I just had a dream so intense that I need to write it down.....

Did you ever have a dream that was so intense that you thought it was real and everything you saw actually happened?
Since February (estimatedly, since my friend left me, the days are only blurring together for me and I have difficulties recalling on what day I did something or saw or heard something), I'm having dreams that show me an event of my past that I know never happened but, at the same time, know has happened. Not just knowing, feeling too. The dreams feel like a memory that has resurfaced in my sleep. And at the same time, I know for a fact these events have never happened. Most of these dreams, except for one, I had forgotten again when I woke up, leaving me only with the vague feeling I had a dream like that. Then I had another one today, while I slept in. But something was different this time.
Because of the discrepancy between knowing that the events of the dream have happened and knowing that they never happened, I theorized if I was maybe dreaming about the future, about something that will happen at some point. But this time, I am sure that it happened in the past.
I was at an anime museum here in my city together with someone (but not my friend, because I didn't know her back then, but I felt some kind of bond with that person, not like he was a close friend, but like someone with a shared interest who I had become acquainted with) in the Summer of 2013. I only found it by chance. I was going through the city and when I was on a square, I discovered that there was an anime museum. I got in shortly before it closed, with about two hours left. The entrance was free. The artist whose pictures were hanging in the museum also owned the building, so she let visitors inside for free. The art displayed in the museum was anime fanart, of a high quality from famous anime fan artists. There was art by other artists, too, not just the one who owned the museum.
When me and my company (who was only there when entering the museum, not before I found it) went to a table near the entrance of the museum on the inside of the building and said we want to visit it, we got something like tokens to prove we are legit visitors, two for each of us. I don't remember one anymore, the other one was a weird, longish, white insect with many brown legs, almost like a centipede, but different, it was more of a rectangular shape and it had big, round, greenish-grey eyes on top where its head must have been. I joked around with my company how creepy it looked and how weird it was that they give out something like that as an entrance token. I thought its legs were touching me when I held it and I felt queasy, but then I noticed it was shrink-wrapped in plastic and I was relieved. I then put the insect token onto the corner of a white, empty table at the back of the museum and jokingly said "Yeah, I just leave it here.". I knew I needed one of the tokens now and the other one later, perhaps each token only guaranteed entrance for a certain amount of time, but I was sure I could pick it up again later once I need it.
We then explored the museum together. The walls were colorful, each space around a picture was painted in a different color, and the framed picture was hanging in the center of that space. We looked around and eventually got into a conversation about the artists whose art was on display there. The topic came up how some of them had been accused of being rascist, for something they said or did, even though what they said or did wasn't actually rascist. There had been calls that these artists should leave the community and stop creating art. We didn't call that "cancel culture", that was in 2013 and the word didn't exist yet. But the way these artists were treated by some was the same as what happens so often these days. They were accused of rascism and some people demanded they leave. We talked about that and said how wrong that was, what was being done to these artists even though they hadn't done anything wrong and weren't rascist, and we said, if that doesn't stop soon, something needs to be done against it.
Later, we came into a room where you could buy anime magazines and manga, for two euros. Not each magazine or manga cost two euros, you could pay two euros and then pick out a few magazines and manga, I think twelve. Two euros for a bundle of anime magazines and manga. I did that and then, the dream continued with me being in the apartment, the shared flat I lived in at that time. I had been going there because I wanted to look something up about a different topic me and the person who accompanied me had started talking about. I think there was something we didn't know or maybe a question we couldn't answer, or maybe he asked me something, and I could find the answer in my room. So I went there, with the intent to look that info up and then return to the anime museum and tell him. But the shared flat I lived in at that time was too far away from the museum, it wouldn't have been possible to ride there, find the information and get back into the museum where my company was waiting with less than two hours before the museum would close for the day. Yet I promised him to meet him again in the museum on that same day after I retrieved the information and I felt like there was plenty of time. When I had what I was looking for, I suddenly saw through the window that it started raining. Just a light rain, but I decided to leave the bag with the anime magazines and manga in my room so they won't get wet. I then left again to get back to the anime museum and tell my company what I found, but I didn't see the rest anymore, because the dream was over then.

I don't have an explanation for this. I don't recall that I ever was inside an anime museum in my city after I moved here in the November of 2012, nor that an anime museum ever existed here. And in the time frame the dream told me, Summer 2013, that was already after I had discovered that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic grabs me much more than anything else and that I didn't nearly had the amount of excitement for anything else I ever watched before that I feel for it, so it's unlikely that I went into an anime museum at the time. Even my local anime convention that I did go to in that Summer, I primarily visited because of the hope to meet pony cosplayers, to see some stray pony content there and to buy some MLP: FiM merch in the vendor hall. And I know that there was no anime museum or art gallery at that con. I did find one manga-related event that took place inside a museum in my city and that had a free entrance when I was searching online, but it happened in the Spring of 2013 and its program only consisted of a cosplay show/performance, manga drawing workshops and a movie screening. There was no gallery with anime art there, either, and this event happened at a different place. It's not the museum I've been to.
But I know I have been there, to this anime museum in the Summer of 2013, the dream is clear as a memory and it feels like a memory, like something I have forgotten about and that resurfaced in my dream today. And for some reason, I feel a strong longing for this event and it makes me emotionally confused and exhausted. I need to find out where that was and why that memory is so important to me.

Comments

[Bronycommander]

that sounds like a odd dream

[Gyro Pony]

A dream where you thought everything was real ?

There have been days when I find myself thinking about "past events". Then my inner frown wrinkles as I wonder how these events were possible, as I was never at a certain place during a certain time. Then I realise it was a very elaborate dream I had that night.

Some dreams are intense. I wake up, wondering if I should feel exhausted at the effort and thought put into some dreams.

I have an old book called "The Dream Library".
It's a collection of good dreams shared by children over the world. The book presents itself as a library - it even has a library card for borrowing the dreams.
You ever found something similar ?