The human mind is an amazing and formidable organ, with the ability to create entirely separate worlds and realities. That being said, I've always appreciated the fact that I have a discursive and digressing thought process, which is able to tie things together and correlate seemingly unrelated events. I also have an active imagination. Normally, these are all good traits. My imagination has gotten me out of more than a few pickles during school when I'm at a loss for what to write for a required 10-page paper about something as redundant as... moss (my apologies to any moss-enthusiasts reading this - I merely meant it as an example).
My imagination also serves me well when I am bored. In fact, sometimes my favorite pass-time is just to sit around, preferably outside, and create a new life in my head (yes, I daydream). Often, I like to think about the future, and where I will go and what I will do in my life. I create fabulous adventures that I know will never happen, but if I daydream hard enough, once I return from my mind trip, I feel contented having experienced the idea so that I no longer actually crave the adventure. It's hard to explain how this works, but it's similar to thinking about a delicious food for so long and in such detail that you are no longer hungry and instead feel satiated.
There's really nothing wrong with having an active imagination. It makes me creative and resourceful. Fortunately, I also tend to have a strong focal ability, so that I can continue to concentrate despite (or rather along with) my thought processes. It's not like I suffer from ADD or anything. In fact, the only real problem I've ever encountered in regards to my creativity dwells in the unconscious realm. Yes, that's right - dreamworld.
I'm not sure how it is for other people, but I'm sure that to some extent everyone can relate to my experiences in dreamworld. Dreamworld, for me, is a rather scary ride through all the twisted little pieces of my mind that are probably better left unexplored. Essentially, my unconscious self is untamed, untempered, and free of any of the restraints I maintain while I'm awake. My mind is also allowed to delve down deeper than it could during the day because it has to pay absolutely no attention to any external experiences, forces, thoughts, or general daily activities that keep it in balance with reality. This is why, for the most part, I don't like being asleep.
Ever since I can remember, I've struggled with nightmares. Even when I'm unconscious, my mind is incapable of slowing down or turning off, so that I never have an uneventful sleep. I never fall into that black abyss that I've heard people talk about. I always dream, and it is more common for me to have bad dreams than it is to have nice ones. It is also more common for me to remember these dreams, so that through the years I can actually recall those vividly terrible nightmares that have become a part of my catalogue of experiences, sitting right alongside memories of a first bike ride, milking cows, playing with baby chicks, going swimming, getting sunburns, and much less pleasant memories I don't care to mention.
My least-favorite type of dream is the multi-layered dream. What I mean by multi-layered is the type of dream where you wake up (or you think you do), but you're still in dreamworld telling yourself you're dreaming. I think double-layered dreaming is a pretty common thing for most people. I wouldn't know because I'm not most people, but I know that I absolutely hate multi-layered dreams. The reason I bring this is up (and the reason I'm writing this post) is that I recently had a 5-layered nightmare, and I wanted to share my experience, analyze it, and ask if anyone else has gone through something similar...
After struggling with trying to get some sleep last night, I finally conked out early this morning - around 3 am or so - for a brief nap of about an hour. I had to get up at 5:30 am to get ready and drive my brother, Peter, to his new job at Gundersen Lutheran. Needless to say, after the nightmare, I woke up around 4 am and couldn't even imagine sleeping more, so I just stayed up.
My nightmare seemed to last several hours, and I hypothesize that this is due to the complexity of multi-layered dreaming. It started out as a benign and realistically mundane dream, very similar to an average day in my average life, and then it quickly morphed into a horror film with me starring as the main victim and all of my worries, problems, and bad memories augmented into "monsters." Fortunately, I realized I was dreaming, and woke up (or so I thought). I had a conversation with a family member, who also assured me that I was awake. Then the second layer of my dream started to haunt me (or should I say "hunt" me), as well. Almost consumed by this second layer of terror, which was made worse by the fact that I thought I was awake and experiencing reality, I felt as though my body were actually collapsing, and my heart was going to stop.
When I woke up again, I was sitting on a wooden chair with my head propped against the armrest. The pastor was rambling on about The Good Shepherd, and I instantly felt ashamed that I had fallen asleep in church. I felt a bit disoriented because I remembered that my family was Catholic and this was most definitely not a Catholic mass. I looked around at the people. I knew most of them. They were friends and acquaintances. I saw my family, the Slattery family, and the families and friends of some of my brothers. Then I noticed something that startled me... many of the people were crying, or at least had very sullen faces. I looked back towards the preacher and started to comprehend his words. This wasn't just a service - it was a funeral. My eyes automatically darted to the center of the front of the church where I noticed the simple, black box. I turned back to look at my family, trying to piece together who had died based on who was attending the funeral. It was Joe. Joe had died.
