I cried in the middle of the night

Yesterday night, I woke up after a bad dream. I was still sleepy and I cried for a few seconds and went back to sleep. The dream deserves a mention as it's only one amongst the many nightmares that I have been having. Most are related to my life, poverty, failure in exams and generalized 'loserhood'.

I had just woken up and I saw my cousin standing next to my bed. Like how I used to do back in Mumbai in my apartment, I had gone to sleep wearing nothing. I got up and and started talking to him. Although he was not acting weird at my nudity, I was getting uncomfortable. As I was in a new room in the new house that my parents had moved into, I was not aware as to where my clothes were. I tried to cut the conversation but my cousin was not interested.

Soon, another cousin came in. And then an aunt came in. All were more or less interested in a gently probing as to why I was not earning and why I had not passed my exams yet. I wished to not be talking to them anymore but I had no escape routes. My sister came into my room and I asked her to give me something to wear so that I could be more comfortable. She nodded and went out.

In a few more minutes, the room was almost full of most of my aunts and uncles and cousins who tried to not leave any possible stone unturned in my miserable life path. Then, my father came shoving the other around him and was surprised to see me naked. He started acting weird and asking me why I was naked. I said I didn't know where my clothes were and that I had asked for help. He started shouting at me saying that I was as useless as I always has been...

I woke up to realize that my nightmare almost parallelled the ones that Vinokur had. The nudity, the helplessness - it was as if we had merged into one mind which was churning up the same dream in different versions of the same movie. I cried for a few seconds hoping to fall back to sleep again. I slept only to have more of such dreams.