War and the Dreamworld

I’m on a small plane with a few rows of seats and propellers on both sides. We’re flying over fields glowing pink, yellow, and lavender in the sunlight. All of a sudden, we enter a thick cloud. Instinctively, I hold my seatbelt with one hand as we bounce through the white. Next to me sits a woman, a mother I somehow know. With my free hand, I hold her elbow as if to make sure she’s there beside me. I feel that she too is frozen in terror as we watch a black warplane approaching us at top speed.

Death anxiety. These words were on my lips as I emerged from the dream. Was it a lay interpretation? An existential explanation offered by my returning consciousness? A consolation, like wiping the brow of a child at night, whispering, “It was just a nightmare”? An attempt to convince myself that the dream signaled a common, if repressed, fear? 

There were no real monsters lurking under the bed, no ghosts hiding in the closet, no warplanes heading our way. Except that warplanes do exist. As do drones and bombs and leaders who cling to power through violence and profit from devastation. Nightmarish yet real. 

On February 28th, the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran. Twelve days into the war, it was a regular evening with my kids at home: piano practice, homework, dinner, bath, and PJs. While the boys brushed their teeth, I looked at my phone, glimpsing warnings from California Governor Gavin Newsom and San Francisco mayor Daniel Laurie: “We recently acquired information that as of early February 2026, Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack using unmanned aerial vehicles from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United States Homeland, specifically against unspecified targets in California, in the event that the US conducted strikes against Iran. We have no additional information on the timing, method, target, or perpetrators of this alleged attack.”

Planes. Towers. Dust. Images of 9/11 flashed in a window of memory.

 I watched videos of both men reading off teleprompters to deliver messages of reassurance. “We are in constant coordination with security and intelligence officials.” “A State Operations Center is established to manage potential emergencies.” “Public safety is our top concern.” I stole a look out the window at the city. Aside from a few white lines from passing airplanes, there was nothing different about the skyline.

With my phone resting on the kitchen counter, I went to read a few pages of a Snoopy book with my seven-year-old. I sang his two favorite bedtime songs, kissed his head. Then I lay down with my nine-year-old, combing his hair with my fingers as he told me about a math problem he had solved that afternoon. I kissed him goodnight and withdrew into the darkness of the house.

At the kitchen counter, I picked up my phone and read the most recent captions about the risk of drone strikes. I put away the leftovers in the fridge, started the dishwasher, glanced out the window once more. Before getting in bed, I quickly caught up with my husband about his day. And finally, I immersed myself in a Booker Prize–winning novel, eventually drifting off to sleep. A few hours later, I bolted upright in bed, a black warplane coming for my night of rest. 

When the morning arrived, it was a day like any other. I woke up the boys and prepared fruit and oatmeal for breakfast. Helped get backpacks ready. Once everyone had on socks, shoes, and jackets and headed out the door, I returned to news of war. 

Smoke over cities and apartment buildings in rubble. Maps of airspace closures and flight restrictions. The headlines raced to keep up: the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a possible military draft, spiking oil prices, tumbling stocks, and international dissent. 

All the while, the San Francisco skyline remained still. 

Weeks went by like this: school drop-offs, work, soccer practices, and reading the news, listening to podcasts, scrolling through posts. Witnessing the war from a safe distance.   

But my dreams insisted that safety was an illusion. East and West, past and present, fantasy and fact collapsed in the psyche. Helicopters fell out of the sky. Bodies were torn to pieces in factory machinery. Blood ran down the sidewalks. I awoke from these nightmares, my heart pounding and mouth dry.

There was a war raging out there and there was a war raging in me. The two felt inseparable.

The haunting images in my dreams were not just metaphors for personal fear, angst, and anger; they reflected current events, historical realities, and the archetypal truths of war and death. I also realized that my dreams revealed my moral injury, along with death anxiety. I did not want this war in Iran, or any war. I did not vote for this president or his administration. And yet when these men promised death and destruction from the sky, when they threatened the end of a civilization, I felt responsible. My tax dollars helped pay for missiles raining down on the Middle East instead of funding health care, education, housing, food security, clean water, and climate justice. No matter how many op-eds I read that disparaged the government, no matter how many No Kings protests I joined, I was still a part of the vengeance and violence by virtue of my American citizenship. Part of a war machine that killed 120 elementary school students in Minab, children the same age as my own.

Sometimes while I’m caught up in a mundane task, I recall the warning for California. My lingering unease feels like a privilege. We are free to worry, and just as free to carry on. Elsewhere, drones fill the skies. Bombs strike hospitals and bridges in Tehran, Beirut, Dubai, Gaza.

I’m aware that staying informed is not enough. It is hardly enough to cast a vote. Neither is it enough to interpret my dreams. Nothing on its own, whether social, political, or psychological, would be sufficient. But somehow, some combination of these things must add up to a world where there is less suffering. Perhaps marching in solidarity with strangers and embracing the joy of resistance, or calling my representative to express my outrage. Perhaps reading an anti-war poem each morning, not giving into despair or apathy in the face of mounting uncertainty. Or remembering that there is more to life than evil. Spending loving, caring moments with my sons, teaching them about honesty, humility, and kindness. Even putting words on a page as I’m doing now, in the hope of reaching a reader the way I reached for the mother seated next to me in my dream, just to be sure she was there and that we were in the moment together.