Dreams and...

I had a nightmare last night.  I don't remember anything more than the fact that I had a nightmare though, and that actually makes worse.  Normally in the bright light of day I can suss out what my brain was thinking/doing.  But now here's all I remember:

I laid down for bed.  The last time I remember seeing on the clock was 1:30 am.  I woke up at 2:45 am scared.   It was dark, I was feeling distinctly alone, I didn't know where I was or why I was there.... and I was scared.

I did eventually figure out the who/what/why/wheres, and did fall back to sleep rather quickly.  But that scared feeling remained when I woke up fully this morning at 8:30 am.

I'm not one to have a lot of nightmares.  Or dreams.  At least not for the past several years.  Medically I know that I AM dreaming... those who don't dream have mental issues.  I just don't remember them.  I don't even have the impression of experiencing them.  I go to sleep, I wake up, I start my day.  No good thoughts/feelings or bad thoughts/feelings.   But I've now had two nightmares this past week.  If this past nightmare was my only experience, I probably would have just forgotten the whole thing in a day or so.... but having two in a week?  What the hell is my mind worrying about?


 I remember listening to a podcast recently that tried to explain dreams.  It wasn't interpreting dreams (The plane you were on was representative of the love and jealousy you have of your mother...), it was more of what the dream process is and what it's doing for you.  Their basic premise was that dreaming was solidifying certain events into your memory while washing the other non relevant memories away.  And they claim it happens in a generally predictable manner.

Their experiment was simple enough, they had a large group of people play a virtual reality skiing video game.  They played it for 8 or so hours before going to sleep.  Once they saw that the subject when into REM sleep, they waited a period of time and woke them up.  I don't remember the exact times, but if  they were woken up early, they were dreaming of playing the video game.  The later they were woken up, the less the dream was about remembering and the more the dream was about interpreting.  Eventually they'd be dreaming of actually skiing.  Some would go further and be dreaming of camping in the snow, or driving in the snow, or of being a dog on a ski hill or of playing a different game.... If they wanted long enough their dream barely had anything to do with the video game.

So that helps me put my previous nightmare into context.  Here's what I remember of my previous nightmare:

A friend (a couple friends?) and I were on a plane.  Everybody on the plane died and we were tasked with landing it.  We were flying over Indonesia and the island had the tallest building in the world on it but was only a few miles long.  So while we took turns figuring out the planes controls we were doing long figure eights around the building.  When it was my turns at the controls I banked the plane to deeply and was struggling to correct the action while not over correcting it.  I ended up barely missing the tallest building but hit another building with the tip of the wing.  The building collapsed killing thousands of people.  Eventually we got the plane on the ground and everybody was searching for me trying to find out why I'd kill all of those people.  I was stuck between my shame of killing them and my desire to not be unjustly prosecuted so I was constantly hiding and lying about who I really was, all the while trying to find a way off the island. 

Yeah... dreams are weird.  But I had spend a lot of time the previous day day dreaming about both my upcoming road trip to Dallas and my future plans of international travel.  So my best guess would be that I was working around those thoughts of travel.

Even though my recent experiences were nightmares, I miss remembering my dreams.   There was a time that I had at least vague memories of dreams almost every night.  I considered getting or keeping a dream journal so that I could write them down upon waking and remember more of them.  I don't believe I've ever had a true lucid dream.  The closest I can recall is dreaming that I was in a lucid dream, but the world was conspiring to turn it into a nightmare... I was constantly having to fight off these things to keep it a nice dream (the sky would grow cloudy and dark, when I focused on turning it back into a clear blue sky the grass would die all around me, when I turned my attention to the grass, the building next tome would decay and turn into a haunted house, while I re-created the pleasant suburban home a monster would appear and start terrorizing those around me.... so I can't say it was truly lucid.

I have also had continuing dreams.  By this I mean that I've had dreams, woken up and thought about the dream, went back to sleep and continued dreaming.  Sometimes the dream picks up right where it left off, other times it is another dream in that previous dreams reality.  The recent plane nightmare is an example of that... the crash was the ending of one dream.  Being on the ground and trying not to be found was the second dream.  I was distinctly awake between the two of them.

I seem to remember more of my nightmares as opposed to my pleasant dreams.  I recall one while I was in nursing school; I was dreaming of driving around trying to locate an Aunt's house.  She had died and I needed to find her body but kept getting lost in a neighborhood that I know well.  A childhood dream that has stuck with me for decades is watching some Easter/Christ show on television, but Jesus carrying his cross came out of the television.  We (me and several other kids) hid behind the couch and thought we weren't seen.  Jesus (cross still on his back) came over the couch and said... something.  It could have been my name, or just a scream but either way it scared the living dog shit out of me.

There are plenty of far more vague nightmare fragments.  Being chased.  Chasing after someone.  Killing or being killed.  Falling.  Failing at school.  Naked at school.  Most of these have no direct details any longer... they're just scenarios that I recall having nightmares about.

Pleasant dreams though... I don't recall those.  I can only remember three dreams right now that weren't outright nightmares, but only one was firmly pleasant.  That pleasant one was early in my capping days and I capped it as "Click Click Click".  I had turned into a woman and about the only detail that I still recall is the sound of the heels clicking on the floor.  The other two dreams are sexual in nature.

One was while I was in photo school.  I was crushing on two redheaded classmates.  Vicky and Autumn.  The dream I had was that Vicky was Autumn's mistress and on a date she was giving Autumn to me.  I distinctly remember being in the backseat of a limo watching Vicky dressed up in tight leather pants and a lather jacket, hanging her leg over Autumn's fishnet stocking clad leg and drawing her finger over Autumn's lips as she teased me "Come on C... you know you want her!"  There were parts of the dream were I was Autumn's master, but there was no direct sex in the dream... more of domination.  I had Autumn kneeling at my side while I casually played with her leash.  Or I had Autumn crawling behind me, the cat tail of her costume swishing back and forth as her hips swayed one way and then the other.  That dream was certainly good... but at the time I was mentally more exploring my submissive side.  When I day-dreamed about Vicky and Autumn it was more about them being my mistresses... not one giving the other to me as a Master.

The other dream is even less distinct.  I was in a relationship with a girl and she was making me feminize her former boyfriend.  He wasn't all that feminine, but I remember being seated with him between my legs, holding his head up against my thigh and talking to him about how we'd need to get him a wig.  Even in the dream I was wishing that someone were feminizing me. The dream was more expansive than that, but the years have washed the details away.

When I talk about quitting smoking to the other nurses at work I often talk about trying out Chantix.  One major problem with Chantix is reported nightmares.  People (even people I know that have tried it) have said that they experience very vivid nightmares and often stop taking the drug just to end the nightmares.   I think I'd like that effect.  While I was certainly scared early this morning and earlier this week waking up from a nightmare, I do like remembering them.  The scared feeling passes away and afterward I'm the star of my own movie.  I can still picture the landing strip and how you'd have to swing the plane gently around that tall building.  The sky was blue with puffy white clouds (we flew through one of the clouds and misted the windshield), the ground was foggy and the lights near the runway were burning the fog away.  The sound of the air traffic controllers on the discarded headset was a faint foreign language mumbling.  The grip of the stick was leather that had worn away and felt very comfortable.

I want more of that.  If I can't have more nice dreams, I'll accept having more nightmares!