daily subconscious

2 Dreams, Inception Style

1) I am in a large field looking at some sort of animal sleeping and buried in deep grass. It’s a dog, not sure what kind, but maybe about 50lbs. He scurries out of the grass and starts bouncing around trying to rouse the other animals. They look like llamas at first, but they turn out to be cows and goats of various ages. When they all wake I watch them hopping up and down from afar. I run up the hill and see my sister and start to tell her about the dog and goats. I stop mid-sentence and immediately realize that it’s a dream. It’s an odd moment because I have the desire to take control and change the course of the dream. I yell at her, you’re not real! I’m dreaming and I start to wiggle around saying that I’m dreaming. in that same moment it’s like my subconscious tells me that I do not actually have control because my sister turns into a grudge-like monster and then I shake awake… losing my opportunity to “play” inside my lucid dream.

2) I dream that I am having sleep paralysis and that Phuong is standing in the room recognizing that I’m undergoing some distress, but he doesn’t do anything. I spend a few minutes struggling to breathe and come out of the paralysis to no avail. It angers me that Phuong does not understand that all he has to do is shake me awake to bring me out of my suffering. I finally snap out of it into consciousness. I look over and Phuong is no where near me, I hallucinated the whole thing. I get up trying to recover from the scare to find Phuong and tell him about my experience. He’s in the bathroom and I flip open the covers to find shattered pieces of glass and one lens. He broke his glasses! I break the news to him and start cleaning up by ripping out the covers. I notice that there are 4 or 5 different layers and I go to try to stuff them in the washer, but accidentally put them in the dryer first. The whole thing is very strange to me… maybe I’m dreaming?

The last thing I remember before slipping into sleep paralysis was being reunited with my 6th grade teacher. I think this was induced from the last passage I read from Mockingjay. Katniss is taken down memory lane and interviewed. I am asked to meet Mr. Kaiser and talk about our last interaction. I say that I last talked to him when I was 12, but he insists it was later than that. I then get an eerie feeling that I am being betrayed. I can’t really explain it but I feels like I’m being set up. This is the moment when my dream is blurred into reality and my subconscious becomes a semi-consciousness. I hallucinate that Phuong is tapping me on my face, but I can’t react because I’m paralyzed. So then I tried the heavy breathing tactic and can hear myself making a hissing sound, but now I realize that that too is a hallucination. I then think Phuong is laughing at me from the sounds I make and simply does not understand that I want him to shake me out if my paralysis. So then i try to force my way out through my fingers and it eventually works. I recount everything to Phuong and he confirms that none of it happened.

I don’t quite recall what the dream was about, but I do remember one specific image. I saw the sun set at a beautiful orange hue and just beside it was the moon and three stars. It looked like someone had painted a picture in the sky. The stars in my dream were not just twinkling bright spots but rather, they were 5 pointed stars as large as the moon and white against the pale blue sky.

my subconscious is an interesting artist!

A large group of friends and I stop by a diner to grab some food. We stay for a long time chatting and catching up on life. After a while, I finally decide I want breakfast. As I walk over to the counter, I notice that the waitress who was serving up pancakes earlier is now gone. I ask another man if breakfast is still being served and he responds, “only the breakfast burrito” and hands me a menu. He points to the section of the menu that should have the burrito and I try to read it. I scan around for key words like “eggs”, “sausage”, “cheese”, and “veggies”, but I can’t read anything. The words are either blurry, illegible, or hard to see due to poor lighting in the restaurant. I hand the menu back in frustration and say, I just want the one with meat, cheese, and veggies. He’s unable to find what I want on the menu either and brings another waitress to help. We take what seems like 15 to 20 minutes trying to figure out what the menu reads to no avail. I give up and walk back to the table to tell PV that we can’t have breakfast. When I reach the table, everyone is gone. I search around frantically and reach for my phone to call PV, but I can’t see the numbers on my phone because of some strange reflection. This causes me to repeatedly dial the wrong number.

I wake up.

I’ve read that it is impossible to read in dreams because reading is a conscious activity. Lucid dreamers often use the “reading test” to check if it is reality or a dream. Unfortunately, this dream was pretty much based on my inability to read and I never realize it was a dream.

I am in the middle of the city, standing on the second floor of a restaurant with my mom when suddenly the floor starts to shake. When we realize that it’s an earthquake, we start to run down the stairs to get outside. Just before I leave, I decide that it is safer to leave my phone on the table. We get outside safely and the earthquake stops. I run back inside to get my phone, but it’s gone. I ask everyone around me if they’ve seen it and they all ridicule me for leaving it; it was clearly stolen in the chaos. I ask the server if he could help, but he seems annoyed. I then plot to steal his iPhone and do it successfully only to find out that it’s not an iPhone at all.. just a lookalike. I feel defeated.

