DREAMS

(This is a chapter from my book Meeting in the Middle of Nowhere, link below).

Another reason for our differences arose shortly after we met. The subject of dreams came up and he reacted a bit strangely about it in my view. He doesn’t have them, none that can be remembered in any way at least, but found it bizarre that I did so much. And that I could replay them the next day. I have them every day, sometimes recurring, but mostly all dramatic and tiring. I had spent years despairing of them sometimes, unable to shake them upon waking. Having them follow me throughout the day, the feeling, the memory, the tiredness. Sleep is often not refreshing for me, but because my brain feels so overworked everyday just by thinking, I require sleep. I cannot escape it.

The whole concept of the above is as foreign as it could get to him when I broke it down. Why would you go through the motions of things that aren’t real when you’re asleep? All I could do was agree, it is weird and I cannot explain that bit, in fact, I have been trying to for a while now.

I watch a lot of horror (or at least have done), and often used to have apocalyptic dreams involving zombies, alien invasion or some such drama. Even when I hadn’t watched the films for quite some time, they could come back any time. Or that is how it looks on the outside. It’s easy to say that our dreams come directly from what we watch – and I have considered it, but what I go through is usually relevant to real life rather than fantasy. Anxiety, stress, worry, fear, anger – all the things we are taught to suppress in our daily lives. They just happen to manifest by way of ridiculous scenarios.

Again, to someone who does not have dreams, or visual replay of any kind, that is crazy talk. But to me it’s normal now, not enjoyable, but a bit more controllable. The trick is, not to get so wound up or anxious in real life, because it will follow me into sleep. There is no respite or escape in sleep, my brain does not shut down, and it just goes somewhere else and takes me with it.

As I got to my early twenties before I knew how to drive, I began to have driving dreams. I wasn’t even learning and had no immediate plan to, but as it was something I knew would come up, it began to feature. My mother didn’t drive and neither did my two older siblings so I had nothing to gauge it on either, so maybe that added to it. The amusing thing about those ones though, was that I had no idea how to drive, so in the dreams the car would usually roll into a hedge or down a hill. Expressing to me my main concern was that I didn’t know how to, rather than I would have to learn.  There was a partly funny, partly scary one though, where I was driving up a hill so steep that the car just tipped back on itself. So I will admit, when going up steep hills thereafter, my brain would default to a mild fleeting feeling of panic, remembering that dream.

Another that featured a few times, were teeth dreams. Occasionally I would have a dream where some of my teeth fell out. If you read any of the dream interpretation books, they say ones like that mean you are worried about money. Personally as I always had a dentist appointment booked around that time and have a fear of the dentist, I put it down to that. Although once you know how much you have to pay for your dental treatment, that could definitely give you teeth-related money dreams!

But as a depressed teenager cut off from the real world by my own mind, I found day-dreaming to be my saviour. I found living with my mother’s weirdness very draining and my only escape was to wander off in my head. I would dream of normality, try to imagine my future, what I wanted to be, dream of being brave and impetuous. Anything that could distract me from my actual reality, I read books, drew pictures, watched films, embroidered, wrote diaries, cleaned, walked our dogs (something that helped me get over agoraphobia), anything I could to not have to stop and be where I was.

I must admit, there is still a similarity as I do not have a quiet mind. But as an adult, I don’t need to daydream anymore, because I can change what I want if I need to. If something in my life is worrying me or is wrong, I can sort it out. I didn’t have that luxury when I was 15, so dreaming was my temporary way out.

The study of sleep and dreams has been going on for an age and I am aware there are people who don’t dream at all. Or some who don’t remember them in any way who do visualise, so this is a varied subject whatever your thought process or visualising capabilities. There are also the extreme sleep conditions, where people have night terrors and actually act out the fear or anxiety being experienced. Where dreams and nightmares can take on a life of their own. There really are some strange things going on inside our heads, whether we are in control or not, and even whether we are awake or not. That can be quite a scary concept.

(c) K Wicks