I gasped and felt confused because I couldn't remember when or how he had died. I asked a few people around me, but they just looked at me with pity because they believed the grief had been too much and I had lapsed into denial about the incident. Nobody wanted to tell me what was going on. I kept begging and telling them that this couldn't be true. He couldn't be dead. I would've known about it. I slowly walked over to the coffin to raise the lid. A few people grabbed me and pulled me away. I told them I needed to see him because I didn't believe he was dead. I told them I knew it was a dream, but they argued with me. I collapsed on the floor and started bitterly weeping, regretting so many trivial things, and my gut ached horribly. I tried to scream, but I my throat was blocked by the anguish until the point where I could no longer breathe and I felt as though I were suffocating. The funeral faded to blackness around me and the choking sensation increased...
I was relieved when I awoke again, and was able to sit in my bed telling myself that I was alright, and I survived the multi-layered nightmare. However, I was distraught when I realized that I was, in fact, not in my bed, but in a strange bed in a strange place. I scanned my memory trying to remember how I had gotten there, but before I had time to reason with myself... the torture had resumed in a new dimension. In an attempt to escape - hoping that I was dreaming and the jolt would wake me up - I threw myself from a balcony the strange building possessed. I felt the wind whipping past me quickly, and as I looked up, the balcony got farther and farther away. I wasn't afraid at all, and so there was no jolt to wake me up.
At this point, I started thinking that maybe I wasn't dreaming this time and I had actually just jumped off a balcony. I pondered the consequences briefly and then decided that I really didn't want to die just yet. To my surprise as I look back, my list of reasons for living had nothing to do with my love of life, my family, my friends, or any fear of what follows in the afterlife, but instead I was worried about a multitude of tiny tasks that I had not yet completed - bills I had to pay, people I had to call, forms I had to fill out, etc. I became frantic and started flailing in the air, and when I tried to scream, it was as if someone had stolen my voice from me. I remembered that you can't scream in a nightmare, so I relaxed and waited to hit the ground.
I don't remember if I made earthen contact or not. Supposedly, you can't die in a nightmare. Or maybe you can, but you just aren't allowed to remember it. I'm not 100 per cent sure how it all works. Anyway, the next layer blurred into existence. There was no abrupt awareness that I was awake or asleep. I determined that I was lucidly dreaming. I had purposely dreamt myself into a green meadow to calm myself down. As I looked around and thought about what I wanted, it appeared before me. If something happened that I didn't like, I reversed it and redid it in my mind until it became the reality of the dream. I moved hills, created mountains, and invented new species of flowers.
I sat down and tried to enjoy the serenity and peace I had created, but I couldn't. It was too quiet. Where was the gentle breeze? Where were the clouds and the sun? Where were the birds and wild rabbits? They seemed not just absent, but dead. The thought that my paradise wasn't alive and happy deeply troubled me and I began to fear that if something didn't change or interact with me, I might not be able to ever wake up. I sat there for a long time trying to remember who I was, how I got there, or when I had fallen asleep. For some reason, I couldn't remember if I had ever had another life, and if I did, what I looked like, or what I sounded like. I tried talking, but I had no voice. I walked over to a pool of water to peer into my reflection, but there wasn't one. I looked down at my feet, but I had none. I felt frustrated as if I were going to explode, but there was no way for me to release my tension. I couldn't beat against a tree because I couldn't feel the tree. I couldn't stomp on a flower, I couldn't scream, and worst of all... I couldn't cry. I was just there, in a beautiful abandoned meadow, trapped and alone, feeling only emotions and nothing physical.
Finally, I heard a song, a familiar and haunting song. I realize now that what I was hearing was in fact my phone playing it's alarm jingle; a jazzed-up version of "The Pink Panther." I jolted awake and grabbed my cell phone, which I keep underneath my pillow. It wasn't ringing. I checked the time. I still had an hour and a half before the alarm went off, so why was I awake? I looked around, saw my little sister sleeping in her usual dead-to-the-world, potato-sack kind of way, and I remembered that I was in my mom's new apartment in Holmen. I stepped outside the bedroom and saw that Peter was sleeping on the air mattress in the living room, just where he should be. I looked for any sign of things out of place, not yet quite believing that I was actually awake this time. I thought about trying to take another nap, but decided against it. Instead, I gathered an outfit from the bedroom by the light of my phone's LCD screen, and locked myself in the bathroom to take a long, hot shower, trying to forget about my multi-layered nightmare...
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