and all she said was, ‘Did you see the handsome one too?’
Some dreams bordered on the surreal. Fifteen-year-old Vanessa is from Shillong, Meghalaya and loves singing, playing the piano, guitar and ukulele, and painting and sketching — which often help her unwind when she’s overwhelmed by school. She had a rather trippy dream to share with me:
Our grandma called us up and told us to visit her and our grandpa. We usually have to walk down the steps which lead down to her but in that dream I dreamt that the steps were narrow, steep, and one step I miss it’s a death call. So we had to walk slow and steady. We then reached someone else’s house, the colour of the room was sea green … [and it] had a dim bulb, my family and my mom’s family sat in a circle, even though there was no fire on or any board game. We sat there doing nothing. For some reason I think I told them that I would be taking a nap? I don’t remember.
So I had a dream within a dream😂 In that dream, … we were fighting with a devil. The devil was in full black clothes looked like a clown for some reason. And I don’t remember the face but I think it was covered in white cloth. The devil did really hate me for some reason, he held me from my t-shirt and swung from left to right, my family did fight with the devil to let go of me but it was of no use, he’s too powerful. At that point I felt like I my soul was light and it was flying??? I cannot express how I felt at that time. After sometime, the dream in the dream repeated.
He later got tired of me I guess? 😂 because I found out that the roots of a giant tree fully wrapped him up and he was asking me for help. I was so so scared after I woke up from that dream.
Brenda, 15, who studies with Vanessa in Shillong, is a chirpy, musically inclined teenager who loves to read. She told me about the dream she remembered most vividly, and it was far darker than anything I’d expected to hear.
The dream started with me buying medicine for my grandmother… she is really sick these past few months. So the doctor keeps on increasing her dosage… hence why I dreamt of this. I reached home. I told her that the doctor asked her to drink (sic) two pills instead of one before eating. She looked quite crazed but I ignored it thinking it was just because she just woke up… instead of feeling down? You know like… when the doctor asks you to drink medicine you feel more sick? Instead of that she smiled. That smile…
Oh my… Gave me chills..
She asked me if she should drink it now? I didn’t even get to reply. She just snatched the medicine from my hands and tried to take out the pills and swallow them whole. And I was trying to get it back, but she wouldn’t give it back! So I had to fight her off by making her confused with my movements. She scratched my entire face!!! And pulled my hair!
But I got the medicine back. I told her to sit there so that I can go change and bring her food. She smiled and shooed me out.
I kept the medicine inside a container in the room she was sitting in and I went to change… I took only for about 5 minutes?
When I entered the room she was in, I saw her lying down on the floor with the packet of the pills beside her and the packet was empty…
She had overdosed.
I was screaming shouting for help. I was all alone in the house, everyone was working. So I raised her head and put it on my lap. I asked her why why did she do this.
She looked up at me and smiled. These words will haunt me forever. ‘So that you can live an easy life without me in it.’ I just stared at her and cried. And one last breath… she looked up at me and died with her eyes looking straight at me. And then I woke up. I woke up and cried.
Yagna, Vanessa and Brenda’s friend from Seven Set School, Shillong, also enjoys painting and playing the guitar like her friends. She too had a series of unsettling, interconnected dreams that she chose to share.
So I had this dream a few months back and it still haunts me. I saw my friend (a guy) and a person sitting next to him, lifeless, whom I’ve never seen before. My friend said something very weird which I still don’t understand. He said, ‘This man will ruin your life,’ but in Hindi. Then suddenly I find myself in a forest where I see my other friend’s (a girl) sister. She had been crying and her face was swollen. And, I saw a shadow besides her which was taking her somewhere and she said, “Go home, Yagna. Your grandfather has been taken to the hospital.’ And with that, my dream ended and I woke up around 3 a.m.
I told my friend whom I saw in the dream (the guy). I told him about the person I saw. He asked me to describe that person and when I did, he was shocked and I asked him what’s wrong and then he sends me a picture of his friend and that was the exact same person I saw in my dream but the weird part is that I’ve never seen him before in my life. I told my other friend about this (the girl) and I told her that something doesn’t feel right and she should take care of her sister and her family.
