I hate it when I have weird dreams.
Let me clarify. I have two types of dreams:
Normal dreams, in which I do normal every day things, with normal every day people. I mean like go to the post office. Have a beer with a friend. Have a normal conversation. Be where I live and go someplace I would go normally. Go grocery shopping. You see for a long time my life was far from the normal every day. Imagine mixing a good spy novel, with a classic 30s/40s dime store detective novel, an Indiana Jones movie, a Romantic Roller Coaster, a summer Self Discovery film, and a Cult Thriller. That was my life for a short period between High School and moving back from Florida. It’s hard to explain and the details are fuzzy but life was anything but Normal day to day.
The others are seriously epic Apocalyptic Action/Adventure dreams of Biblical proportion and nature which reoccur on a regular basis. They sound like fun, but they are rather nightmarish. Imagine living in a world created by H.P Lovecraft, Dante, Aleister Crowley, and some particularly vile Catholic Priests looking to scare hellfire into your soul. Now bring it all to life by Peter Jackson. They tend to be fairly realistic and not at all healthy for my psyche I’m sure.
So when I say I hate weird dreams. I mean weird in the sense of a bad acid trip with an ether kicker. That’s right “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold” kind of weird.
Now most people tell me about their dreams, and they seem similar to these things I call “weird dreams”. Where strange things happen just slightly on the edge of reality in a way that can only happen in dreams or while on various hallucinogens of low levels. Where words will be repeated, words cannot be read, clocks mover backwards, objects or people fly, colours move and twist and fade, and everything has a sort of surrealist nature to it while still being just normal enough to seem like it might be everyday life. Things like “we went camping, and we got in a canoe and paddled through the stars.”
Mind you occasionally I do have dreams that are fantasy. However, they are low key fantasy. Like taking a road trip and stopping off at one of those homes that look like their inspired by European castles out in the country side and being invited in by a nice old couple and helping to make dinner. I understand dreams like this are very common too. That’s fine with me.
What I simply can’t handle is standing on the edge of reality. I seem to enjoy my dreams as either reality, or so far from it it’s fantastical. Yet, I cannot handle standing on the edge of reality where things get, for lack of better vernacular, trippy. I don’t know why. I’ve stood on the edge of reality in actual waking reality. I’ve seen, smelled, heard, and touched things that probably shouldn’t or for the good of us all can’t exist. There though it can be rationalised, or simply ignored.
Perhaps it’s more of a fear of falling from the edge of whatever little sanity I cling to. Maybe a fear of never waking from such a horrible thing. I say horrible and yet I’ve dreamt of pits of Hell in such horrid and vivid ways that even Dante would have to succeed that my vision was far more horrifying as eternal punishment than he could ever have imagined. Hell would be bared to be spoken of in Catholic Mass and would be left to only rumour and whisper. Granted for his time that is almost what it was that he wrote.
I simply cannot figure out what it is that disturbs me so much about these dreams. They send me into a waking panic and keep me from wanting to go back to sleep until I can be satisfied I will have a normal dream.
The only way I can really describe how much this bothers me is this. Imagine you have a red vase on your coffee table in your living room. This red vase sits directly in the center of your coffee table on top of a doily. Every day the vase sits there. You can see it from the corner of your eye, or every time you enter your home with a passing glance. You never spend time in the living room because you simply are too busy or have no real use for it. So this vase remains totally undisturbed. You live alone and have no pets to speak of and no one that enters your home but you. Now imagine that you come home after a long and stressful day. You open the door and take in the view of your home setting down your bag and keys when suddenly you stumble and inhale sharply and with fear and anxiety as your head and eyes do a forced double take reaction that your brain failed to inform the rest of your body that you were doing.
There, on the coffee table. The vase has been moved three inches to the left of the center and the doily has been moved five and a half inches to the right. More over there is no disturbance in the dust, as if they magically lifted and gently floated to their new place. Now your panicking, yes? You should be. You have no roommates, not pets, no one but you has the key to this home. You have been violated. Either by villains or the most careful and anal pranksters ever known. They could still be in the house, they could be waiting right now to do the most horrible and unspeakable things to you involving car batteries, bailing wire, a leather sewing needle, and a German Shepard. Worse though… what if there was no one. No physical being. Nothing else disturbed. Not even the dust.
You begin to question yourself. Why do you never use the living room? Is it because you really have no use? Or is it because after you set it up you felt an uncomfortable presence? Could it be something ethereal or the unseen influence of something most foul and smelling faintly of sulphur? Was that a hint of sulphur you just smelled now? So many questions… but the only thing you really want to do is run. Now I know that some of you may be brave and move forward to inspect your home to disable any possible lingering intruders, trust I’m one of that sort. Here though… here is the overwhelming sense of fear and tension that has already chosen between fight or flight and it is not swinging any fists any time in the next three or so miles.
This is how these dreams make me feel. So uncomfortable in my own skin and subconscious that I don’t really feel like going back until I have a couple friends and the local authorities to investigate.
I wonder what it says about me when the only fear I feel is a fear of my self?
