Perchance to Dream...

I’ve been having a lot of vivid dreams lately and those incredibly deep sleeps where I wake up, feeling like I just downed a bottle of Tylenol Cold so I’m all druggy and confused and my legs won’t move. Weirder still, when I looked at the clock I found out I’d only been asleep for about an hour.  Not that I’m complaining, but there are nights when I can’t will myself back to sleep so how on earth can I be deep-in-a-Tylenol-Cold-sleep in under an hour? 

(And on a total sidebar, does anyone know when Tylenol Cold is coming back on the market?  I don’t mean to sound like a junkie but that’s the only stuff that works for me and, well, I miss it.  I read it was recalled so they could update the labels – really???  This is the line they're toeing?  I’m pretty sure it’s because some kids who were really good in chemistry found a way to turn it into crystal meth and were making a few bucks selling it around the playground.  If only I could find this playground….)

But I digress.

So the crazy vivid dreams.  It’s weird how sometimes I remember them in great detail (and on occasion am not sure if what I dreamed really happened or was it all just a dream?) and other times I can’t even remember if I dreamed at all the night before.  I’ve always found the entire concept of dream analysis fascinating, so I keep a notebook on my nightstand and scribble pieces of dreams I remember.  Some mornings the writings are clear as can be and I’ll look the dreams up online and try to figure out what the hell it meant.  Sometimes the scribble is beyond recognition and I’ll wonder what the frak I was trying to write.

But the analysis amazes me.  Sometimes the dream meanings are so dead on to what’s happening in my life that it freaks me out.  Other times I’m left totally confused.  And on special occasions I will myself to have the same dream so I can finish what I started. (I hate waking up just when things are starting to get good!)

This week’s dreams went a little something like this:

Monday night – I’m being held captive by some crazy dude who’s looking for information that I presumably have.  And he’s slowly cutting my arms and legs with a knife and I’m bleeding.  (Yes, this is one of the more disturbing dreams I’ve had lately.  Made worse by my crystal-clear memory of it.)  Maybe it’s all the Law & Order: SVU I’ve been watching or, cue the emotional train wreck, maybe it’s this:

To see blood in your dream, represents life, love, and passion as well as disappointments. To dream that you are bleeding or losing blood, signifies that you are suffering from exhaustion or that you are feeling emotionally drained.  (That’s an understatement.) It may also denote bitter confrontations between you and your friends. Your past actions has come back to haunt you. (Nothing like the word “haunt” to make a girl nervous.)

A knife refers to some sexual tension or sexual confrontation. (Guess that’s better than sexual frustration, right?)  To dream that you are wounded, signifies grief, anger, or distress. You need to slow down and take time to heal.  To dream that you are wounded by a knife, is symbolic of masculine or animalistic aggression. (Huh?  I’m *so* not aggressive.  And I’ve never had a pet.)

 

Tuesday night – I was at a party at my office and both my dad and my Nana told me I was pregnant.  Evidently I wasn’t aware of this fact, but in my dream I said that must have been why I wasn’t losing weight, despite apparently a lot of time at the gym.  I begged them not to tell my mom.  (So I'm a coward in my dreams.) And I didn’t know who my baby daddy was either. 

Bravo me!  Way to get mysteriously knocked up in my dreams.  To the dream dictionary:

To dream that you are pregnant, symbolizes an aspect of yourself or some aspect of your personal life that is growing and developing. You may not be ready to talk about it or act on it. Being pregnant in your dream may also represent the birth of a new idea, direction, project or goal.

I’m not always good with embracing ch-ch-ch-changes, but I know there are parts of my life that are in a rut and could use a kick in the ass.  I have one of those quotable magnets on my fridge that says “I am still learning.”  I’ve had it up since about 2003 and it’s still 100% true.  Still learning.  Still growing. 

I have ideas in my head of what I want my next life steps to be, but realistically need to pay the bills, so this part is still gestating.  For now I’m taking the baby steps (no pun intended) to making the dreams a reality (minor apartment renovations, blogging, contest entries for starters).  And the story ideas are popping, which always seems to be the case when I should be editing my manuscript so I can send it out to potential agents, but all I want to do is write new stuff.  But this was a good dream.  Hooray for being dream preggers!!!

I was on a train.  Trains are one of my recurring dreams (though the details change from dream to dream).  I was also reading Silent Mercy before I went to bed and Alex and Chapman are on a train for a portion of the book so that could have planted the idea in my head.  Either way, I’m a train with my friend “K” from high school who, in real life, I haven’t seen in a decade and haven’t been in touch with since we were both on Friendster.  (Don’t judge.  I’m aware Friendster wasn’t cool.  We all make mistakes.)  K keeps popping up in dreams lately, as my sidekick, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why.

Anyway…I’m on the train with K.  Apparently we’re on the run and trying to figure out how to switch trains to get to safety.  The only person on board who can help us is Drew Barrymore.  (Oh thank God!  Love her.)  Drew was very helpful, telling us we could literally jump onto the train that was slated to pass us.  And she promised she wouldn’t change the passenger list so whoever was after us would think we were on the original train. And then I woke up. 

Train in Vain you ask? (“I see all my dreams come tumbling down”). Let’s find out:

To see a train in your dream, represents conformity. You are just going along with what everyone else is doing. (UGH!  That’s disappointing to hear.) Alternatively, a train means that you are very methodical. (That sounds more like me.) You need to lay things out specifically and do things in an orderly and sequential manner. (I can be a tad bit of a control freak.) If you see a passenger train, then it relates to mental work. Dreaming of trains may also be a metaphor that you are "in training" for some event, job or goal. According to Freud, a train is analogous to the male penis. (Oh Jesus.  Of course it is.)

To dream that you are on a train, symbolizes your life's journey. It suggests that you are on the right track in life and headed in the right direction. (Good to know.) Alternatively, the dream means that you have a tendency to worry needlessly over a situation that will work out in the end. (Sadly, that’s pretty much true.  I’ve been know to worry myself into an attack of irrational thinking.  Perhaps this is one of those things I can work on ch-ch-ch-changing.)

So, it’s been an active dream week. I could certainly do without the nightmares and the creepy dreams, but have read that these are usual the result of stress and anxiety.  And interesting to work out the things I don’t want to deal with in the light of day, in the dark of night. 

But the really cool part is that every once in a while, when I’m not being attacked or having some Freudian episode, I come up with an idea, or a snippet of dialogue or a one-liner that makes its way into something I’m writing.  (One such line is the opening of my work-in-progress.)  Without fail I’ll have a moment of inspiration and I won’t have a damn thing to write it down with. (I’m particularly brilliant in the shower and at the gym.)  That’s another reason I took to keeping pen and paper, bedside.  Sometimes ideas (good, bad, strokes of genius and painfully awful) are the things that go bump in the night.  And sometimes they are the things that inspire me to write.

Has anyone else had moments of genius in your dreams or in those moments before that weird body jerk/sense of falling happens?  And if you do, do you try to jot them down in the dark?  Get up and start writing? Or just convince yourself, OMG, I’m way too tired to move/get up/write this down, but it’s such an insanely great idea, I’ll totally remember it tomorrow.  For the record, nine times out of ten, you wouldn’t remember the idea if your life depended on it. Write it down.  Every time.  Or repeat it in your head until you can get a pen in your hand to record it.

And now for something a smidge unrelated – I couldn't resist.  This is one of the many songs I’m currently obsessing over.  As if the world needed further proof that Adele is ahh-may-zing, here is a live version of Someone Like You.  I agree with the lady herself – this one brings me to my knees: