Nightmares Can Be Strange Things...

My original image that kind of looks
the way I think nightmares feel...

Everyone has nightmares. Whether it's the one where all your teeth are falling out, or you're at school for the big exam you didn't study for and you just happen to be naked, we all are familiar with waking up in a state of dread only to be relieved that no, this isn't something you actually have to worry about at that moment.

For years, I had school nightmares. I would remember that I had signed up for a class that I then promptly forgot about until the final exam, only to realize that I had absolutely no idea where the class was being held. I also had a recurring dream that I would suddenly appear at school either completely naked or in my underwear, with only a pillow to conceal myself.

Lately, though, I seem to be having a new type of nightmare. Instead of being based around school disasters, these focus on something much more distressing for me - moving. I will find myself in a fairly luxurious apartment that I absolutely love. It often is the same apartment, one Ive never been to in real life, but I recognize the floor plan once I wake up.

In this apartment are the things my family and I have acquired over the 1-2 years we lived there, and we find ourselves faced with the prospect of boxing it all up to move. But wait, you say, I thought this was supposed to be a nightmare?

Oh, my friend, trust me... it is SUCH a nightmare. See, we aren't just boxing up our things. We have to move because some sort of drama has occurred- someone has lost a job, or become disabled (things we have gone through in reality), and for whatever reason, we have left everything until the absolute last minute possible to leave. We have a matter of hours to get everything we own out of the apartment and clean it up to get the deposit back, and it just is not going to be possible.

It gets worse from there, as then family comes to help, but instead yell at us for being unprepared, and the landlord comes with police to evict us... my child (who is an adult in reality, but always a small child in these dreams) cries as everything familiar is being boxed up and taken away, and I stand helpless, watching everything Ive worked for basically falling apart.

Then I wake up, and let me tell you this- my life is nowhere near perfect, but the relief I feel when I realize I don't actually have to move right now? That is a wonderful, wonderful feeling.

Brains are weird. What sort of nightmares do you find yourself dealing with? Have you found anything that seems to trigger them? Leave me a comment, I would really like to know I'm not the only one having weird dreams like these!

My brain is a strange place to be trapped sometimes.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Strange Dreams...

A few nights ago I had the strangest dream. Well, not strange for me, but strange in general. You see, for some reason I dream in technicolor, linear plotlines that often make some sort of sense even after I've awakened. This was no different.

For this one, I dreamed that I still lived with my parents, and that my parents were still married. I had a sister that was barely over a year old (which is odd, because I'm an only child), and I absolutely doted on her. The beginning of the dream was a succession of fun moments with the baby, as well as me going on a date with the guy I had a crush on from 6th grade through graduation.

Unfortunately, when I came home from that date, I found that my house was a bit of a disaster. My father had sold my baby sister to an unsavory type for about $4 and a bag of cocaine. (This is funny because my dad doesn't even like taking Tylenol, so the idea of him doing street drugs is about as likely as finding out that the Pope has a huge heroin problem.) The house was filled with strangers, and I was locked out.

Apparently all of the action movies I've been watching lately have seeped into my brain, because at that moment I went into action hero mode. The house in my dream had a huge wall of windows that reached floor to ceiling, and I went to work digging out the supports on either side of one window. I checked to make sure I had my guns, then made a running start at the window. I then jumped as high as I could, kicked the window down with both feet, and somehow landed with my gun out, aimed at a "bad guy."

Said bad guy looked at me and I shot. However, apparently I'm as much of a pacifist in my sleep as I am in life, because instead of having a gun that shot bullets, my gun shot tranquilizer darts. I shot three people at first, and two of them dropped like stones. However, the third just laughed at me and said, "Your gun only holds three shots."

Apparently he'd been taking the tranquilizer to build up an immunity to it, and he knew that one dose wouldn't take him down. His taunting infuriated me. My reaction?

I dropped my gun, reached behind me with both hands and pulled out two more tranquilizer guns, one in each hand, and shot him once with each one. He went down in a puddle, looking utterly confused as I continued taking down bad guys until I found my sister.

I woke up shortly after this, and just shook my head. My dreams are so weird.

If I could record my dreams as movies, I'd have lots of blockbusters.

See my disclosure statement for more information.