My Dreams Are A Playground In The Middle Of Nowhere

When I was a kid, I think my dreams were just places for me to be myself.

Let my imagination run free since reality was so limiting. I’m a Pisces. And human. But mostly a Pisces. But 2 years ago, something snapped inside my gut and I felt the universe knock me off my feet. I started having nightmares almost every night. I don’t know if dreams mean anything for sure, but I think they’re like tea leaves. Little speckles of crushed leaves swimming in your little teacup of a head; you might see something you recognize. Learn a thing or 2 about a thing or 2 about yourself. You can throw it all away after, if you want. In the end, it’s just leaves.

But then I started having different nightmares in the same reoccurring dream space. Like I was actually inside my own brain. A strange basement of a church, connecting to a hotel, connecting to a beach. If I drive on the highway for 3 seconds I’m back at my childhood home. Once you get there, it’s hard to leave. If I take the bus and oscillate for 3 eons, I’d find myself at the mall, seeing people from my past, going on trains and elevators and never really feeling like I was safe. Sometimes the bus would take me to a school. Where the stairs still look like stairs but you can slide down anyway. Not much dialogue or plot consistency.

I recently read something by Carl Jung. He explained how the concept of god or infinity may not be useful in a sense that Jesus will make your life easier by ascending down from heaven and kicking your alcoholism to the curb, but how entertaining the idea of a god or infinity can keep you from limiting yourself. It’s nice for your brain to contemplate big things. Big ideas. Big stupid ideas. To keep yourself on your tippy toes because life is too boring and precious to not experience being hungry for more. It’s almost like a way to keep yourself from being stagnant. So, as these nightmares happened more and more often, they slowly stopped bothering me. What bullshit will I come up with next? I always knew that I was dreaming in my dreams, but I would play along like it mattered. I think that’s what made me create this dream version of myself. She was fearless and invincible. Like she had some type of awareness about herself that I felt like I lacked in my waking life. She cared for things. Felt things.

Getting to know her was getting to know myself. I think I saw myself for the first time without the self-loathing. We had many things in common, too. How life was different every day. And in turn, so were we. Occasionally, I am given a dream where I am somewhere I don’t know. Once, my reality was a Lana Del Rey music video. But then I just make it up as I go. Have fun with it. Feel fear because it’s good to be uncomfortable. Wake up with an adrenaline rush. 

I feel like I’m going crazier and crazier the more and more I become like her. But I can’t help it.

She’s just so cool.