THOUGHTS & MUSINGS

Dreams are strange

What happens in our dreams can be stranger than fiction

We were at our regular hangout when a friend — technically she works there, but over the years she has become a friend — told me about a strange dream she had. Hearing her dream reminded me of the strange dreams I have, the recurring ones which always return in times of stress.

My friend’s dream

My friend — Carrie — told me how for many years, she had this one dream returning to her over and over.

In the dream, she was being chased, but she couldn’t escape the one who followed her, and didn’t even know who it was. All she knew was that the person wanted to kill her, and she needed to escape. While still in the dream she tried to wake up, knowing it was only a dream, but no matter what she did, she couldn’t wake up.

Then one night in this same dream, the person finally caught up with, and murdered her. Still in her dream, she took the bus to go to her mom, and on arrival, she told her mother that she was dead. Her mom looked her up and down and said: “Well, you don’t look dead.” “Oh, but I am,” Carrie said in the dream, and then she woke up.

She never had the dream again.

Dark water

During my life I’ve had quite a number of recurring dreams, but two immediately came to mind when I heard about Carrie’s dream.

The first is something that started in my youth. I grew up in South Africa, where you have a lot of low water bridges. Mostly, only a trickle of water run under them, except when there are floods. Then the water can come level with, or run over the bridge. My father — and everyone else — just used to cross those bridges, despite the water, but as a young child, it frightened me to death.

I started dreaming of dark water, and always dreamed that I was drowning. It was so frightening, that I taught myself to wake up. In my dream I would scream ‘wake up, wake up’ and forced myself to open my eyes. Once awake, I had this mantra: don’t dream about water, don’t dream about water.

After that I would fall asleep soundlessly, and didn’t dream of water anymore. Not that same night, at least!

Up to today, I still use this technique.

Crossing roads

Another recurring dream is where I have to cross a road. The scene is never the same. Sometimes it’s a road in the center of a regular town, other times the town resembles something from a western, and there’s a dirt road. It’s always a town, never a busy city.

In the dream, I start to cross the road, and then halfway into the street, my legs get terribly heavy, and I battle to put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes a car is approaching — always in slow motion — and I feel the panic rising in me, knowing I have to get to the other side before the car reaches me.

I mostly make it to the other side, but the one thing that always stands out in this dream, is how heavy my legs feel, and how difficult it is to walk.

A castle, a crawlway and bathrooms

Where the two dreams mentioned above are scary, this one always makes me smile.

Somehow I find myself in an old, dark-ish castle, and always have to turn right from the entrance, walk totally to the end, and then follow a long corridor between the brown stones. The corridor starts high, and runs lower the deeper I walk into the castle. Once at the end, I turn left, follow the corridor and then have to get into a narrow crawlway.

I am afraid of narrow or small spaces, so it always surprises me that in my dream, I don’t mind crawling through that narrow space.

Once on the other side, I enter beautiful quarters, with several luxury rooms. Every room has a big bed, beautiful bedding, and an on-suite bathroom with all the luxuries you can image. I love the beautiful rooms, and the lovely beds, but somehow I always end up in the bathroom. Sometimes I take a really enjoyable bath, and other times — where in the world does this come from! — I use the loo.

Other dreams

The above are dreams I can remember. But, I also have dreams I can’t remember, or only remember a tiny part of it. Sometimes those dreams are the most unsettling, as they leave me feeling off-balance, especially the ones where I wake up crying.

The dreams where I wake up with a wet pillow, fighting the sobs with tears on my cheeks, mostly are about my mom. Either I have seen her in my dream, or I have been searching, but couldn’t find her.

Thankfully, I also have dreams about my mom where I wake up with a smile, like the one I had last night, where just before I woke up, she — a much younger version of her — smiled at me and gave me a big hug. I still need to tell my cousin about the dream, as I saw her mom and dad too, both of whom have passed too. Her parents and my mom had always been very close.

I love having dreams like that one, seeing the three of them, all smiling and happy. It’s like the universe is trying to tell me they are okay.

Symbolism behind dreams

I know there’s a symbolism behind dreams, and am sure if I searched online, I might find some explanations for my dreams. But, I don’t need that to know those dreams about dark water and crossing the road always occur in stressful times.

The one about the castle I can’t really explain. It has occurred several times, but the last time has been years ago, long before I took notice of when dreams repeat themselves. Maybe it’s a dream that happens after stressful periods, when I can finally relax?

Maybe one day I will try to analyze my dreams a bit more. Not only these above, but also those ones I have only once, and which stay with me for days.

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