MUSE
Re-adjusting A Self-Reflection piece by Emily Clements
To possess dreams is a natural part of every human life. Most of us will remember as children being asked: ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ or maybe as we entered our early teenage years, ‘what is your dream job?’. Dreams are an integral part of the language we use in discussing our future plans. But they are also inexorably linked to our own personal wants and desires. Do we dream of love? Of financial stability? Of travelling the world?
Dreams had a huge impact upon my formative years, shaping my own personal identity and defining the person I thought I was going to become. Of course, like any other self-respecting five-year-old, I dreamed of being a princess. By the age of twelve I was dreaming of becoming a singer. All harmless, fanciful dreams for a life as yet unwritten. But by my fifteenth birthday my dreams had become vessels of self-sabotage; things I truly believed I wanted from life. It really seemed that the heteronormative dream of being a childhood sweetheart, graduating from university and settling down into a job and domesticity was going to be it for me. Compared to my friends these were very mature dreams - and I sat back and watched as their dreams revolved around who they would get off with at next week’s party, or which festival they would go to that summer. At seventeen, I took solace in the maturity of my dreams, thinking they would stand me in good stead as I prepared to cross the threshold into adulthood. 17
