I read something once about how there is nothing more boring then hearing about someone else's dream. I love telling people about my dreams, so that came as a nasty shock, and I hope it isn't the case with me. I feel I am quite blessed with my dreams, they make no sense, like all dreams, but they are hilarious. I am fortunate in my family as well, they never have any objections to hearing about my dreams, my father often tells me I should write them down.
Now, here's something I find interesting about the topic of dreams. It is really common in fiction for someone to have bad dreams, full on recurring nightmares that make the prospect of sleep terrifying. These dreams are often about something legitimately bad, or scary to the person having them: watching a loved one die, being chased by monsters, something creepy and disfiguring happening, whatever. The point is that this literally scary thing haunts this person in dreams, and they don't want to sleep because they don't want to live this nightmare over and over at night. Well, I used to wonder if dreams were really like that, and when I saw something scary on TV I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to forget it and that I would dream about it that night. If that happened then it was all over, just a couple of steps until I refused to sleep and spent my last days in a mental institution refusing all food but peanut butter covered celery. That was the logical progression in my mind at least. Now, I am scared by a lot, and two things that I'm absolutely terrified of are tornadoes and zombies. Zombies are a little illogical (right now at least! Always be prepared), but any time I try to actually imagine myself inside a zombie movie being chased by decomposing corpses I start hyperventilating. I mean ugh. And tornadoes are just wicked horrid forces of nature that kill people and make lots of noise.
I am scared of both of these things, and I dream about both of them a LOT. Like, several times a week. There are zombies creeping around outside our house or in old hospitals my family is inexplicably inside of. The zombies always end up finding us, and we have to run, and we do run, or drive, or fight, but it is SO scary, because my mind knows it's one of my worst fears and it makes me feel every second of it.
And somehow, in the midst of this zombie pockmarked wasteland in my head, a storm will stir up and tornadoes will come down. Multiple tornadoes, while we're in the car, and they come straight towards us, and they're making that train sound that they're famous for, and I'm curled up in a tight little ball in the car watching the horrid funnel thing come after us as we try to find a sturdy spot free of zombies. This is all horrid.
But you know what? It's awfully fun to remember when I wake up. It's fun to tell people, and it doesn't bother me when I wake up. The idea of dreaming about tornado zombie worlds doesn't make me afraid to fall asleep. I'm pretty okay with it.
The dreams that do bother me are hard to explain. It's not the contents, it's the feelings they invoke. They make me feel sad, or helpless, or ugly in some way. When I wake up, I feel BAD, and I can't stop thinking about them unless I pray to God that they stop bothering me. I remember one dream, kind of disgusting, but mainly weird. There was something killing deer in my dream, always in the woods. I would look at the bodies and try to find out what had attacked them. To go to the woods I had to cross a bridge covered in fire ants, and they would attack me. The actual woods weren't woods at all, everything was beige and orange, and soft, like we were in something's insides. The surroundings reminded me powerfully of vomit. When I woke up I felt horrible, and seriously disturbed. Now the dream was weird and kind of gross, but I don't know why it felt so creepy. It was just the atmosphere.
I take a certain kind of antidepressants, and I forget to refill the prescription quite often. It's kind of idiotic of me, because I have a terrible reaction to going cold turkey off my medication, it's called SRI discontinuation syndrome. One of the symptoms is bad dreams, and they are very much the kind that make you feel wrong and ruin your day. I had one night of these dreams, I kept waking up and going back to sleep, and I had bad dreams every time. By the time day rolled around I felt kind of hysterical and the thought of having another night like that made me cry. I was off my antidepressants darn it, I cry easily. In any case, the only thing I actually remember about these dreams is a lot of vivid color. That's it, that's all I've ever been able to remember, but the feel of them was bad, like my brain was assuring me, "yes, this is really bad, this is awfullll, this green color reminds you of boogers, now scream in despair!"
So all in all, zombies and tornadoes and other things you're scared of, they aren't half bad to dream about, but fire ants or the vivid color of avocado? That's terrifying.
Now, here's something I find interesting about the topic of dreams. It is really common in fiction for someone to have bad dreams, full on recurring nightmares that make the prospect of sleep terrifying. These dreams are often about something legitimately bad, or scary to the person having them: watching a loved one die, being chased by monsters, something creepy and disfiguring happening, whatever. The point is that this literally scary thing haunts this person in dreams, and they don't want to sleep because they don't want to live this nightmare over and over at night. Well, I used to wonder if dreams were really like that, and when I saw something scary on TV I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to forget it and that I would dream about it that night. If that happened then it was all over, just a couple of steps until I refused to sleep and spent my last days in a mental institution refusing all food but peanut butter covered celery. That was the logical progression in my mind at least. Now, I am scared by a lot, and two things that I'm absolutely terrified of are tornadoes and zombies. Zombies are a little illogical (right now at least! Always be prepared), but any time I try to actually imagine myself inside a zombie movie being chased by decomposing corpses I start hyperventilating. I mean ugh. And tornadoes are just wicked horrid forces of nature that kill people and make lots of noise.
I am scared of both of these things, and I dream about both of them a LOT. Like, several times a week. There are zombies creeping around outside our house or in old hospitals my family is inexplicably inside of. The zombies always end up finding us, and we have to run, and we do run, or drive, or fight, but it is SO scary, because my mind knows it's one of my worst fears and it makes me feel every second of it.
And somehow, in the midst of this zombie pockmarked wasteland in my head, a storm will stir up and tornadoes will come down. Multiple tornadoes, while we're in the car, and they come straight towards us, and they're making that train sound that they're famous for, and I'm curled up in a tight little ball in the car watching the horrid funnel thing come after us as we try to find a sturdy spot free of zombies. This is all horrid.
But you know what? It's awfully fun to remember when I wake up. It's fun to tell people, and it doesn't bother me when I wake up. The idea of dreaming about tornado zombie worlds doesn't make me afraid to fall asleep. I'm pretty okay with it.
The dreams that do bother me are hard to explain. It's not the contents, it's the feelings they invoke. They make me feel sad, or helpless, or ugly in some way. When I wake up, I feel BAD, and I can't stop thinking about them unless I pray to God that they stop bothering me. I remember one dream, kind of disgusting, but mainly weird. There was something killing deer in my dream, always in the woods. I would look at the bodies and try to find out what had attacked them. To go to the woods I had to cross a bridge covered in fire ants, and they would attack me. The actual woods weren't woods at all, everything was beige and orange, and soft, like we were in something's insides. The surroundings reminded me powerfully of vomit. When I woke up I felt horrible, and seriously disturbed. Now the dream was weird and kind of gross, but I don't know why it felt so creepy. It was just the atmosphere.
I take a certain kind of antidepressants, and I forget to refill the prescription quite often. It's kind of idiotic of me, because I have a terrible reaction to going cold turkey off my medication, it's called SRI discontinuation syndrome. One of the symptoms is bad dreams, and they are very much the kind that make you feel wrong and ruin your day. I had one night of these dreams, I kept waking up and going back to sleep, and I had bad dreams every time. By the time day rolled around I felt kind of hysterical and the thought of having another night like that made me cry. I was off my antidepressants darn it, I cry easily. In any case, the only thing I actually remember about these dreams is a lot of vivid color. That's it, that's all I've ever been able to remember, but the feel of them was bad, like my brain was assuring me, "yes, this is really bad, this is awfullll, this green color reminds you of boogers, now scream in despair!"
So all in all, zombies and tornadoes and other things you're scared of, they aren't half bad to dream about, but fire ants or the vivid color of avocado? That's terrifying.
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