It’s Sunday, I find weekend writing the most labourious. Maybe because everyone’s up and home and around and I always feel more like the foreign outsider that sits and types at the dining table while my family does their routine shuffle around me. My nightmares are back and I feel a little bit like they’re self-induced. Sorry brain. I didn’t mean to fuck with you. I’m so fucking tired. I don’t know the science behind it but I swear I don’t sleep when I have nightmares. Fun fact about me- I lucid dream. When I have bad dreams, I’m fully conscious of the fact that I’m in a dream, and I have the ability to make decisions and react but not the ability to change a situation. So for example last night’s dream. I’m sitting at a table with someone I hate (Guess! I’m such a basic avocado) and they’re talking to me like it’s real life and I consciously respond and think independent thoughts on what I’m going to say. It’s not like a movie where I’m passive. I’m in it, I’m participating. It doesn’t sound scary until you are fucking constantly dying in your dreams. Do you know what it’s like to drown? Cause apparently I do. I’ve had that one a few times, then you get to wake up gasping for air. Fuck. At least you wake up alive though. That’s something, if not minimal.
In the midst of my Melbourne madness and meltdown I read this article about how the unconscious mind has no concept of language because it predates speech. Grunt once to be my cave wife. Interesting right? Often your subconscious will visually depict a solution to a problem you may be facing. Lots of mathematicians and other people who solve those kind of abstract science problems dream up the answer. Like finding something once you stop looking for it. It’s the light bulb inspiration moment. Does this work for emotional trauma? Probably not. So maybe I should, I don’t know? Figure out the speed of light or gravity or some fucking shit. Tie a key to a kite and stand in the typhoon. True confession- I have been asking my subconscious to talk to me and now my dreams are a minefield (again. So boring). I never get to talk to the dead. It happened once and it was awful not because it was morbid but because it had to end and no matter how many times I tried to re-dream that scenario it never repeats. It’s another way to keep losing someone. Dramatic.
When I tell people about my nightmares they always ask what I dream of. So to satisfy your morbid curiosity, here’s one for the fans:
I’m in the middle of the sea in a boat. The sea is blue and calm and endless. There’s no land, just empty space. Only the varying shades of blue differentiate the sea from the sky and my eyes can barely tell where one ends and the other begins. The boat is small and tin and grey. In my hands is rope that’s connected to the anchor. I know to move my little boat I need to pull up the anchor, so I begin. I keep pulling and pulling the rope upwards. Every time I look into the ocean I see the dark shadow that promises the anchor is just there, there’s nothing else in the water just the blurred outline and consistent weight of this ambiguous anchor I know I must get. I try pull the rope up faster, but the rope is endless. It starts cutting up my hands until they are raw. I don’t feel pain just fear. The boat has started filling with rope and it’s starting to struggle under the weight. Every time I pull the rope upwards with my raw hands the boat sinks a little and the anchor never gets any closer. I’m sitting in the small tin boat surrounded by the sea and all I feel is suspended in time and colour like eternity just began. In my little boat filled with rope I am slowly sinking. I know I have two options. I can either cut the rope and hang myself or I know that I can give in to the weight of the anchor letting the rope pull me into the sea. I stand by the edge of the boat. The same rope that I endlessly pulled into the boat, that threatens to sink me under it’s weight, passes through my hands quickly and effortlessly, my hands leave blood on the rope and when it hits the perfect blue of the water I can see the red washing into the sea. The anchor moves deeper and further down into the ocean. The rope ends and I’m taken by the blue as I look up to the surface I see another figure in the boat. With my eyes open under the water the figure in the boat is dark and blurred and ambiguous. It’s me. From underneath the water I’m aware that I’m watching myself drown, I watch myself being pulled deeper and deeper into the darker shades of blue. My hands let go of the rope and I’m trying to get back to myself, back to the surface. Blue turns to black, my own weight now pulling me in deeper and faster than the anchor and the rope that I was holding. I wake up gasping for air afraid of the dark.
Was it a good one? My favourite dream motif is the hand thing. I haven’t dreamed of my hands without fear in over six months. I hope you don’t catch my nightmare. Hahaha fuck I’m intense sometimes. Have a nice Sunday!
xx SJ