Not-So-Sweet Dreams

I really hate it when people tell me about their dreams. It bores me silly. So it is with great hypocrisy that I state the following:

Last night I dreamed that I visited an old teacher of mine who was afraid that I was there to kill her. "Why else would you return?" she asked me with tears in her eyes. I dreamed of being in the deep, dark service tunnels of the NY subway system where vagrants had made their homes and turned into silent shadows who tried to rob us. I dreamt of offering drugs to an addict and being chased up a flight of stairs and beaten. I dreamt of being in the rebuilt World Trade Center and was berated by a security guard when I didn't pay proper respect to the memory of the terrorist attack. Werewolves and vampires had chased me up a tree as my situation was being discussed on an alt-science AM radio show. And there were super heroes flying through the hi-rises fighting for domination.

And between each little scenario I awoke and stared at my alarm clock. The digital readout glowed bright read in near blinding luminance.

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Growing up I regularly used to suffer from sleep paralysis. Somewhere between wake and sleep I would become paralyzed and unable to move. This was accompanied by a sinking feeling as if my brain was a bathtub drain and all my thoughts were water funneling down inside. I would become aware of an evil "presence" just outside of my field of vision. During these times I would try to fight it believing that if I could just move my foot I could break the spell. I would also pray frantically. It only lasts a minute but it is the most awful feelings I know of. In the aftermath I would be so terrified I couldn't go back to sleep for fear it would happen again. Fortunately, these episodes have diminished to maybe once a year. I used to think I was being attacked by demons (or aliens) and that horrified me. Now that I understand that it is a "natural" bio-chemical experience it's not so bad once the episode passes. But it still leaves behind this feeling of dread that is hard to shake.

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I've often given thought to why we dream. As far as I know science hasn't provided a definitive answer. I speculate that perhaps it's our mind's way of organizing our mental hard-drive. Perhaps the brain is reviewing the day's experiences located on the desktop and moving them into to various file locations throughout the disk as well as chucking some of the events into the recycle bin.