My sleeping pattern has slowly begun to normalize. Not there yet but I see progress. Last few months my sleep has been so scattered I could not remember any of my dreams. It’s only since the frequency of waking up has gotten down that I been able to do that. Well, some.
I’ve always had different types of dreams, also had weird experiences regarding dreams. I remember during my childhood I always had the same type of dream; not being able to walk or run, flying away, being lost, being naked in public. Common theme was being trapped and needing to escape. That’s not a hard one to explain.
As I grew older I started having lucid dreams. They were always accompanied by sleep paralysis and occurred mostly in times of extreme stress. Sleep paralysis scared the shit out of me. I don’t know if you ever experienced it, it’s terrifying. Your mind is awake but it’s on the cross point of dream and reality (read; hallucinating) while your body is completely immobilized. There was a point that I was so stressed out by the thought of sleeping that it made my sleep paralysis become a daily nightmare (..) Didn’t take long for it to become a vicious cycle so I needed to find a way out.
The only thing I could think of was just let it happen, stop fighting it and see what happens. Not panic.
Took me weeks to get there. Stop panicking while panicking takes some practice… After a while it worked. I remember calming down and just waiting. The shadows that scared me before, the crushing weight on my chest, they just stopped moving. I remember thinking to myself ‘what would happen if I thought of a window’ to just walk out of the space I was in. Before I could finish the thought I saw the window. The window I envisioned in my mind was right in front of me. I flew through. That was my first lucid dream. Once I got the hang of it it turned out to be really, really cool.
I still have lucid dreams though not as much. I haven’t experienced sleep paralysis in years.
I have dream meetings, don’t know how else to put it. The setting is always neutral and there’s always myself and somebody I have a real powerful connection with in real life. Sometimes it’s checking in with each other, getting an update on life. Sometimes it’s saying goodbye to each other and ending the connection. These dreams always leave me feeling peaceful. Sometimes a bit sad, but peaceful.
Then there are the house dreams. When I dream of my house, that’s me. Most of my life my house was in ruins, beyond repair. Those are gone. My house is fine.
Of course there are the dream-dreams. Walk through the front door and you’re in the swimming pool and that’s completely normal. I don’t have many of those. Or I just don’t remember, very plausible. Those I don’t pay much attention to, it’s just processing everyday life stuff.
The other ones I mentioned, those are the ones I pay attention to. The reason I do that is because of a really strange experience I had when my son was very young. We shared a dream. I said what I said.
When I woke up it was still really early in the morning, what woke me up was my son. He was crying and calling for me.
What I woke up from was a dream that was so strange and emotionally overwhelming that I had to take a moment to process. I had been in a cave-like space. An enormous cave. It was made of black material. Solid black smooth walls, with millions of tiny shining stars within it that lit the cave. It was a beautiful light, soft, comforting. And familiar because I had been there before, once. There was water in the cave, a river running through it, a peaceful stream. And a boat, patiently waiting to be boarded.
I was there, and my son was there. I kneeled before him and took his little hands in mine and I looked at his little face, his blue eyes. I was feeling his sadness and my own grief. This giant boulder of pain in my heart because I knew what I was about to do. What I had to do. He knew it too. I remember the exact words I said
‘I love you, baby. I love you so much. If there was any other way to keep you safe, I would. But I can’t. This is the only way that I can keep you safe.’
He cried as we walked to the boat, I cried too but I tried not to let it show. I didn’t want him to hurt because of me too, he was hurting so bad already.
Before the boat left he told me ‘Mommy I love you. I love you forever’, I said the same thing to him.
His crying woke me up. My face was wet from crying and I needed a moment to gather my thoughts and clear my head, wipe my face. As I got to his room he was sitting up in his bed, his face red and wet from crying. I held him tight. When he calmed down he told me about this dream he had where he was in a boat, alone. And he was drifting away from me. The last thing he heard me say was ‘Baby I love you. I love you forever’.
A few months after this, there was an incident that changed the course of my son’s life forever. So yeah. I pay attention. I pay close attention.
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