My Dreams Are Trying to Kill Me

…and it’s rude.

Seriously, I am completely sick and tired (pun!) of all the ways in which my dreams cheat and attempt to give me more nightmares. It’s bad enough that I have bad dreams several times during the week. This conspiracy to turn them into nightmares is worse.

Oh, what’s that? You didn’t know there was a difference between a bad dream and a nightmare? You probably don’t even have nightmares, do you? Freaking lucky SOB.

The difference between a bad dream and a nightmare is normally defined by whether or not the dream forces you to wake up. Since I wake up randomly throughout the night regardless it’s a little hard for me to define the difference between what was “natural” and what was in the middle of a REM cycle, so I apply my own definition. If I wake up screaming or crying or with my heart racing and still very afraid, I consider it a nightmare. If I wake up calm, even if bad things were happening in the dream, I just consider it bad.

I don’t particularly like either type of dream because the worst thing is, I have the very unfortunate habit of falling back into the same dream when I go back to sleep. If this happens, it’s also very common for it to go from a bad dream to a nightmare because my dreams F*CKING CHEAT.

If I woke up calm because I had managed to hide from whatever was attempting to kill me, you can guarantee that when I fall back asleep my hiding place is discovered. If I had the situation under control because I had a weapon, it no longer works or changes into something else. I remember one zombie dream that infuriated me later because I had a gun, I had a safe area in sight, but all of the zombies had STEEL PLATES IN THEIR HEAD AND COULDN’T BE SHOT. WTF!?! HOW IS THAT FAIR!?!

Last night I had a total of 5 bad dreams/nightmares. 5. **5**. This is excessive. I even stayed awake from around 3 am to 5 because I absolutely knew I was going to be trapped in the same zombie dream and I didn’t want that to happen. Finally, I fell asleep and had another nightmare about being trapped in my car after it flipped. Woke up panicked, forgot to try and think about non-zombie things to trick my mind, fell back asleep, and sure enough had more zombie issues.

Logically bad dreams shouldn’t be a big deal. Keep in mind though that it is possible to die in your dreams, and I’m one of those “lucky” individuals that dies quite often. I mean sure, that doesn’t really kill me, but neither is it pleasant. And again, I have the habit of continuously falling back into the same dream. So I get to be murdered not once, but sometimes multiple times.

Let’s just say too that I decide to stay awake. This is the obvious answer to win the game when your dreams cheat. Good plan, except I’m also blessed with a constitution that responds to things like not sleeping enough with violent nausea. I know, I know, being me is such a joy.

The good news is I have stumbled upon a possible solution. You see, I’ve finally realized that I have the most nightmares on the nights when I take my contacts out (and that just adds to the bundle of fun, because now I get to wake up screaming and be completely unable to see, yay!!!). Most likely it’s because I have a deep fear that if I’m ever attacked, it will be while I’m somewhat blind and more vulnerable. Years of watching Scooby Doo as a child have warped my brain. I try to leave in my contacts as much as possible to help with this, but I decided a month or two ago that maybe this should be the year I actually get eye surgery.  Then I reconsidered, because I feel like they don’t let you drive yourself home from eye surgery and I hate cabs, but after my doozy of a night I’m leaning towards it once more.

Plus I suppose the bright side of having nightmares more often than not is that it gives me writing fuel. If I wrote happy, sappy, love stories good dreams would probably be more effective, but as it is I like to write things where I need to tap into feelings of terror or hopelessness. Done and done.

Dream On

This week I’m staying at a hotel that has all these little signs up that make me cackle. Not that the signs themselves are particularly funny. I just find the entire idea of displaying little signs telling guests tips on how to achieve a good night’s sleep rather amusing. I also found it particularly apt for the week, as I had spent a good portion of Sunday night thinking about sleeping and dreaming in general.

There are some pretty crazy facts/myths about sleep and dreams floating out there in the world, which I wanted to share!

