Sweet Dreams (and Nightmares)

I am a very vivid dreamer. I have long, epic, masterpiece dreams.  I still remember dreams I had as a kid.  I remember them vividly, and in detail.

However, I also have nightmares.  Nightmares were something I thought would stop as I got older, or at least get less intense, though I am finding the older I get, the more vividly I dream, which is awesome when it is a fun dream, and terrifying when it is a nightmare. My nightmares have changed, I no longer dream about being chased by bears, or having to drive a car when I was only 5 and didn’t know how a car worked…  I feel like my dreams and nightmares are much more nonsensical now.

In general, I have a pretty strange sleep pattern. As a teenager, I remember going through bouts of not being able to sleep.  I wouldn’t call it insomnia, as I would sleep, but normally for just a few hours at a time, then wake up again for an hour or so, then go back to sleep.  I now go back and forth between periods of sleeping well for 8 hours, to periods of sleeping like this:
9pm – sleep on the couch for an hour.
10pm: Go upstairs to bed, and toss and turn for an hour.
11pm-3am – sleep/dream.
3:15-5am Wake Up, go downstairs, watch documentaries, fall in and out of sleep/dream.
5am: stumble upstairs and sleep.
6:30am: Wake-Up and Start my day.

So, anyway, on Friday night I woke up around 3 and went downstairs and put on some documentary on Ancient Egypt, curled up with Oliver and tried to get back to sleep for a bit. I was having this dream that my parents, my brother, my aunt and uncle, my cousin and her husband and Dan and I all lived in our tiny, 1100 sq ft house.  I was wandering around looking for a place to sleep, and finally settled on the couch.  In my dream, I was still somewhat aware of my surroundings, so my position on the couch, and the lighting played a role in what was happening and what I was seeing, which is interesting and terrifying because it makes the strange events seem very, very real.  I dreamed I was trying to sleep, when I noticed a large dog coming down the stairs.  I figured it was one of my relatives dogs, and called it over to me.  It sat in front of me, and in then hazy blue light of the TV, I tried to make out which dog it was.  I could tell there was something not quite right about the dog. Suddenly, it got up, walked behind me, stood on it’s hind legs, and as it hovered over me and I realized it had a human face. This dog was probably 7′ tall, standing up on it’s hind legs, with a cloth around his waist, and a HUMAN FACE.  This was the most terrifying things in the whole entire world at that moment, though now it sounds comical. So, naturally, I start screaming, but I was still in that paralyzed REM dream state, so my screams came out like weird muffled moans.  So, that was disturbing, and I assume it has something to do with me thinking too much about Anubis before sleeping…

Last night I had another screaming dream.  In this one, I had gotten up to use the bathroom (exciting content, huh?) and while standing at the sink I noticed a ghostly figure slumped in the corner of the room.  It started slowly moving towards me, and as it got close it grabbed my arm. I started screaming “NOOOOOO” but again, was paralyzed by sleep so it came out like “mrph hrmph MHRMPHAMLMMMOOOOO”.  I was in bed this time, so Dan was able to gently wake me up and snap me out of it.

I don’t believe that dreams serve as any great insight into the future or anything like that.  I feel like they are just a mash-up of bits and pieces of information we have picked up throughout the days and weeks, and our brain assembling it in some mangled-up way. While my nightmares are scary, and my dreams (good or bad) disrupt my sleep, I am kind of glad I have them.  They are interesting to reflect upon, and try to make sense of.  Some of them also make hilarious stories.

So… any other adults out there still have nightmares?