Sweet Dreams

I awoke. It was just after four in the morning. My room was unsettlingly quiet and dark, given my playlist had long ago run out. Restless, I shifted positions in bed, searching for something to slow my racing thoughts. Why I had awakened, I have no idea. But what I awoke from was one of the more life-like and eternally blissful dreams I had ever dreamed, with the thoughts, visions, images, emotions, passions, and experiences so chillingly vivid it was staggering. The details of the dream are hardly important, but the feelings of perfection were fleeting so quickly as the moments between my eyes opening and my current state were ever-increasing, letting the cold reality settle in. I, in fact, was not living the dream I dreamed. It was cold, dark, silent, and still an hour and a half of dreaded attempts at sleep before my alarm would disrupt any semblance of nocturnal rest. Once again, I was fooled. Quite the gag my mind was able to pull off. Casting a life so strongly feeling like one I had been living for years, only to wake up and scare it away. So why do we dream?

In a mild attempt at research, I’ve found that some researchers suggest that dreams serve no real purpose, while others believe that dreaming is essential to mental, emotional and physical well-being. Not surprising, but I didn’t want to continue if there was an agreed-upon scientific theory that would completely nullify my words. But since I found nothing, I will forge on.

In no way will I attempt to explain my dreams, but it’s my un-researched belief that dreams fall into three main categories:

1.) My aforementioned utopic dream

2.) Frightening dreams we commonly refer to as nightmares

3.) Bizarre dreams that have no grounding in reality, which make you sound like a schizophrenic 8-year old when you try to relay the events involving raining peapods, your 3^rd grade music teacher, candy lava, and your shoes could talk to you. Also known as ‘acid trip dreams.’

I don’t count day dreams since I believe they are simply times when your thoughts wander and you lose focus, therefore, a controlled and planned mental diversion as opposed to the ones that happen in the middle of the night. But no matter the type of dream, and whatever researchers might suggest is the reason for having them, there’s one concurrent theme: they *always* leave you disappointed.

You wake up after the most amazing and perfect dream ever. You realize it wasn’t real. The situation I outlined at the beginning of this post comes true. You went from feeling like a king to feeling like normal. Result: Disappointed.

You wake up after the most terrifying and miserable dream ever. You’re panicked. You’re sweating. The creak of your pipes make you want to turn every light on. You seriously dread closing your eyes, assuming the evil that you just escaped will promptly reappear. Result: Disappointed.

You wake up after the most confusing and jumbled dream ever. You’re… confused. Why did someone try to eat your leg? Why was your family on a rocket ship to Boston? Why were you 10 feet taller than everyone else? Why did your 6^th grade class show up singing Christmas songs? How come when you try to tell someone how crazy this dream was, you can’t remember anything, and they lose interest immediately? Result: Disappointed.

Sure, half the time I wake up, I don’t have one iota of an idea of what I just dreamed. It kept me asleep for at least 4 or 5 hours, and now I’m ready to start my day. And I would think it’s obvious that recent activities or conversations or thoughts have an easier time finding their way into a dream and influencing how you perceive them (if you just watched The Exorcism, you’re worried about devil possession…). But I kind of hope they get behind the nonsense of dreams, because I’m sick of being disappointed or freaked out. I don’t want to dream in colors, I want to dream of colors. ‘Oooooo, blueeee, that was calming, good night’s sleep!’ Save the serial killers in my neighborhood and the winning the World Series, I’ll take care of that stuff in reality.