I mean other than, "Girl, you are batshit crazy!" Here are my Top 3 Recurring Nightmares.
At #1 The School Nightmare
There are variations on the theme, different ages, etc. but the general nightmare has me realizing I'm almost late to class, it's a class in which I didn't know I was enrolled and have never attended, and it's the Final which counts 80% of the final grade. I don't know where it's being held, don't know the teacher, but I know I have a text and notes in my locker (even when it's set in college), but I don't know where my locker is. My entire dream is me trying to figure out where to go and what I need to know. If I fail, I don't get my degree, this is the last class.
My last graduation was 1991, so 24 years? I received my MA with a 3.95 GPA. And this dream still scares the shit out of me.
Nightmare #2 Backseat Driver
In this one, I find myself driving through a major city from the backseat of the vehicle. I'm not really sure how I'm working the pedals or steering, just that I'm doing okay. My fear is being discovered. People discovering that I'm not driving properly, legally, etc.
Nightmare #3 Claustrophobic Cute Chick
As soon as she could walk, Teen Queen was a traveler. If she could get out, she was gone. By 3, she could open any lock, any gate. I was forever chasing after her. This nightmare has us out in Palo Duro Canyon near the sandstone caves. These are very tight caves, and sandstone is notoriously unstable. I am horribly claustrophobic, to the point I panic if I can't get my head through the neck of a sweater quickly. TQ takes off running to the caves and crawls into one, I'm hot on her heels but it feels like I'm running in deep sand. She's crawling in the cave, me crawling behind her trying not to panic. She's just ahead of me, I can touch her foot but not grab it. As we go deeper, the cave gets smaller until we're both wedged in. TQ starts crying and panicking, then the sandstone walls start caving on us. I'm trying desperately to reach her foot and drag her out, the walls are caving in faster. Just as it all goes black, I wake up screaming. I haven't had this one in a while, but when I do, I don't go back to sleep.
Okay folks, there's a few dark corners of my psyche. Knock yourselves out.
#1 means you don't feel in cintrol if your life.
ReplyDelete#3 I don't understand... I regularily crawl through 20" pipe to get into things at work. Ifvyour claustrophic; afraid of the dark ir afraid ofvheights my job is not for you.
Exile1981
I've had #2. I 'woke up' in the sleeper of my truck, driving itself through ice-covered, scary mountain terrain. I tried to get out of the sleeper to take the wheel, but it seemed like a journey of 1000 miles...
ReplyDelete...and then I really woke up--in the sleeper of my truck, staring out at the snow. Talk about bone-chilling, and I don't mean the temps...
Stress...
ReplyDeleteall three
All I know about my dreams are that they usually involve the emotions of concern/anxiety, terror, frustration, shame or bliss/happiness. Then I very occasionally have a 'movie' dream, where I'm in a movie-like plot which plays out like real life. For example, Alien Invasion, Foreign Invasion of my town by non-American troops or the one where I'm married to a woman I've never known in reality and living in a different place that I never recognize.
ReplyDeleteI also visit my 'dream city' where I go to different places meet different folks. I have that dream every so often and the city is always exactly the same. It's as familiar to me a my home town and it's as big as NYC, but very different looking.
And I dream in color. Do you?
So your dream #1 might be a frustration dream. #2 might be an anxiety dream and #3 sounds like a classic terror dream. My terror dreams almost always ends with me dying, but sometimes I'm captured by people unknown and they are about to torture me, but I wake up before the pain.
My worst recurring dreams have to do with one or both of my children dying/being taken from me by government forces. But I have had your #1, as well, though not often since I became the teacher rather than the student.
ReplyDeleteI almost never get the "back in school" dreams, but the last two times I did, I forgot to check my class schedule and ended up sleeping and/or working(at the job I left in 2012, of all places) through all of my classes or got moved to AP English.
ReplyDeleteI usually have a dream that there's someone I have to fight, and either feel like I'm punching through molasses, or remember that my knife is too dull to cut butter, let alone the wrists of the Dwayne Johnson wannabe in front of me.
I get #1 all the time, at least a couple of times a week, but with a twist. I'm a teacher - and the nightmare involves a roomful of screaming kids, I forgot what I'm teaching, I can't get them under control, in walks the principal...
ReplyDeleteThe crawling into a narrowing space is frightening. External restrictions in you life? I often have cool dreams but rarely if ever nightmares. The dream city one Lysander mentions is frequent; but mine is a conglomeration of English Cotswold market town and modern NYC.Bizarre!
ReplyDeleteMy Dad told a story about a fellow in Alexandria, LA, who owned a '34 Ford and rigged it with back seat controls. He had a big Golden Retriever who would sit in the front (drivers) seat and peer thru the windshield while the owner drove from the back seat.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't illegal in the late '30s and I'm not sure that it's illegal now. Who would make a law like that?
I don't usually remember dreaming let alone the an actual dream... everybody dream, I just don't remember.
ReplyDeleteWay back in my college days I was a Fuller Brush Man, door to door sales. I quit when I started dreaming about it...
But, two nites back I dreamed I jumped over a wall and it was a long ways to the ground, I remember...
Not remembering is better
@ Pawpaw: Who would make a law like that? The same people who shut down kids' lemonade stands for not having a permit.
ReplyDeleteI've had dream #1 numerous times. I finished my BS in Actuarial Science in 1995. So, for 20 years I've panicked over a class (usually some sort of math) that I didn't remember enrolling in, nor went to any of the lectures, nor studied, and I'm supposed to pass the final, I suppose by baffling them will bullshit, 'cause I for sure won't dazzle the prof with brilliance.
ReplyDelete