Violin and church

Date: 11/10/2019

So irl my parents keep asking me to play the violin for our church. Just to provide service and stuff. But I always refuse because I hate playing in front of people and don’t need that type of anxiety in my life. So in this dream we were sitting first pew, and three kids from my school’s orchestra were there. Two playing the cello up front and one kid kind of near me trying to play the violin. He was terrible, but the cellos were ok. For some reason I had a violin that someone had lended me, and everyone was urging me to go up and play but I was starting to have an anxiety attack because I really didn’t want to go up in front of anyone and sight-read music. But I was plucking along because by god this other violin kid COULD NOT play. Like I didn’t even have the music or anything but it was simple stuff like ode to joy that I could just play along by ear. It didn’t help when the priest stopped the two cellos and made them redo it because they made a mistake, while the entire rest of the church laughed. That’s when I started hyperventilating because I knew sooner or later my parents would just force me to go up there. Then, as I’d predicted, my mom told me I was being selfish (the whole lecture, blah blah blah, I kinda missed it because I was trying not to hyperventilate too much) and then forced me to go up. My face was burning and probably extremely red, I took this rented violin and raised my bow to play and saw that the next piece was Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. Irl I had been working on this piece for a couple weeks and I didn’t have it up to speed yet, I couldn’t play the second movement as fast as it was supposed to be without messing up but the other kids up there in church were gonna take it full speed. As soon as they started I realized they were even going above regular tempo and I knew I would never be able to keep up when we got to the faster parts like the second movement. I saw all these people watching and judging me and I started to feel dizzy. My hyperventilating increased to the point where I couldn’t breathe and my vision started getting dark, like someone turned off the lights. Then, in the dream, I passed out. When I woke up my parents were yelling at me and I was so upset because not only did I go up and play in front of everyone but I also literally passed out in front of the whole church AND a few of my classmates and the embarrassment felt too much to bear. I wanted to go curl up in a hole and die. But my parents, who thought I did it on purpose, told me I was going to play for the next service (which was like ten minutes from that moment in the dream) and every service after. I started getting super anxious and as the service drew near, I considered going out and jumping into traffic. Last minute I decided I didn’t want to ruin some poor old lady’s life, and that if I was gonna kill myself I at least should make sure I didn’t inconvenience anyone. But I didn’t have enough time to come up with a suicide plan and was forced to go out and play. Before I actually played anything for the second service I woke up. This entire dream was in first person and seemed like it definitely could’ve happened in real life, I was so worried that it actually might’ve happened that I went downstairs and asked my mom if anything like that happened (leaving out the part about me wanting to commit suicide and everything, obviously) and luckily this really was just a dream.