I don’t know if I ever really liked dreams.
Some people talk about the really good, eventful or even bad ones that they remember having.
I’m slowly poking at my keys right now & staring at this blinking cursor because if I’m gonna be honest- I’m stalling. Don’t know whether it’s out of embarrassment, or shame or what, but I’m not the type to get touchy-feely with emotions or vulnerability so.. ‘here goes’ I guess.
I remember the bad ones.
I know you might be thinking “yeah, sure everyone has nightmares”. But I mean the like.. really, bad ones. The kind you can’t forget, with details so perfect? Yeah okay, now we’re on the same page. It gets a little worse though.
Around 1994? My family moved across many state lines to be closer to the rest of our relatives and so that my grandparents could be more involved with four year-old me. Cozy little house in a small city, very friendly neighborhood, pretty place and whatnot. My first like, REAL memories happened sometime that year. You know how kids typically have “childhood amnesia” or whatever until BOOM, they develop function to retain real memories? That. And mine was a doozy.
It’s also when I got to discover two things: One - sleep paralysis. Two - hypnopompic hallucinations. Though I didn’t know these things until far later in life. Anyway I’m stalling again.. Sorry whoever reads this.
The first memory I ever had was sitting on that cherry-brown cheap linoleum flooring with all the slightly off-white square border. It was a little textured to the touch but overall smooth and slightly dusty if you touched it. I think night was just arriving and my parents had the Lincolns (neighbors from across the street) over to become acquainted. Today I’m sure they were having some drinks and things. It was jovial, not super loud but a noticeable clamor of multiple grown-ups sharing stories in separate groups. I remember their legs passing by me often as they went between the house and outside to the back yard and so forth.
We had this toy when I was a kid. It sounds so stupid now but I think it was really popular. Basically a faded neon suction cup thing. You put it on a hard surface, then push the center down. After a few seconds it would pop up and maybe do a flip. I was playing with that when all of the adults relocated to what I assume was the bonfire outside. Two lights were on in the house; living room and kitchen. I was basically in what would become the dining room once we furnished the place. It was adjacent to the hallway section which began as a cross-shaped intersection leading to three rooms immediately.
The floor was nice and cool as night set in and I was laying on my side pushing the stupid cup down, watching it pop when I fell asleep. When I opened my eyes, I felt a little confused but it was immediately dismissed by what I assume is a child’s attention span and lack of critical thinking.
What I did notice was right there in the direction I was facing. The cross-shaped intersection. In the mostly unlit entryway, more toward one bedroom and the bathroom, was.. something. I could feel it in every little bone. I could almost -see- it. Looking right back at me. There were no adults nearby, but I could hear their voices faintly coming from outside, through the screen door. Frozen with fear newly experienced, I then tried to scramble away but found I could not move anything at all, not even a twitch. Queue the crying and I tried to yell “Mumma!” but nothing came out. I was so goddamn scared. And then the feeling of ‘the thing’ was gone and I could move, but I just curled up into a little defensive ball and sobbed until shortly after I remember my mother coming in from the kitchen (which led to the back yard) and consoling me.
That was my first memory ever.
Fast-forward through a relatively happy childhood until I was eleven, when my older brother passed away in an accident, from there things kinda went a little squiggly. I became an addict of all kinds early in my teens which thanks to my preferences and a solid combination of imaginative cocktails, I slept very little and mostly ran on youthful endurance. This was when I stopped having dreams altogether, or I at least don’t recall having them. After some counseling attempts throughout the years and a specifically unpleasant event, I was put into rehabilitation and successfully released at 17.
Of the many things I was treated for, one was drug-induced insomnia.
Woohoo, sleep! Wait..
Not entirely sure when this occurred, but it wasn’t too long after my release.
I had a -dream- that really shook me and reminded me of what I had forgotten as a child.
In this dream I was in a forest. It was probably mid Fall, because the leaves were already browned and slightly dry/cracked. Somewhow the leaves above were still green, and the trees were almost identical- tall, thin and numerous. There was a very slight dip in elevation for a tiny clearing where my little buddy Cotton, my curly, white bishon frise dog was walking with me when we stopped. Immediately, I became what I now know as lucid. The feeling is like nothing I could ever describe. Waking up within your dream? It’s like everything clicks into place at once with a cool breeze. Like you go from vaguely watching bits and pieces of a television show while you do something else, to being first and
front-most in the main character’s seat and everyone is waiting on you to deliver your line.
