But not of me - that would be kinda creepy depending upon the context of the dream.
I have the unhappy situation of not being able to remember my dreams. There have only been a few that I have been able to remember - like the one where Amber and I did heroin. I guess it stands out because I remember the feeling in the dream so much, though I've never taken heroin, so I have no basis of comparison.
The other ones that stand out were ones I had about the end of the world, and there are several I can remember. One was that there was this gigantic earthquake, and chaos everywhere, and my mother was missing - and somehow because of that I knew it was the end. There was a split, and you had 2 groups of people - The New World Order, and the Old World Order, and the newbies were using violence to bring people to their side. Next thing I remember was that I was in a room with a bunch of people - in some government building - and the women were taken to a room and given a bag full of makeup. I knew something was wrong, so I asked one of the chemists who were in the room for some reason (it was Caitlin's dad), and he said it was ok - as long as they didn't take my picture. Then I was at some movie theater, and I had the choice of seeing Pretty in Pink or Reservoir Dogs, and I had the feeling my choice decided if I was going to heaven or hell.
It's kinda neat to pick it apart - like the fact that some cultures believe (or past tense, believed - as I'm not sure many still do) that having your picture taken steals your soul. Ok - so maybe that's the only thing, but when I told my mother she read a lot into it, and then started talking about how there was scripture saying people would have prophetic dreams and stuff.
Another one I had, there were demons everywhere, and the humans were rounded up and put in concentration camps (or something like it). It was pretty terrifying, and we were all sure we were going to die, but then one of the demons told us it was only going to be about 12 people killed worldwide. (Obviously, not so scary after that) The last one involved parts of the moon breaking off and falling to earth. Though in the whole dream, it was more about me finding someone and saying goodbye than it was about the destruction.
I was reading a theory that people who can't remember their dreams are subconsciously afraid of the content of their dreams - which made me think: If the stuff I can remember is pretty scary - what kind of crap am I dreaming about that I block out?!
There's also another thing I want to talk about that's related to sleep, and has happened to me quite frequently. I wake up, but for whatever reason am unable to open my eyes. I'll struggle, but they're so heavy I can't get them open, and I just eventually fall asleep again. When I wake up the second time, I'm fine, but it's so scary. I don't know if this is some weird dream or if my body is just too tired and unable to wake up with my brain. I've started writing a story about it, and we'll see how that goes - I'm kinda stuck right now.
I could gush about my love of Neil Gaiman, but I think I'll save that for another post.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
That thing where you can't open your eyes is called sleep paralysis. Your body goes into a certain "mode" when you sleep, basically where you are "paralyzed" (otherwise, in your dream, if you, say, hit someone, you'd also make that action in real life- it serves to keep you from performing the actions for real). Sometimes your mind starts to come out of the dream and your body is still in that "mode." That happens to me all the time. Also, if you ever expereince, right when you are falling asleep, the feeling that you are about to fall, and then you jump and wake up- that's apparently something that's happening when you enter the "hypnogogic" area of sleep, which is the border of beginning to sleep/dream, and around the time your body enters the sleep paralysis (or so the stuff I've been reading says).
I don't know that I buy that people who don't remember their dreams are blocking them out. It, I think, has to do with when you wake up. Every morning when I wake up, I am aware that I was having dreams, but the memories of them quickly escape me (which is why I've started a dream journal). The medication I am on has improved my dream recall, and taking melatonin seems to also increase the vividness of my dreams. And it's extremely rare for me to have a bona fide nightmare- I can't remember the last time it has happened, besides my childhood. I have upsetting dreams, but not nightmares. It's not uncommon that in my dream I realize I'm dreaming, but then unfortunately I immediately wake up. So my goal is to eventually realize I'm dreaming but stay dreaming (which is "lucid dreaming.")
I dream a lot about looking up and seeing a mushroom cloud on the horizon. Or sometimes I'll dream that I've survived some large scale catastrophe, but I've had to run out of the house unprepared and then I look down and realize that my footwear is totally inappropriate to the terrain. I wonder if apocalypse is just a recurring archetype in the human imagination.
