My Dreams Affect Me Long Past Morning
From the blissful to the terrifying, the imprints of my unconscious are unavoidable.
“I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?”-John Lennon
On Wednesday night, I dreamed that I was engaged to Alec Baldwin. In the dream, we were the same age, and instead of being an actor he was a wealthy socialite. He proposed to me with an enormous sapphire and diamond ring, and later as I walked alone back to our penthouse suite at the hotel, I decided to order a martini from room service. And I felt it: pure joy. I knew in that moment that I was getting everything I’d ever wanted, my dreams were coming true, and my life was as near to perfect as it could get. I was so happy.
I awoke with the conviction that I was going to have the life I’d always wanted, and then it was gone.
I am an intense dreamer. I can’t remember a time when this wasn’t the case, and as I’ve grown older it’s only intensified. When I have a dream, I feel it, and it feels so real. When I wake, I remember it, not just in my brain, but in my heart and my bones. That night, I awoke with the conviction that I was going to have the life I’d always wanted, and then it was gone. Even when I can’t remember, sometimes the feelings linger.
My vivid dreams can dictate my mood, memories tingeing my feelings and my experience of the world around me over the following few hours, or even days. I am often left with intense nostalgia and longing after I dream, a feeling that I can’t seem to shake. Sometimes I only remember bits and pieces, but I can feel them inside me, and a part of me longs to bring them back.
My socialite engagement was on my mind all day. It stuck with me as if I had lost something real and tangible. In my head, it seemed completely ridiculous, silly, self-indulgent and fantastical. I love my friends, my family, my children. I don’t wish this life away, and even if I did, this crazy dream life is just that: crazy. Still, the feeling in my heart and my gut was so real that it manifested in a static dissatisfaction and sense of loss and I walked through that day in a weird nostalgic melancholy.
When life is overwhelming, the sadness brought on by unconscious states feels particularly silly.
Thursday evening I found myself holding back tears as I ended a particularly intense volunteer crisis counseling shift. Not only do I not have that dream life, but in my real life I hadn’t had dinner, I was allergic to the one medication that can help me, and I was exhausted thinking about chores and holiday plans. I worry about my kids, and about money, and wish I could travel. Sometimes I long for the feeling of a cold martini slipping over my tongue in top-floor penthouse.
When life is overwhelming, the sadness brought on by unconscious states feels particularly silly. I take deep breaths and chastise myself for letting something so trivial and so far from reality influence my day at all. The past decade has been really, really hard. Far, far fewer days now are overwhelming, and much of my life is what I’ve always wanted. But some nights when I sleep, and my inhibitions are gone, and I don’t have to be anything for anybody else, my fantasies are lived out in diamond rings and celebrity.
Another night, I dreamt that my 5 year old son was asleep on our couch when people with guns broke in and he was shot. I saw his body there, and thought he was dead. I silently agonized until the intruders were gone, then ran to him. His face was frozen with an expression of such fear I could feel it in my bones. Then I realized he was still breathing.
I called 911, and for some reason they didn’t take me in the ambulance with him. I drove, but then no one would tell me which hospital they took him to. The city was large, and I was panicked. When I finally got the information, I still couldn’t get to the right place. When I did, I walked up to the surgery intake and said “I’m here for my son, he’s been shot.”
It was just a dream, but 12 hours later I found that I didn’t know how to banish it from my head completely.
At that very moment, my real-life flesh and blood son awakened me, asking sleepily if he could lay in bed with me. Normally, we didn’t let him, but I couldn’t say no that night. I curled my body around his small, kindergarten sized frame and willed myself not to cry.
It was just a dream, but 12 hours later I found that I didn’t know how to banish it from my head completely, and I still wanted to cry with the horror of it. The way I dream is hand in hand with my empathetic soul, I don’t have the constitution to shake these things that rattle me so deeply.
Sometimes, I wish that I did not dream like this. When I have a good dream, I often think about it for hours after I’m awake, closing my eyes and letting the feelings wash over me, holding on to the memories of it as they slowly slip away back into the ether from whence they came. It’s like holding on to that delicious stomach-flipping shiver as you replay your first kiss with someone over and over again, breathing in the memory. But in this case, there is no second kiss to come.
When I have the rare bad dream, I want it to go so badly, but it sticks with me and makes me feel like I’m losing control of my own mind. It can dictate my entire experience of life because my brain is slow to reset. I have dreams sometimes that require self-care and the admission of defeat.
I’ve never been a lucid dreamer, and my mind needs to work out what it needs to work out.
The longing for something I’m left with in their aftermath seems to be an inevitability. I can only try to process, let my mind work, and trust that my brain is doing whatever it needs to do. There is always a temptation to solve the mystery of ourselves, but I’m not sure I’m a good enough detective to ever actually do it.
“Dreams are symbolic in order that they cannot be understood; in order that the wish, which is the source of the dream, may remain unknown.”- Carl Jung
Nine years later, I dream of a boy I used to know, one of my true friends in life, and I feel the loss of him like he has died. Ten years later, I still dream about people I used to work with and wake up missing them so much it feels like my heart is breaking. I rarely have nightmares, but when I do they are so real they can leave me in tears for a whole day, or more.
Other nights, I dream of visiting family I haven’t seen in too long. I make love to Richard Gere in a hotel room with gleaming white walls. I join a polyamorous triad with two youtubers I find entertaining, and eat pizza at my favorite restaurant. In the end, the content of the dreams is inconsequential. I’ve never even had a daydream about Alec Baldwin or Richard Gere, or wished for a life without kids.
Most nights, my dreams fall somewhere in between. I meet up with my old friends, the one where it’s the last day to drop classes and I can’t find the registrar’s office and the I’m supposed to be boarding my flight but am still at home packing. They are unextraordinary and familiar.
No matter my desire, I can’t control it. I’ve never been a lucid dreamer, and my mind needs to work out what it needs to work out. Maybe there are just feelings inside me that need to be felt, and I’m not in a place where I can feel them for what they are, so I feel them through the untruths of my dreams.
Don’t miss a thing! Sign up for my weekly newsletter here.
You might also enjoy…