Now this literally scared me to death, right? The next day after I told her about the dream, that friend’s grandmother passed away.
Anyways continuing with the dream, after a few months my friend’s (the guy) friend dreamt of something related to my dream. He saw how the person who was present in my dream and who seemed lifeless, died. And even he saw a shadow. The same night another one of his friends dreamt of something related and this friend of his is the guy I saw in my dream. He saw himself in the afterlife.
We’ll call the lifeless guy Jack so that it’ll be easier. Now this is how it’s all related…
One sees how Jack dies.
I see him dead in my dream.
And Jack sees himself in the afterlife.
And all of us see one thing in common, the shadow…And, I’ve never seen or met these two people.
It’s been months now, nothing has happened and I hope nothing serious happens. So yeah this was the weirdest and the scariest of dreams I’ve ever had.
Death seemed to be a recurrent motif in many dreams. Naina dreamt of being chased by someone murderous; S (16, from Golaghat) told me about seeing a dead relative in her dreams — except they looked happy and content, dancing quite often — unlike their last days which had entailed a lot of suffering. I asked Mr. Newman, the dream worker, about this recurrent motif, and while dream exploration is really beyond the scope of this essay, he reminded me that there is a death of our previous selves in each stage of growing up, and rarely do most societies have room to acknowledge, let alone grieve, the loss of parts of ourselves as we fit into newer roles. It is perhaps in sleep, in our dreams, that we come face to face with those hidden parts in different forms — and the archetype of death might just be one of them.
I was curious to know how their dreams made these young women feel, and if they’d shared them with anyone else. Some of them tried to make sense of their dreams in the light of whatever else had gone on in their lives around then. Once she was done laughing over her ridiculous dream, Naina felt that she’d dreamt of her friend’s impromptu wedding because she’d watched a wedding video earlier that evening. Prajyapti thought she’d dreamt about doing badly in her exams because stress made her sleep really badly the night before her results.
Some of the young women often turned to grownups around them to help them make sense of their dreams, particularly the scary ones. S asked her mother what her recurring dreams about her dead relative meant, and her mother told her they were probably trying to tell S that they were finally in a good place and that she needn’t worry about them anymore. Cew’s family reacted with amusement after she punched her sibling in her dream, while her grandmother was keener to hear about her old crush. When Brenda told her family about another dream about seeing them seated around their hearth with an unusually large snake nestled in their midst, they said it probably meant that they had a snake among their family, because culturally, snakes are seen as both witty and cruel.
However, when it came to the terrifying nightmares, Vanessa, Yagna and Brenda all said that their families had a similar response, “Just go and tell the toilet your dream and then flush it out!” which often startled them into hilarity and helped them feel a little better. Vanessa’s mother asked her if one leg was pressing down on the other one while she slept on her side, which made Vanessa think her physical discomfort might have led to her dream — especially because she still was in some pain from her appendix surgery.
“A nightmare’s purpose is to reveal a dreamer’s fears so that they may face them,” growls Gaiman’s Morpheus to a rebellious nightmare in Sandman.
While most people around teenagers probably do not encourage deep dives into dream analysis, they help young people parse their dreams in ways that help them deal with the messiness of incomprehensible, or even disturbing, visions.
If our adolescence, as Mr. Newman had pointed out, is a time of flux and learning to grow into one’s own person, perhaps the ways in which we learn to make sense of the world around us and the worlds within us aren’t all that different — with a little bit of help from those around us: sometimes using humour, sometimes with very literal explanations that help rationalise things that seem beyond reason, and sometimes with pragmatism that might involve pushing some things to the side for later. When you’re a teenager, the world seems to be brimming over with an infinitude of possibilities, and even as these young women take sure-footed steps towards becoming who they dream of being, perhaps some of those roads to finding who they are and who they can be might also lie in these journeys inwards in their dreams.
Anannya reads a fair bit, writes a little, and translates occasionally. She gave up on studying Bio as quickly as she could, and feels the same way about having to write a bio.