That’s when I felt wrong. A sense of dread filled me, and I got the feeling I needed to leave and I should NOT do anything else even move. But I did.
Against all warning signals firing off in my brain, I turned my head.
There was my cute little Cotton, sitting in the depression of leaves, looking up at me. Visually, nothing was off. The horror I was now experiencing, was because I could tell, I could feel, that he knew what was happening - no, he knew everything. Then he smiled. I woke up shouting and cut off mid-yell realizing what I was doing. Shaking, sweating, I started to laugh. Don’t know why but maybe because I was thankful I could at least move and it was -just- a dream. Though I never forgot it.
Over the next few years I had a few more fear-inducing lucid dreams, but no paralysis. I’d say maybe two times a year? I’ll spare their details if only for brevity. Moving on..
I think it was in 2010 when my oldest brother asked if I would watch his kids from noon to the next day. Sure, no problem! Free food, a nice place and about 100 more channels than my TV had? Sign me up, I said. The day went relatively normal. Played some games with my niece and nephew, fed them, watched a movie and put them to sleep. Finally I could watch what I wanted! So I sprawled out on the white leather couch and put his 72in plasma to the test.
My eyes open.
I’m looking up at the ceiling, it’s dark excepting the bits of moonlight through curtain gaps. TV must turn itself off after so long, cool. Something feels wrong- I can’t move. Immediately that full body tingle hits me and every hair on my person rises. I’m panic looking around as much as I can, and that’s when I notice. This is the most insane part to me, that I was entirely unaware until I caught a glimpse of my relative position to the coffee table. I was presently contorted. My heels and the back of my head/neck/shoulders touched the couch and the rest of me was arched up in the middle bit. Full-on panic set in and I could have died when I heard a voice coming from somewhere close or maybe in my head. It seemed so pleased and the worst part is, and I don’t know how, but I felt like I -knew- it was my own voice. It said, “I’ve found you.”
I tried screaming. Though I’d never screamed before because that’s not what men do, I’m positive I attempted it right then because the sound I managed to gurgle out through a tongue and lips that didn’t work was a long, pathetic whimper something akin to a broken-up, strangled Tarzan bellow.
Then I could move. The feelings were gone and I, not very proudly, gathered up the blanket draped his couch and quickly disappeared into it where I spent hours awake until I saw the light of morning.
Among other things, this lead me to a life of alcoholism. Drinking before work, during, after and into the wee hours of the morning until I embraced sweet oblivion and then promptly rose to a screaming alarm to do it all over again.
Over a decade later and to another’s benefit, I was hitting up Google for some sleep-related research when I went down a rabbit-hole of Reddit posts, which led me to topics on lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis. Those also led me to googling the conditions and just eating up all kinds of information I had never known prior. There were posts about people practicing lucid dreaming, using things like ‘reality checks’ and ‘revisiting dreams’, things of that nature. They would intentionally try to lucid dream, practicing throughout wakefulness with ‘reality checks’ by looking at certain objects, or hands, or saying “Is this a dream?” out loud. Some of the revisited dreams sounded great and all, but I can’t remember one I’d like to go back to, seriously.
Of course then, I couldn’t stop myself from reading the posts from users with bad experiences, especially sleep paralysis in lucid dreaming. With no events in a long time, this awakened something in me and has me terrified to sleep tonight as I think my mind is going to automatically go over everything I’ve read to summon up a dark place.
Why would anyone want to remember what we see when we sleep.
My biggest takeaway from those articles on LD is having the ability to tell when you are or are not asleep. Wish I had that knowledge far earlier in life, but all the same.. I’m almost too afraid to say those four words. Would it even help to know when I’m asleep or not?
Well, that’s my story and thanks for following along. I feel pretty empowered by the anonymity of the internet, steeling my resolve to share this with you. So I guess since I’m being so honest here it couldn’t hurt to give it a shot for laughs.
Is this a dream?