Throughout my life I have had a number of recurring dreams. Falling off anything to my death, organizing a hoarder’s house, traipsing through windmill museums and facing deadly murderers to save all the kittens. It’s not necessarily what I see on TV that causes these images to enter my mind, it’s more likely due to my anxiety disorder; my brain can be afraid of things that I can’t recognize or understand– yet terror ensues.
I internalize everything, my mind is a semi-repressed smörgåsbord of melancholy and the morose.
I’ve had recurring nightmares lately about being late and packing up everything I own vigorously. There is so much left to do and I worry I’ll never finish (and always wake up before finishing). I am running from something or someone and it’s unclear who.
Systematic chaos, night after night.
It always takes place in my old bedroom, which brings upon uneasy feelings. The bright yellow bedroom that once held my dreams and innocence, now only reminds me of the night it was taken away from me. The bedroom represents a lie, an unfulfilled promise of safety and stability. In my dream, I feel as if there’s nowhere safe to turn, and then an overwhelming, pounding thought that I have to get out of there.
Obviously one could read this dream as meaning that I am making changes in my life, or something big is ahead for me. One website casually links my dream together to mean, “you are weighed down by the endless responsibilities and expectations in your life. As a result, you are stuck in your current circumstances.”
So am I stuck? Or am I in motion?
I want to think I’m in motion, but just moving stealthily like a ninja of destiny. Just as constantly talking isn’t the same as communicating, constantly thinking isn’t the same as progress.
The trouble with talking too fast is you may say something you haven’t thought of yet.” -Ann Landers
If this recurring dream really is representing impending changes and feelings of being overwhelmed- now that I’ve recognized it, the dreams should stop right? Nope. That’s not how this works. It’s like my brain has to work through problems in little movies in my head. I use my sleeping hours to reconstruct arguments, situations and problems in new ways to imagine new outcomes or solutions. I think it’s literally my brain just being too busy to turn off, and working overtime.
I’m dedicated; AKA I sleep as much as possible. I can never wake up on purpose without being annoyed that I didn’t finish my dream. I want to sleep for a week straight. I want to sink into the warmth of the bed, curl up with my nightmares and live through them non-stop.
Through the tears seeping out of my rapidly-fluttering eyes, I will dream this to completion.
Streams of Conscious Thoughts 