Dreams

Dreaming vividly is part of who I am.

I still remember dreams when I was under three!  They reflected my deepest fears and were probably really called night terrors because they appeared in actual three dimensional forms on my bed covers.  I remember the feelings, the fear, the confusion.  Even then I knew these things shouldn't be possible for one reason or another.

Fire!  I opened my eyes to see a huge fire burning in front of me and my first thought was why doesn't it hurt me this time?

Three pale pigs with gleaming red toothed smiles and burning cigarette red noses, so unlike the three little pigs, but perhaps reflecting a game people played with me that ended, "Gonna eat you up!"

These are the first dreams I remember.  Since then there have been many good and bad ones.

I was part of a dream group where we shared and studied our dreams for over ten years.  I knew the dreams of the other people as well as my own by the time it ended.  It wasn't unusual for one of us to say, "Remember that other dream you had that...."

I've tried lucid dreaming with almost no success.  Once in a blue moon I realize I am dreaming but that is usually just before I wake up.  I have had unusual dreams that seemed to portend future events or appear to be shared dreams, but neither one is something I have any control over and they are rare.

Wherever my dreams come from they color my life like mini vacations or nightmare movies, so it is good to have someone who knows me well enough to say, "That is because you drew a picture of a castle," or "You said he wanted to live to be three hundred."

Last night I lived in a castle, the old fashioned real sort with old wooden floors and a weedy overgrown courtyard.   I had so many children, both mine and my husband's, that I was constantly discovering more trying to sleep in odd places; like a three hundred year old girl I found in a cupboard!  I worked hard in that dream, trying to clean the place up, polish the glasses, take care of all those children, some of whom were not pleased I was there.  It was real!

But only for a while and that is the beauty of dreams.