I’ve written before about my dreams, but I’m going to do so again, as I have something new to share: My dreams have changed.
I don’t mean my aspirations, wishes, hopes for life. I mean my alpha wave middle of the night dreams have changed. And this isn’t the first time, now that I reflect on it.
So maybe this is normal. I don’t know. Someone will have to tell me.*
The first wave of recurring or similarly themed dreams that I remember were when I was a child. In each of these dreams, I was being chased by a tornado. Not that I was running – sometimes yes, but often, no.
In those dreams I would usually be in a group of some kind, all immersed in an activity. I would notice a tornado coming towards our house or field, and would try unsuccessfully to get people to notice. The theme was always the same, some kind of frustration, anger at an inevitable demise that I couldn’t get the adults around me to acknowledge or confront (did I tell you I grew up in the cold war?)
Oddly, these dreams led me to writing. I’ve written at least two stories based on these dreams.
The second memorable theme in my dreams didn’t start until I had traveled far and wide. I started having frequent dreams that were all about me exploring the same non-existant city (I think it’s fictitious). It was a square city with ocean on three sides, and a highway that ran both along the shoreline and across the top of the city, off into the distance.
I ate in restaurants in that city. I drove around it, took public transport. I was in a shootout in the docks. I went to the bank, and a museum/ I took food to a poor family on the outskirts. I helped rescue a kidnapped friend…
In later dreams, I would know my way around, seeing buildings that I’d been to in previous dreams. I’d even lead people through the city to specific places.
I thought that was a weird overall experience. Well, now comes phase three of my dreams.
I’m no longer in them.
Yep, in my dreams now, I’m not present.
Now my dreams are very short – maybe as short as fifteen seconds. I’m in someone else’s body, experiencing the moment. These aren’t magical, special moments. These are “I’m pumping gas at the petrol station.” Or “I’m paying for groceries.” Sometimes I appear to be in the middle of a conversation for which I have no context.
But the weirdest one was the longest one – and in it I was in two different people’s heads.
First, I was in a guy’s head. He was driving a very pretty girl to the cinema. He was nervous, excited. Once they got seated at the cinema, before the movie even started, she decided she wanted to go home. He went to get the car. It was down a slippery gravel parking lot (spring ice, I think). By the time he got the car up and out of the lot, she was getting into a taxi.
Then the really strange part.
I shifted into her head and saw him. I learned from her that his name is Charlie and that he’s neurodivergent but functional (down’s syndrome, I think) and that she’d gone out with him to the cinema as a joke. making a scene in the theatre and leaving him there was the punchline.
Then I jumped back into his head, but on a different day. He was racing his car down the town street to get somewhere, but cars and pedestrians kept cutting him off, swearing at him.
He couldn’t understand why something as simple as keeping an appointment was so difficult. He didn’t understand that the whole town was intentionally making his life harder than needed because they didn’t want him there. He just assumed that this was how hard life was and couldn’t understand how everyone else functioned so well.
Understand, this was all in a dream. It took you longer to read it than it did for me to experience it. I’ve never had dreams like that before.
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