Jul 30, 2009

Awake and Dreaming

My dreams are intense. I've had lucid dreams, where you know you are dreaming and are able to control what happens next. Every once in a while I'll have a dream that is prophetic. Sometimes they're about trivial things - in high school I once dreamed an entire conversation with the boy I liked, the day before it happened. As a result I was able to avoid embarrassing myself (more than usual). More often, however, the meaning is less clear. Once I had a night terror about a flesh-colored sack filling with yellow viscous fluid. The next week, my father had a heart attack due to a cholesterol blockage. Even my regular dreams are so vivid that I will often confuse them, upon waking, with reality.

This morning I dreamt I was covered in spiders, and that they were spinning their webs around my head. When I woke, I screamed at the top of my lungs. My roommate came running, only to find me out of bed, batting at my ears and shaking all over. When she asked me what was wrong, I couldn't remember the right words to explain myself. 'Nightmare,' my logical brain called to me from across the vast ocean of sleep. 'Ignore the feeling of wispy cobwebs against your neck - it's only your hair. That sense of creeping dread is a figment of your imagination. You are not about to suffocate, or be eaten, or die. Go back to sleep ... if you can.'

"I... I had a dream," I told my roommate groggily, and crawled back into bed.

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