I had a strange dream last night. I dreamt of an old friend, someone whom I haven't spoken to, or seen, in at least twelve years. It started in an amusement park, a really wacky fun one (I dream about amusement parks a lot, actually...) The next thing I remember is that I'm sitting in the passenger seat of a car next to my friend. I can feel the turmoil rolling off of him. We talk, but not of anything specific, then I woke up.
I don't often have dreams about my friends, new or old. I also don't often have dreams that I remember, but when I do they tend to be of famous people. Keep in mind that I work at a movie theatre and and am surrounded by giant versions of famous faces for seven to ten hours a day, five days a week. Plus, I love movies.
From past experience, I know that if I dream of a friend, I should check with them to make sure they're okay. It might be something relatively insignificant or something monumentally huge and I check with them not so much because I might be able to help, but because they may need someone to talk to who is outside of the situation that's bothering them. The dreams rarely give me an indication of what's wrong, just that something is. And this doesn't happen all of the time. Things could be happening to any one of my friends and I won't have a dream about them. I suppose that I have dreams about them when they need me around? I don't know, man, I just do the dreaming.
When I was a kid, inbetween bouts of severe night terrors, I had dreams about the future. Insignificant stuff, too, like a certain type of calculator or a certain phrase, but what I saw in my dream came true or really happened, even a couple of years later. I have a pretty good memory, as some of my friends can attest. Those dreams, and the night terrors, stopped when I hit puberty and that might be when my dreams about friends started.
Do you know how hard it is to say to a friend, "Hey, I had a dream about you last night. You okay?" I usually get a sideways narrowed-eye look with a raised eyebrow and a guarded "Yeah...?" Which, being me, I'm kind of used to since I get that quite often, but still. There's only one person I can go to when I dream about her and when I say, "Hey. Had a dream. What's happening?" she won't be weirded out...or if she is, she doesn't tell me.
Unfortunately, this particular dream is going to have to go without resolution. Not the first time that's happened. I don't know how to contact the friend I dreamt about and even if I did, well...there are times where even I am bound by social constraints. Meaning, I wouldn't know what to say.
When is a dream just a dream? For me, I guess it's when there are celebrities, or zombies (I'm not picky), present...people I don't know, like when I dream of an amusement park.
Oh, I should probably stop and say,"No, I'm not psychic." So, no, I'm not psychic. If I were psychic, let's face it...I'd have won the lottery years ago. It's not that I don't believe in the possibility of psychic phenomena, it's that I'm too cynical to believe that a proposed psychic isn't getting some kind of help, especially in the digital age where crystals are often to be found in computers as well as a proper New Age arsenal. That's just me, I guess.
6 comments:
I think you ARE psychic. You just haven't found a way to channel it yet. I am somewhat, and my wife is much more so. I feel auras, she sees them. We both see ghosts sometimes.
I still have night terrors. I think they're past-life experiences, since apparently I've had a lot of past lives, always getting killed in war. I wake myself up sometimes, shouting. My darling wife is VERY patient. She can tell that I'm going into a terror because my breathing changes. She touches me or shakes me, and it interrupts the brainwave sequence and usually helps me avoid it. That's kind of her.
I've seen ghosts at work: one shadow figure, one little boy, and something rushed me while I was threading a projector. No one believes me about the rushing thing, but I think that's more because they don't want to...
My night terrors were pretty abstract, but some common elements were that if I screamed, I couldn't breathe and was then sucked into the ground. There was one time where I screamed and couldn't breathe, but then I woke up and I couldn't open my eyes so I started thrashing around really freaked out.
Fun times.
Most of my dreams are an abstract chain of events strung together like a movie. Strangely enough, I actually know I'm dreaming in most of them.
Once, and only once, have I had a strange "psychic"-esque dream experience. Back when I lived with at my Mom's, the gas-meter was just outside of one of my bedroom walls. I had a vivid dream of that wall ripping into a huge explosion that instantly shot me awake.
I couldn't get back to sleep and was bordering on a panic attack. I couldn't even get myself to go near my room. My Mom's boyfriend at the time was a believer in such phenomena, much moreso than I am to this day. He got someone from the gas company to check out the meter and, sure enough, there was a leak that created a good-sized cloud of flammable gas in that narrow space between our house and the neighbors'.
It was a bizarre experience and I'm still not sure what my feelings on it are, but it happened.
As for night terrors, I started having them a couple years ago, but quickly realized they only happened (and always happened) when I slept on my stomach. I stopped doing that and haven't had one since.
Noel CT:
There have been dreams that I wished, while dreaming, that I could remember them so I could use them as stories. Of course, I haven't had any luck in remembering them well enough to use them...
Holy crap! There's definitely something to be said about occassional psychic phenomena...
I wonder why your night terrors only happened when you slept on your stomach. I had a schedule for mine. I could only sleep for a couple of hours before I'd have one and I have to wake myself up and not fall asleep for an hour or two. Surprisingly, I never fell asleep in class.
I tried keeping a dream journal for the same reason, but they were so off-the-wall and bizarre, I doubted they'd sell.
For example, in one I was the sidekick of Scott Patterson (who played the grizzled Luke on GILMORE GIRLS) who'd inexplicably become an international adventurer. When we were attacked by an unseen dragon, I escaped harm by turning into an eagle and zapping myself into the Tetris-like video game I had in my pocket. After doodling around in there for a bit, I came back to discover Scott had been turned into an action figure and spent a while haggling prices with an old woman who was selling him in her yard sale.
As I said, it's they're a bizarre chain of events.
In regards to the night terrors, I'd always theorized that my case resulted from how my body type and certain sleeping positions affected my breathing. On my stomach, my head is twisted to the side which also affects the blood flow through the arteries in my neck. I have no idea if this is the case, but it makes sense to me. No idea how to explain ones that follow a solid schedule.
NoelCT:
This is one weird dream, but definitely interesting!
That makes sense...less oxygen in the blood mixed with possibly less blood than it's accustomed to could effect the brain when its in its sleep state. I'm no scientist, but that sounds good to me!
I think the schedule thing is probably more superstition than science, but when it worked, it worked! Sometimes, I was just too tired to stick to it and ended up having the nightmare.
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