On Dreams

Some of the earliest dreams I remember having were around when I was 5 or 6. One of my favorite films and one that was certainly formative to my outlook on dreams is Little Nemo’s Adventures in Slumberland.

One of the first dreams I remember having involved me biking on a canyon trail, I hit a rock and flipped end over end. I woke up from the dream relieved that I hadn’t, in fact, fallen off of a cliff only to realize I was in a hospital bed. I woke up again in my room, relieved that I wasn’t, in fact, in a hospital bed.

One thing I remember vividly about my earlier dreams is that they would often switch perspectives to the point where they’d be little movies instead of first person dreams. There was a dream I had once which took place in one of those fantastical journey settings of a large road floating in a space of indeterminate size. Purple tile with street signs telling us where to go from time to time. At one point we reached an intersection and down one of the roads was a girl. For some reason she started crying and as she cried she began to sink into the road and the camera and switched to a dramatic shot where she was sinking in the foreground while the group I was with was off in the background.

In the first grade I remember reading a book on superstitions and one of the bits that stuck with me was the concept of “some say if you dream the same dream three nights in a row, it will happen for real”. Imagine my disappointment when I had flying dreams two nights in a row.

I’ve had a handful of workplace dreams and typically the cast of characters stays within the bounds of people I’ve worked with. Rarely do I bounce from work to normal life and back. Recently everything has been stirred together and I’ll be working, seeing my coworkers and then move to an environment where I see people from my last job, my family and others.

These days my dreams include a cast of characters from all parts of my life so far. One of my favorites was within a month of the loss of my most recent rabbit I had a dream that I was searching the house for him. I ended up closing a door and he was sitting behind the door. My reaction to seeing him was simply “Oh, there you are!” and he looked up at me as he often did to acknowledge what I had said.

Nightmares

My nightmares are typically quick and have had a similar theme through the years. Creatures from cinema, dark spaces and jump scares mostly. Larges eyes in the distance spotting me.

One of the earliest nightmares I had took place in our computer room, which was an extra bedroom we had in our old house. I was hiding in the closet and creaked the sliding doors open to peek through a space. Through the crack I could see two terror dogs from Ghostbusters going through the room and inspecting the area. I woke up before they found me.

Once I peeked through the blinds into our backyard and saw two large yellow eyes pacing back and forth in the distance. Eventually they spotted me and the eyelids curled into something sinister (ironically enough accompanied by a music cue from Rescuers Down Under) I woke up shortly after that.

I once had a vivd dream that a VW Bug fell off of a truck and landed on my friend. My friends and I were able to lift the car off of him and while he looked unharmed he was unresponsive. I woke up in a sweat and couldn’t get back to sleep. I rolled over and texted him, explaining the dream and went back to sleep. He texted me in the morning informing me that he was unharmed.

The next few nightmares sit at an intersection between dreams and the supernatural and have occurred over the past twenty years or so. Once we moved out of the childhood home (where we stayed for 15 years) we moved into a townhouse a few miles away. During the first few weeks of living there I had a series of sleepless nights where the following occurred.

During one of the first nights we stayed at the new place I was dozing off one night and heard my name, whispered clear as day when I on the threshold of sleep. I bolted up in bed and turned on the bedside lamp and sat in the silent room for a few minutes before brushing it off and going to sleep. A few nights later I remember groggily waking up to see someone messing with another lamp I had on the desk near the foot of my bed. I saw a shape that I identified as my mom and went back to sleep. I asked her about it the next morning and she said she didn’t set foot in my room the night before.

Another reoccurring nightmare that happened a few months later goes like this, I wake up in bed, usually on my side, I am aware that there is a chance I might still be dreaming, sleep paralysis lets itself be known and I do my best to wake myself up. I feel a weight sit on the edge of my bed. In some cases I wake up at this point, other times I cannot move and I start to hear what I would describe as antagonistic whispers inches from my ear. No discernible words but voice is not friendly. You might ask if these are deep seated memories rising up but I have no recollection of anything like this happening in the past so I assumed it’s just a lot of unpleasant stimuli occurring in the unconscious realm.

When it comes to lucid dreaming the two main details I notice. Technology not working properly, the light switch technique has never worked for me, although after rising I’ll remember that little bits of technology wouldn’t function properly. Another details is the bounds of my own experience. I’ve had dreams where I have to defend myself and find myself unable to throw a proper punch, sometimes the unconscious going as far as to shift the spot where my fist is striking since, thankfully, I’ve never had to punch someone before. Since I don’t know how that feels my brain can’t simulate that. Over the past ten years I’ve had multiple dreams where I’ve been shot. In the dream I’ll register that has happened but like before I have no prior experience therefore the blind spot in my experience allows me to assume it’s shock and I soon wake up.

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Over the years I’ve logged some of my dreams and dive back into that for future entries.