I wake up.

HOW BIZARRE AND RANDOM?!

I am playing some sort of driving virtual reality game where the object of the game is to avoid hitting other cars and objects through chaos and high speeds. During my second time playing the game I purposely ram my car into everything that comes into my path. Eventually my car flips over a bridge and into the body of water below. The game ends because I die. The only problem is that I remain dead in actual reality. I enter a state of panic and regret as a ghost. I try to explain to PV that I didn’t mean to kill myself, it was only a game, but he doesn’t hear/understand me. I spend the rest of the time in my dream attempting to undo my unintended suicide to no avail. 

I wake up.

Why so morbid! It actually makes sense that a lot of my dreams surrounding death involves me driving a car. 

The past couple of weeks I’ve had really mundane dreams reflecting daily life activities. I even had one about writing a post in this dream blog. Last night’s dream felt like I was watching myself in a reality TV show that takes place in the future. Here’s what happened:

I am on a bus in Seattle getting dropped off at a dorm. I have a lot of anxiety because I’ve never been there before, I don’t know if it’s clean or dirty, I don’t know if I’ll have a roommate, and I’m afraid I won’t make any friends. Finally I’m dropped off in front of a bed and breakfast-like place that’s kind of grand looking on the outside as if it used to be a luxurious hotel 50+ years ago and is now being used for different purposes. I step in with my luggage and notice that it only hasone floor. I meet a girl who seems to have been there for a while and she takes me on a tour of the building. She shows me the open/shared showers (I was impressed by its cleanliness), the kitchen, and the sleeping quarters. All the beds (twin-sized) were lined up against the wall. In retrospect, they remind me of military sleeping quarters or at least what I would imagine them to look like. Despite the lack of a home-feel, I am relieved that it’s not dirty and can see myself living there for the next couple of years. This girl and I have a chat and I tell her about why I decided to make the move to Seattle (I graduated from UVA, worked in public health for 3 years, want MPH, etc). Then I fall asleep on my cot glad to have made a new friend. 

The dream ends when I fall sleep, but I don’t wake up. 

Interpretation: I’m just anxious, people!

Some context: I had a dental cleaning appointment scheduled for yesterday, but the doctor was sick so she asked me to reschedule. Somehow this manifested into a dream/nightmare later that night. 

I was scheduled to get my 3 remaining wisdom teeth extracted at the dentist. I went with my friend Amina who had gotten a similar procedure done recently. I had opted to be put to sleep and she told me, with much enthusiasm, how good her experience was. We were in a very sterile room with white walls, white floors, and two chairs, nothing else. The dentist gave me the sleeping gas while Amina zealously explained to me how good it would feel when I would start to get drowsy. That moment came, I closed my eyes, but I didn’t fall asleep. I then started to panic thinking that the dentist would start to drill into my mouth while I was still conscious. I sprang up just before he could touch me and screamed, “IT DIDN’T WORK!!” We tried once more, but the same thing happened. The next solution was to numb my face, which terrified me even more. He started to inject me with local anesthesia and I panicked again fearing again that it would not work and imagining how painful his knife would feel. I ran out of the room with half my face numb.

I wake up.

It’s obvious that this dream does not require interpretation. I can feel my upper right wisdom tooth is coming out and my departure with these last three is imminent. Perhaps my cancelled appointment yesterday added to the anxiety and my subconscious decided to give me a nightmare, haha. 

Finally a less intense one!

I am given an assignment to make puppets and stuffed animals and present to a class of young children their story. I go to a big toy store to find supplies and I make two pieces: a bright yellow rectangular pillow with a face and a small fluffy white animal (maybe a fat bird). I come up with a great story and decide not to rehearse it. Presentation time comes, there are hundreds of people in this class, and my introverted self makes sure that I go last. I recognize two of the people that present before me from my waking life and get excited because I think my story is better. Finally my time comes and I draw a huge blank. I can’t remember my story at all. I try to make up one on the spot and then realize I brought the wrong animal too. Maybe it was something about the yellow rectangle wanting to be a star? I’m so embarrassed and ask the teacher if I could present another day, but it’s too late.

I wake up.

Dream Interpretation: Forgetting

To dream that you are forgetting things signify life’s anxieties. You are expressing an overwhelming amount of stress in your life. You feel the need to tend to everything and everyone’s needs. Alternatively, forgetting something may represent your unconscious desire to leave that something behind. On a more direct level, the dream could just be your subconscious telling you or reminding you of a forgotten appointment or date.