Dreams. What a messed up aspect of our lives, right? We close our eyes for the night and our brains process what we’ve experienced during the day and we get to experience that as dreams. And some just make no sense at all!
As fascinating as I find dreams, I actually prefer to NOT dream. Mine are often very strange, messed up, and often give me anxiety, at least during the dream itself if not beyond when I wake. Once in awhile I get lucky – my dreams will take me on an epic adventure, with videogame-esque elements and an intriguing plot. I’m not usually so lucky. Normally I get dreams like I experienced the other night – I can’t recall specific details, but I can remember one moment. My father being absolutely PISSED that I had purchased a $20 hair dryer with my own money, saying things like I was irresponsible, it was foolish of me, how dare I. It left a sour taste in my belly in the dream, but thankfully wasn’t something that followed me when I woke up.
Anger is a common theme in my dreams. Not anger towards me, but rather anger that I feel. And it is a monstrous anger, irrational and petty, quickly ignited but not so quickly soothed. These are among my scariest dreams, because I don’t normally carry anger, I try to let it go. But I spend these dreams screaming, throwing things, breaking things, pushing buttons, and sobbing uncontrollably. Because yes, anger and tears are a package deal for me. I always find these sorts of dreams to actually be kind of frightening – it scares me to think that somewhere within me is apparently the capacity to completely rage.
I also cannot fly in my dreams, a fact that frustrates me even in slumber. The most I can generally manage is a clumsy glide, but that doesn’t stop me from flapping my arms with the best (worst?) of them. Dream guides suggest that this means I have someone or something holding me back in life. Hard to say if that’s true, it has honestly been several years since flight held any role in my dreams. Which is curious, considering how much I love wings and the idea of flying. And also probably why it always frustrated me when I couldn’t.
Locations in dreams are pretty tricky, too. Whenever my dream is at “home”, that home is a strangely distorted version of the home I grew up in. It has the open/circular main floor, my bedroom at the top of the stairs, the half wrap-around deck, the outside concrete stairs to the basement, the garage. But it isn’t actually that home. Small, subtle differences occur – the good room doesn’t exist in the dream version, the basement is far more sinister and easy to get lost in. The concrete stairs are steeper, deeper, dangerous. Sometimes the pool and hot tub exist, sometimes they don’t. The playhouse is often there, but it will look different all the time. And yet every single time, in my dreams, I understand that it is that home Doesn’t matter what changes my mind makes to it. I do wonder, however, when my mind will stop pulling up this house as my “home” when it hasn’t been for quite some time.
-Arc
Flights of Fancy 