Plummeting to Earth

In the first couple of months upon my move to the Midwest, I had some amazing dreams.  This one in particular shook me up but at the same time, I woke up feeling full of hope.

Just woke up from a really vivid dream. I was in an airplane taking off out of SFO. The plane takes off over the bay and as we turn, the plane banks sharply and I realize we are descending rather than ascending. Aloud I say, "Oh, shit."

There are gasps around me and my mind goes through a split second inventory of a million ways to die on a plane.

We make a soft landing, slightly askew, in the drink. We are near the end of the runway. After we seem fully stopped, some people actually burst out into a relieved laughter.

I am seated in an exit row. In real life, I use to not mind the exit row and I always prefer window. Now days my feeling is, how the hell am I going to open this thing, while screaming in a fetal position, plummeting to Earth? But in my dream I am a stronger person. I hear a voice say, "Please open the exit doors." I pull that bar and the door releases and moves sideways, just the way I imagined it would. It does not take too much strength.

We seem to have landed in such a way that the water is only a couple feet below the door opening. The end of the runway is less than 20 feet away. I jump down into the water and it is only to my waist. Other people are jumping out a second door on that side of the plane, some with kids and floating devices.

As we are all wading to shore, there is a self-congratulatory air, people are smiling and some are even laughing at the joy of being alive.