Woke up this morning with the fitted sheet all balled up in the bottom corner pocket, my pillow on the floor, and my mouth guard laying next to me. I either had really amazing dream-sex or a fight with zombies. I’d like to hope not both, but you never know what may happen. Either way, I don’t remember any of it…which is always weird to me now.
…It didn’t used to be like that.
For a little over a decade I never remembered my dreams at all…cuz I was really traumatized with probably the most horrifying nightmare ever, after the death of a friend in 8th grade. So I did everything I consciously (and unconsciously) could, just to wipe ‘em all away. The “good” with the “bad.” And outside of an occasional flicker, I never remembered them at all. Not the theme, not the starring players, not what went down…nothing. Just faded snapshots every now and then.
Turns out, that isn’t really the most healthy thing.
When I started therapy, my Shrink warned that sometimes it can bring on kinda crazy dreams, and I should “prepare myself.” To which I smirked that I had brain-parts of STEEL (obviously, otherwise why else would I be in therapy?), and such things just never really “affect” me.
…So you can imagine my surprise when within a week, floating heads of my dead Ancestors would hover next to me, in a world that looked roughly like something Picasso or Dali would have painted, and all my teeth kept falling out. Totally normal and not freaky at all for your first time dream-scaping since you were 13.
The more we dug and tore at all my problems, the stranger they became. Like constant little acid trips every time I drifted off…which, coincidentally, is the first time I ever developed insomnia. I became literally too terrified to close my eyes. Four, twelve, sixteen dreams would collide all at the same time, all with these intense emotions and circumstances that never made sense…and all with a constant underlying terror at the base of them, which could never be explained.
…Eventually, of course, I managed to work it all out, in the little sorting machine of “strange” up in m’head…and as I got “better,” my night adventures did too. In time I managed to sleep like a human again. Without screaming myself awake. Or finding finger nail digs in the palm of my hand every morning. In time I was flashing back to childhood memories that were the good kind, fantasizing new ice cream flavors, having dinner with my BFF Meryl Streep, winning the Pulitzer, and running for President.
…You know…normal stuff, like that.
Then it calmed down to a trickle…only once in a great while sticking with me beyond that first three minutes or so, after being ripped awake by the alarm clock.
I don’t remember my dreams much anymore at all, now. Only an exceptional few.
…Not because I block them…just because, well…because “I don’t,” I guess. Waking up this morning, and seeing the condition of my bed, just kinda got me thinking: how in the hell can anyone sleep through all that? Then I remembered, I used to do it all the time.
Even when I was “awake,” if you get my drift.
…It’s not that I want to necessarily experience absolutely every trip I go on, every night. My brain prob’ly protects me from any number of horror night-sweats on a regular basis…(induced no doubt from lack of chocolate.)
…But it also means I’m missing out on prime story-telling plot I could really be using right now. Free creative stuff that doesn’t count as “stealing” if the episode is super limited and only shown to the viewing audience in my head, that one time. I’m not saying that I’d want to experience nightmares like a Jack the Ripper attack, or those kind where you’re naked and confused in the produce aisle, looking for butter again. (Look, don’t judge me okay…I don’t make fun of your little “freaknesses.”)
…I’m saying: if it was all about me being a Super Spy, or goin’ at it on some grassy knoll with Colin Firth, and I find out about it? I’m gonna be pissed!
…That’s all.
~D
