I rarely had nightmares until this year. I don’t know how other people define their nightmares, but mine is if I feel panic and realize that I’m in a dream and can’t wake up. The moments I feel actual fear are brief.
Before 2024, the only nightmare I remember having is from elementary school, where I went by my mom sleeping on the couch and she turned into some sort of monster. I ran around the corner and cried against the wall, hoping to wake up. Probably the only reason I remember the dream so well is because it stood out among my average, boring dreams.
They’ve been cropping up more often lately. I pretty much can expect one if I try to sleep in the afternoon. I think they form at the very end of my cycle, or in the instants before I start waking. My best guess is that they’re morphing from the anxiety dreams that have plagued me for a bunch of years now.
I don’t know if there’s another name for this. It’s for the dreams where you make the stupid decision you avoided in conscious life and have to deal with the consequences of it (and the benefit of the decision is nowhere to be found).
Lately, my dreams have been about me smoking weed even though I’ve been abstaining for my job hunt. In my conscious thoughts I have no problem avoiding it, but I do miss it sometimes. The hilarious part is that I never smoke enough to get high, but just enough so that I’d fail a test and have to keep waiting to apply. I recently lost out on a job opportunity because my glue-like body didn’t flush it out on time and I failed their test. I definitely fucked myself over in that- I needed over a month to test clean, I guess. Maybe it’s a fear of my sometimes wavering self-control?
The most prevalent dream-mistake, though, is hitting a car while I’m driving and panic and race away. Maybe some of it comes from never having been in an accident, but I used to be a professional driver! I know that I would never do something like in real life but the thought still plagues my dreams. The entire time I’m racing away, I’m freaking out and wondering why the fuck I left.
I’ll wake up stressed and with a faint sense of annoyance at myself, without knowing the words for the emotions or why I’m feeling them. A more meditative person would start their morning with a mental cleanse that would address these feelings but I ALWAYS. FORGET. To challenge my morning mood and put the day in a better frame.
Stupid dreams.
