I have lived through 1 tornado in my life and frankly, it was 1 too many. It was senior year of college, September 2001, and I was sitting in class during Architectural Studio, when all I heard was continuous thunder. The booming never stopped. Crack, boom, rumble. Then the papers started flying off the walls. We couldn’t see a thing due to the room only having these slit windows in alcoves, but we were aware of how dark it got outside. Eventually, a professor ran into our room and said we couldn’t go anywhere, there was a tornado. We all just stared at her in shock.

A tornado hitting Maryland?! Kind of bizarre. You would think Kansas or another of the plains states, but Maryland?! This University of Maryland tornado (story here) registered as an F3, with winds as high as 206mph, and killed 2 sisters traveling home. It flipped their car over one of the high-rise dorm buildings. One sister was set to graduate in January, the other was a sophomore. While I, fortunately, was unscathed, many others weren’t. My husband (fiancee at the time) was displaced from his apartment and had to live in a hotel for awhile. Many were injured. Buildings were destroyed and the landscape unrecognizable.

But we persevered.

Now, it was no tornado like that in the Wizard of Oz. It didn’t lift up the building and drop us in a fantasy world filled with flying monkeys, witches, and little people. But, it did scare us all. Not long after…

… the dreams started.

When they first began, they were terrifying. Similar to the double cyclone scene in the 1996 movie Twister starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. They occurred a couple times a week. I was always caught in them, trying to hold on for dear life. Some of the dreams had up to 6 tornadoes spinning in my vision at one time. I screamed, I cried. It was horrible.

After a few years, they diminished in occurrence. The dreams became a bi-yearly event and then one day they were gone. Afterall, the Maryland tornado happened over 17 years ago. I thought I was free of them, that my PTSD-inducing dreams were gone.

Sadly, I was wrong.

A few weeks ago, I had a dream. My husband, daughter and I were on vacation in North Carolina. We were staying at a hotel. We checked in, received our room keys and ventured to our room. I should have known something was amiss when upon entering our room there was no ceiling over the beds, just open sky. It was actually beautiful in the beginning, laying in the beds at night and staring up at the stars. One day it changed though. Thunderstorms began to roll in. Oddly enough, there was no rain, but hey, it is a dream. I suddenly recognized that never ending roar.

I panicked and ran to the front desk and cried that there was a tornado coming. The people behind the desk laughed, “Silly woman, it’s just one of our typical North Carolina storms.” I sprinted back to our room and eyed 2 funnel clouds in the distance… typical storm my ass, I thought. We were totally fucked. As I entered our room I could see the clouds swirling overhead because remember, there was no ceiling. I couldn’t breathe. My heart was palpitating. This was it, this was how my triangle family was going to die. I could see the headlines now:
“Vacationing Family Gets Swept Up by Mammoth Cyclone and Perishes”

What were we going to do?! I wasn’t ready to die and definitely not by a tornado! In the distance I could hear my daughter crying and rightly catastrophizing the situation. My husband was pulling her into the bathroom. He then grabbed my arm and…

My alarm clock went off.

Shit, another terrifying tornado dream.

Of course since I suffer from generalized anxiety disorder, I began to get a bit anxious about what this all meant. Was this foreshadowing another tornado in my life? Was it a metaphor for something else? Googling the word ‘tornado’ within the dream realm, I found out the following:

• Tornadoes: symbolize a destructive situation in your life. It could be loss of control over your life or your behavior becoming destructive. In addition, tornadoes mean that you may feel overwhelmed and disappointed. (Dreamingandsleeping.com)
• Multiple Tornadoes: Indicates a strong change in life. (Dreamatico.com)
• Surviving a Tornado: You’re going to have an advancement in your life. (Dreamatico.com)
• Chasing a Tornado: someone in your life is displaying power over you. (Dreamatico.com)
• Being Caught in a Tornado: someone is controlling you and you’re letting that happen. (Dreamatico.com)

This latest dream had me seeing multiple tornadoes and being caught in them. I wasn’t exactly swirling within them but I was stuck with no where to go. I have no idea if I survived because I woke up. If I analyze it then there is something or someone affecting my life in a bad way and I am letting it happen. Hmmm… can’t really think of anything or anyone that falls into that category. Oh, and I am overwhelmed (uh, duh!).

Dreams are bizarre though. There are those reoccurring ones, such as the dream about missing a college class all year and freaking out when you realize it is time for the final. There are random ones that you can distinctly know the meaning of because it related to something you did the day before. Then there are the instinctive ones that let us know what may happen in the future. What these tornado ones mean for me, who knows!

What do you dream about?