Over the years I keep having the same recurring dreams. And these dreams aren’t very good ones, either.

The dream that I’ve consistently had my entire life is thus: I’m being chased. Something, and I don’t know what or who, is chasing me and I can’t get away from it. Sometimes I’m in the house I grew up in, running from room to room, rooftop, basement, in and out of doors and windows. Sometimes I’m outside, and it could be the forest or a town I’ve lived in from my past. No matter what I do, no matter what I try, whether on foot or in a car or flying somehow, I just can’t get away. I don’t know what it is, but I do know that it is bad, and I cannot let it catch me, so I have to keep running away trying to escape.

I got out of the Navy in January 1995. And since then I often have the dream that I’m back in the Navy. I’m back on the ship that I hated so much, trapped, unhappy, full of angst. Always in this dream I’m serving a life sentence, never to be discharged, forever serving aboard the USS Antietam. I can smell so vividly the JP5 fuel, and the PVC decks, and horrible BO of the dirtbag sailors in engineering. All the people that I hated are there, still making me miserable, taunting me, physically assaulting me, but I can’t speak and my punches are in slow motion and ineffective.

Ten years ago I graduated from college, in May 2004, from Chico State. And in my dream I’m back in college. It’s my last semester. It’s the final day of school. And I have to go take a final for a class, one that I obviously need to graduate, and I have not been to this class in weeks. I’m completely unprepared. I’m panicking. I have to take the final for this class and I know I’m going to fail, and not graduate.

And then I wake up from these dreams. I’m usually breathing heavily, sometimes in a cold sweat, and feeling…dread. Like something from my past is unresolved. I don’t know.

I don’t know why I keep having these dreams. But I do know that I wish they would stop.