# 1 – Some people dream in color, while some dream in black & white.

TRUE

The mechanics are still open to debate. Why do some people dream in color and not others? Scientists tend to view this as a matter of interpretation and recall.

Now I once read an article that said you actually do not dream in color, you just add the colors in when you remember the dream. I found this ridiculous.

Take, for instance, my dream from Saturday night. During the dream my brother was kidnapped by a flying vampire. My cat (Cat) was sniffing his trail, and since the vampire had flown away it ended at a cliff, which Cat walked over since she’s quite stupid. This happened to be right above the ocean and it was cold out, so I immediately grabbed Cat from the ocean and bundled her in my shirt as I went to find a warm towel to wrap her in. Then I had to puzzle over the towel cabinet for a while. I could see some bright yellow towels, but those are my kitchen towels so they’re not very big. I could also see blue towels, but same problem. Then I found some gray towels, but those belong to my parents, and I knew my dad would totally not approve using his towel for Cat.

# 2 – You cannot die in a dream/if you fall in a dream, you won’t ever hit the bottom.

FALSE

I’m glad to know this is a just a myth, otherwise I’d be the weird one out. I die in my dreams like all the time. This isn’t always traumatic. Sometimes I become a ghost, sometimes I switch bodies, and sometimes it just fades out to black before I wake up. I fall in dreams quite a lot too. Luckily, I don’t do it as much anymore.

I say luckily, because back in the day when I dreamed I was falling and hit the bottom, this was normally because I rolled out of bed in my sleep and I actually hit the ground. Which hurts. And wakes you up quite abruptly. I really don’t recommend this for a good night’s sleep.

# 3 – Your body is paralyzed while sleeping.

MOSTLY TRUE

This is actually a fact that your body is supposed to release a hormone while you sleep that paralyzes you.

I say “mostly” true, because there are clearly some exceptions. Obviously this isn’t working for sleepwalkers. While I’m not a sleepwalker, I’m pretty sure this hormone is also a fail for me. I have always been a very active sleeper. I kick, I punch, and some times I throw things about the room. Let’s not forget that once during high school I even managed to tie myself up during my sleep with my blanket. In fact, I cannot sleep well if someone is in my bed, or even my room, because I’m terrified that if I fall into a deep sleep I’m going to end up hurting them.

This probably stems from the fact that when I was younger and we visited my grandmother, I normally slept in her bed, and my mother would warn me over and over again that I COULD NOT kick her in my sleep like I normally do. My grandmother breaks even easier than I do, so I was convinced that if I slept deeply I’d kick her and break her back. That would totally make me the new family pariah.

# 4 – Sleep paralysis is caused by aliens.

FALSE (Duh).

Although interestingly enough, sleep paralysis is one of the reasons people may believe they are being visited by aliens or other supernatural entities.

On the opposite end of the scale from me, some people wake up before the paralysis wears off. This means they wake up paralyzed, which can be frightening. It feels like they can’t breathe, the room looks funny, and they think they see a strange, bright light. These are all effects of the paralysis, but many people in the past have taken this as a sign of witchcraft, ghosts, or alien visitations. 

For whatever reason on Sunday night I couldn’t fall asleep easily, and while trying to drift off I was thinking about my crazy dream from Saturday (the part earlier is just one tiny section of that dream. Yeah…), which led to me thinking about Final Fantasy: The Sprits Within.

I can’t say I particularly understand how this movie ties in with the games, but nevertheless I like it. About midway through the movie General Hein (voiced by the great James Woods!) uses dreams as a political weapon. He claims the main character Aki (voiced by the same person as Mulan. And we all know James Woods is Hades in Hercules, so this is really like a Disney movie voice party) is in league with the enemy aliens because of her dreams.

This popped up in my head Sunday night because I was thinking about how weird my dream was, and how people would think I was crazy if they could see it. But really, can you imagine a world where we could watch each other’s dreams? We probably wouldn’t need reality tv anymore.