Same song, different dance
As you are aware of, I dream a fair bit. Some I remember, others I don't. Usually my dreams are pleasant or wacky, but every now and then, they're so upsetting and feel so real that it jars my very being into fearful wakefulness. It's always around the same theme: Armageddon.
Thankfully, my Armageddon dreams happen so infrequently that I can count them on one hand. I started having these dreams when I was 12. I remember the first one very clearly--I was in Westport (Ireland) at the time visiting my Dad. I dreamed that I was witnessing the fallout of a nuclear bomb, and everyone around me was dying of radiation sickness. Everything was poisoned, and everyone was suffering. My dream was vividly colored--yellows, oranges, reds--all streaking before my eyes. I woke up terrified, and it took my father hours to calm me back to sleep. He recited Winny the Pooh and his version of the Three Little Pigs.
My dream tonight was about war in a developed country. There were no soldiers around--everything came from air strikes. They were bombing schools, hospitals, large apartment buildings, anywhere. People were offing themselves because they couldn't take it anymore. I saw ordinary men driving around in their trucks with a vacant and hopeless look in their eyes, dressed in flannel shirts and armed with shotguns. My friends, who were trying to restore some semblance of order and trying to stick together, were dying in front of me. I remember one being gunned down while we were in a playground, and I hid behind his body to avoid being attacked myself. I woke up shortly after that.
I knew it was a dream, even while I was dreaming, but I couldn't tear myself from watching everything unfold. After I woke up, my stomach has been in knots from the anxiety i endured during the dream, and I've been having a hard time trying not to burst out into tears. I know it's a dream, and I know I'm secure where I am, but I also know that violence and sadness like that exists in other parts of the world. The clarity of the events that unfold in these dreams are so intense and feel so damn real...
I know it's far-fetched and I'm rationalizing the irrational, but sometimes I feel like these dreams come from someone else. Nothing ever bad happens to me directly, but I bear witness to the agony and suffering of people around me. Am I witnessing something going on with someone else in another part of the world, or hell, at another point in time? Or is it my brain misfiring while I sleep? Why the hell do my neurons play such a mean trick on me?
*sigh*
I wonder how long it will take me to fall back asleep.
Thankfully, my Armageddon dreams happen so infrequently that I can count them on one hand. I started having these dreams when I was 12. I remember the first one very clearly--I was in Westport (Ireland) at the time visiting my Dad. I dreamed that I was witnessing the fallout of a nuclear bomb, and everyone around me was dying of radiation sickness. Everything was poisoned, and everyone was suffering. My dream was vividly colored--yellows, oranges, reds--all streaking before my eyes. I woke up terrified, and it took my father hours to calm me back to sleep. He recited Winny the Pooh and his version of the Three Little Pigs.
My dream tonight was about war in a developed country. There were no soldiers around--everything came from air strikes. They were bombing schools, hospitals, large apartment buildings, anywhere. People were offing themselves because they couldn't take it anymore. I saw ordinary men driving around in their trucks with a vacant and hopeless look in their eyes, dressed in flannel shirts and armed with shotguns. My friends, who were trying to restore some semblance of order and trying to stick together, were dying in front of me. I remember one being gunned down while we were in a playground, and I hid behind his body to avoid being attacked myself. I woke up shortly after that.
I knew it was a dream, even while I was dreaming, but I couldn't tear myself from watching everything unfold. After I woke up, my stomach has been in knots from the anxiety i endured during the dream, and I've been having a hard time trying not to burst out into tears. I know it's a dream, and I know I'm secure where I am, but I also know that violence and sadness like that exists in other parts of the world. The clarity of the events that unfold in these dreams are so intense and feel so damn real...
I know it's far-fetched and I'm rationalizing the irrational, but sometimes I feel like these dreams come from someone else. Nothing ever bad happens to me directly, but I bear witness to the agony and suffering of people around me. Am I witnessing something going on with someone else in another part of the world, or hell, at another point in time? Or is it my brain misfiring while I sleep? Why the hell do my neurons play such a mean trick on me?
*sigh*
I wonder how long it will take me to fall back asleep.