Fears
As a child I had a recurring nightmare of being chased by a vampire in an old decrepit house set high up on a hill, with lightning flashing in the background. The whole thing was rather campy actually as I was in a group and I don’t remember the vampire being very skilled at hunting us down.
Not content with such a stock villain, my subconscious has gradually devised a new method of torment. Over the past year, I’ve occasionally had dreams where I think that I’m awake, ie in bed, but I can’t move. Everything is normal, the room and objects are exactly as if I were awake, except that I’m immobile. It’s almost as if your mind thinks that you’re awake, and so you can see everything around you, but your body is still asleep. And instinctively, I know that to move my body is to culminate in consciousness but the greater the desire to move, the louder my brain screams for action, the more glaring is the realization that I am standing at the border between sleep and wake, horror and fascination. It is horrible and fascinating in equal measure, to dream about dreaming or to dream about being awake. I do not know which is which.
The immobility dream reached a new crescendo one night this week. Aside from not being able to move but sensing everything around me, I could feel the presence of something or someone near the window seat of my room. Abstract figment or not, that presence scared me, I knew, at the level reserved for emotions of the gut, that it was evil, malevolent. I had to move, twitch a muscle, break the spell. But I couldn’t. It is the first time that I have felt truly terrified, either in a dream or in the real world. Perhaps it is a testament to how sheltered my life is that my figure of terror is diffused and unreal, given power only by my imagination and darker thoughts. Eventually, in a seamless transition, I could move again. But as I lay awake in bed, I stared up at a column of light on the ceiling of my room which was let in by a nearby window. The exact same column of light was in my dream where I could not move, I had looked up at it while I struggled for consciousness.
From a dispassionate point of view, the recurring notion of paralysis is almost certainly produced by stress. Many of my law school classmates often have dreams about fellow law students, professors and classes. (I’ve managed a cameo in a few. One dream had me joining the other frat, another me living in an apartment, engaged in disreputable activities.) One blockmate recently admitted to me that he frequently has dreams where he’s yelling at all the terror attorneys that have given students grief. An admitted bit of role reversal/wish fulfillment, there. Most of the dreams my friends from lit have told me revolve around sex (or perversions thereof, hehe).
To thine own self be true: My current recurring nightmare readily reflects many of the situations that terrify me. One such scenario is waking up while surgery is performed on me and while I can’t move or indicate that I’m conscious, I can feel every cut, incision and pain from the procedure. This unfortunately is quite possible. There have been medical reports of patients becoming semi-conscious due to the anesthetic wearing off. I have no mouth but I must scream. Another bleak situation for me is if, due to an accident, I live on but in a vegetative state. I’ve mentioned to my family on numerous occasions that for me that isn’t living and they should have no compunction at all about pulling the plug on me. Perhaps my greatest fear of all is one of uselessness, that the world has not benefited one iota at all from my presence on it; such that it is as if I have never moved, never lived. Eliot’s poem says it best, “And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, / And in short, I was afraid.”
Last night I dreamt I kissed a girl on the cheek. She was lovely and did not turn away.
Not content with such a stock villain, my subconscious has gradually devised a new method of torment. Over the past year, I’ve occasionally had dreams where I think that I’m awake, ie in bed, but I can’t move. Everything is normal, the room and objects are exactly as if I were awake, except that I’m immobile. It’s almost as if your mind thinks that you’re awake, and so you can see everything around you, but your body is still asleep. And instinctively, I know that to move my body is to culminate in consciousness but the greater the desire to move, the louder my brain screams for action, the more glaring is the realization that I am standing at the border between sleep and wake, horror and fascination. It is horrible and fascinating in equal measure, to dream about dreaming or to dream about being awake. I do not know which is which.
The immobility dream reached a new crescendo one night this week. Aside from not being able to move but sensing everything around me, I could feel the presence of something or someone near the window seat of my room. Abstract figment or not, that presence scared me, I knew, at the level reserved for emotions of the gut, that it was evil, malevolent. I had to move, twitch a muscle, break the spell. But I couldn’t. It is the first time that I have felt truly terrified, either in a dream or in the real world. Perhaps it is a testament to how sheltered my life is that my figure of terror is diffused and unreal, given power only by my imagination and darker thoughts. Eventually, in a seamless transition, I could move again. But as I lay awake in bed, I stared up at a column of light on the ceiling of my room which was let in by a nearby window. The exact same column of light was in my dream where I could not move, I had looked up at it while I struggled for consciousness.
From a dispassionate point of view, the recurring notion of paralysis is almost certainly produced by stress. Many of my law school classmates often have dreams about fellow law students, professors and classes. (I’ve managed a cameo in a few. One dream had me joining the other frat, another me living in an apartment, engaged in disreputable activities.) One blockmate recently admitted to me that he frequently has dreams where he’s yelling at all the terror attorneys that have given students grief. An admitted bit of role reversal/wish fulfillment, there. Most of the dreams my friends from lit have told me revolve around sex (or perversions thereof, hehe).
To thine own self be true: My current recurring nightmare readily reflects many of the situations that terrify me. One such scenario is waking up while surgery is performed on me and while I can’t move or indicate that I’m conscious, I can feel every cut, incision and pain from the procedure. This unfortunately is quite possible. There have been medical reports of patients becoming semi-conscious due to the anesthetic wearing off. I have no mouth but I must scream. Another bleak situation for me is if, due to an accident, I live on but in a vegetative state. I’ve mentioned to my family on numerous occasions that for me that isn’t living and they should have no compunction at all about pulling the plug on me. Perhaps my greatest fear of all is one of uselessness, that the world has not benefited one iota at all from my presence on it; such that it is as if I have never moved, never lived. Eliot’s poem says it best, “And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, / And in short, I was afraid.”
Last night I dreamt I kissed a girl on the cheek. She was lovely and did not turn away.