I really need to blog more often. My writing’s going to get rusty otherwise.
I had been meaning to write about dreams for a while now. Before Stinky Pete happened, I loved dreaming. And not to brag, but I was good at it. I had the ability to turn almost any and every dream into an adventure. I’m fortunate enough to have had a talent for turning almost any dream into a lucid dream.
A lucid dream, for those who don’t know, is a dream during which the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming, within the dream. As I am discovering, oftentimes people, while they are dreaming, aren’t aware that they are experiencing a dream until they wake up, regardless of how ludicrous the events of the dream were. According to Wikipedia (I know, high school teachers, I know, it’s not a reliable source, whatever) the human mind will often explain away the oddities you see in a dream with some logic that it will immediately accept as gospel truth.
Essentially, your brain doesn’t want you to ever think that you may be dreaming. Weird.
Anyways, the Wikipedia summary I referenced earlier mentions that lucid dreams tend to be vivid and the dreamer may gain control of the events of their dream. This control was the reason my dreams were so much fun, were each an adventure, and this control was also the motivation for such in depth exposition as far as this post is concerned.
You know those real-life situations that you wish you had an undo button? Where you said or did the wrong thing and the ramifications were too clearly apparent later on? Well, my level of control was such that, in my dreams, I had that button. Almost each and every dream that I can remember, I had the ability to redo my actions with full knowledge of the coming actions.
It.
Was.
Awesome.
Yet ever since the whole Stinky Pete debacle/procedure, my dreams… stopped.
To my knowledge, I did not dream for months. Upon waking, I would have no memory of any nocturnal adventures, no mental exploration of the varied landscape of Nod. Mr. Sandman told no stories.
The closest thing I had to a dream were last-second-before-falling-asleep visions of this:
You may not want to scroll down for this, I won’t mind if you don’t finish reading.
Seriously, it’s okay.
Well, I warned you.
Seriously, I warned you. Don’t say I didn’t.
Sorry about that!
For those of you who don’t know, that’s actress Linda Blair in make-up for her role of Regan McNeill in The Exorcist. It’s also one of the scariest images in the world for me to look at. THAT was the closest thing I would have to a dream in months.
And the fun part about my brain is that it’s very good at making things scarier when you get used to it. Want to know what’s even scarier than that face? Seeing it in black and white. I won’t even dare to Google that, to see if it exists outside of my head.
But once I’d manage to drift to sleep with Regan McNeill staring me in the face (not an easy task) I’d be safe in the black tranquility of unconsciousness. The nightmares died.
But even safety from the likes of Regan and Samara Morgan (another frequent visitor in my nightmares. Obviously I’m not a fan of evil little girls. I wonder what that says about my psychology…) wasn’t worth losing my other dreams. I’ll gladly suffer a few sleepless nights if it means I get to revel during the rest of my time asleep.
But for the longest time, nothing. Void. Empty blackness was all that interrupted my waking hours. Any dreams I MIGHT have had were completely forgotten the moment I came out of sleep.
A few days ago, I resolved to write a blog about this dreamless state I was in. Nothing too introspective or lengthy, just enough to share my feelings: those feelings of loss and deprivation. How empty my nights seemed without my nocturnal mental wanderings. How much of a loss I felt.
That night, I dreamt.
No idea what it was about, not anymore. But that morning, I was aware that I had dreamt.
Was it mundane? Yes. Maybe even a little boring? More than likely. Was there much original about it. Thinking about it, I really don’t believe so. But it existed. As much as any dream can, anyways.
My dreams still aren’t a nightly occurrence, more often than not I’ll still wake up seemingly moments after I fell asleep. But my dreams occur more and more often, and are more and more vivid. With any luck, maybe I’ll regain my ability to dream lucidly, and will be able to enjoy my rest, rather than experience it.
So there’s still some hope for my dreams yet.
But please, if I may return to the initial motivation I had for writing this post: cherish your dreams, those of you fortunate enough to remember them. Even the scary ones. To know that your mind is still capable of creating a world, a scenario, a fantasy that even your brain itself doesn’t want to admit is fake is an incredible thing. When I thought I had lost that ability, I felt broken, incomplete. Regaining my dreams makes me feel a little more whole than I was before.
So give thanks for your dreams, and count them among your blessings where they truly belong.
And one more thing…
Suck on that, Stinky Pete.