We call that "sleep paralysis" thing the Night Hag. I get it all the time, and I hate it (it always feels like I can't breathe), but it's the worst when it's mixed up with an actual nightmare. Like one time I "woke up" and my body was still asleep, but then my stereo started playing this horrible wailing demonic music, and then I thought I really woke up, but I still couldn't move, and my stereo did it again, and so on. Not fun.
As far as remembering dreams go, I rarely remember mine, but my chances of remembering are much higher on the weekends when I wake up on my own, rather than with the alarm.
Otherwise, it's as described by Nick: I remember when I first wake, but by the time I get in the shower it's gone.
I experience sleep paralysis several times a month. It can be pretty frustrating! I have some friends from high school who described their personal encounters with actual demons(!) to me...it sounds like a case of sleep paralysis: can't move, trouble breathing, etc.
I also have quite a lot of lucid dreams. Yes, feel free to envy me on that point.
What I was taught in a psych class back in undergrad is that you have a greater chance of remembering your dreams if you wake up in the middle of them, that is, during the middle of a REM cycle. So if you are not sleeping well, the chances are that you will have a greater likelihood of remembering your dreams, because you will be drifting out of sleep and into consciousness or semi consciousness throughout the night.
My recurring disaster dreams either involve a meteor falling from the sky and causing a huge explosion, or me witnessing a plane crash from the ground (this predated 9/11). I have the plane crash dream a lot, and every time it happens I tell myself in the dream "This time, it's real."
When I was in high school I frequently had a recurring dream about being in an underground mall with my friends, and then having really bad things happen: explosions, gunfire, etc. It was only a few months ago when, in one of the underground malls here in Daegu, that a possible reason for this occurred to me. When I was in high school, my friends and I would hypnotize each other. In order to "go under" one would have to picture going down an elevator or stair case, deeper and deeper, until arriving at a "mall" this "mall" would have different "stores" which represented different aspects of your life: the friend store, the band store, the boy store, the family store, etc. I'm sure that my recurring dreams about Very Bad Things happening in the underground mall pertained to this somehow. I wonder why that never occurred to me at the time?
My mom moved from Lake City (the house where I grew up) to GA in July 2005. The move was EXTREMELY hectic, in part because my mother went on vacation the week before closing, leaving me to pack 27 years worth of miscellany. We didn't even have all the stuff out of the house by the time the closing was finished, and had to make arrangements with the new owner for when we could go back and get the rest of our stuff. Since then, I've had recurring dreams about that house. In my dreams, the house has been sold and the new owners want to move in, but my mom hasn't finished packing yet. Every time I have this dream, I know the current date and how long it's been since July 2005, and I'm pleading with my mother to finish the move before they send the police to evict us. I most recently had this dream last month!
Last year I worked at a school in Russia which was equipped with many sofas - excellent for napping. I had many coworkers, and it wasn't like it was a quiet environment at all. Nonetheless, I FREQUENTLY napped. Often, I would lay down and close my eyes... then I would hear a coworker make a comment like, "How can she sleep in here? It's so noisy!" I'd try to tell them that I wasn't actually sleeping... but then I'd realize that I couldn't open my mouth to tell them, so I probably was actually asleep.
I can't even remember it when I first wake. I might have a feeling/emotion residual from it - or maybe remember that the dream had to do with jam or something - but that's it.
I've heard the Night Hag thing before - but it's just my eyelids. I've never had problems breathing or anything else, and I think I can move other parts when it's happened - I really need to pay attention more next time it happens.
That sleep paralysis thing sounds scary!
It wasn't until this topic started that I realized I haven't remembered my dreams, at least not for more than a day or so, in quite a while. generally, I sleep like a rock, hardly ever waking up for more than a second or two to roll over and squint at the clock. This is probably due to the fact that I don't allow myself enough time to get a full night's sleep and don't allow myself to laze around too much during the day, especially the weekends.
That said, there's few places in the world I enjoy more than my warm, too soft bed. I'll have to get on dreaming tonight so i have something to write about tomorrow.
Post a Comment