Sunday, May 04, 2008

Dreams that linger

The dream itself was disturbing enough.

It was one of those dreams where nothing was what it appeared to be, where things (including me) changed and morphed constantly throughout the dream. I had done something wrong, terrible even, but I wasn’t clear about exactly what it was. I found myself in a grotto-room-hotel with another man, someone I thought was an ally but who turned out to be my enemy. There were people coming in and out of the dream, room service staff who seemed to be bringing me something to eat or drink only to pull out a syringe and try to inject me with some sort of drug. I fought them unsuccessfully and then I too morphed, I could feel my body changing, hardening in spots, swelling and then I began to float above the room. It was at about that point in the dream that my wife and son appeared, and, because this was a dream, it didn’t seem odd that they would suddenly be there with me. As I recall the dream this morning, I remember thinking we must be on some sort of holiday together. But it didn’t feel like a holiday and I knew something was terribly wrong so I woke my wife (in the dream) and told her to go check on our son and she turned to me with a very scary look on her face and laughed an evil laugh and began to upbraid me for something. It was at that point that I started shouting: ”Get up, Get up and check on him!” And I thought I was awake, but I wasn’t, so I tried harder to wake and after what seemed to be a very long time, I was actually awake and I actually woke my wife and told her we needed to check on our son. She suggested that since I was the one who was wide-awake in the middle of the night that I should do it. I went into his room and saw that he had thrown off his covers and his pajama top was pulled up exposing his back, which was cold, but otherwise he was fine.

I got back into bed and here’s where things got odd – the dream wouldn’t go away. Every time I closed my eyes I was back in the dream. I was very tired and wanted to sleep, I was heavy with the need to sleep, but my mind wouldn’t allow me to escape this dreamspace. I don’t know how long it was before I fell back into nightmare free sleep, at one point I got out of bed again and later I tried a different sleeping position. In the end I conjured the image of my favorite place, a cabin deep in the Catskill Mountains, and I was finally able to go back to sleep. That said, here I am early, early on Sunday morning writing it all out. It was the first time in memory that a nightmare was so persistent and had such a strong physical component - I’ll be googling it later on this morning. Maybe you have had a similar experience?

Sweet dreams …

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