Dreams; smelling, and fire

And another nightmare, two nights ago. On a side note, last night I flew a lot, I had a lot of massive landscapes in the shape of my parent's kitchen, and I distinctly and strongly smelled  pine scent... first time I've noticed smelling something specific.

Ok, so nightmare. A fire truck raced down the street, toward me, going north. I hated the noise, and felt some dread. I then looked up behind it and realized there was another fire, just like the one across the street in August. Even though that truck was leaving the scene, there were many others still there, just like before. The flames were huge, realistic, just how I remember them that night of the arson. But this time it was in four buildings instead of one, and two of them were much taller, meaning it was worse for the people up high. The hallways were all purposely set on fire, so no one could get out, just like in real life. People were climbing down poles on the sides of the buildings, they were jumping out, they were sticking their heads out the windows waiting for help, just like in real life. And the other two buildings were across the street, probably one or two stories tall, but flames just as big. I ran out in the dark in the bad neighborhood, but everyone was out, so it wasn't too dangerous. We stood around watching the flames, just like in real life. Unlike real life though, where I hoped no one would die, believed in possible, and then of course people died, this time in the dream I knew people would die, partly because the buildings were too tall to jump out of and partly because I already knew how the story ends. I had the same helpless feeling, standing there, ready to run and help, and knowing there was nothing I could do, my body twitching to do something, and yet... just standing there, resigned.

I woke myself up, before remembering I was trying not to do that.

Dream; Baby forest fires

I haven't had any more nightmares yet. Not since seeing them through that night and writing them down that morning. I did have a seriously vivid and amazing and beautiful dream of running away from a castle ruin in the Rocky Mountains on a train, and encountering three baby wildfires in the trees next to waterfalls on the way down. There was a boy on the back of the train who would have helped me if I had needed it, cuz I was definitely running away danger (and we would be the last train out before the fires closed the railroad, thankfully), but anyway I got distracted by the equally beautiful waterfalls, every pebble in the stream visible, every wave visible, every stream of water running down the falls lifelike, that I was studying it until I woke up, and the story never ended. :)

Songs; New ones I love to hear when they come on the radio

Just sounds so pretty.
______

This one needs a movie or book playlist to belong to.

Nightmares; Batman and daughters, Dinosaurs and dad, Storm bombs

Well, I actually think I have to come back to this blog. I didn't have motivation for so long, but now, it's almost about surviving, I guess. Because for the first time since I was probably four, I've started having nightmares again. Four was about the time my mom told me I had the power to wake myself up to disappear from a bad dream, and that's when I started to be aware of dreaming, and it grew into lucid dreaming. And so, if you can control things, well, first thing you do is throw out the nightmares.

I've lost some control. And I think I know why. My dreams are often a combination of images from my waking life, or things I've sensed (hear, taste, etc). But the other thing they are is a combination of feelings I've felt while awake. And now, I have felt true and utter helplessness. And where before I could imagine being stronger than I am, or safer than I am... that ability is gone right now. Everything has been forced to be more realistic.

Thank you James.

You know, I've had bad experiences with every James I've ever known? :) Anyway.

The helplessness is a new feeling, and it's in my dreams. Where before I could just tweak the dream and save myself or others, now my mind can't believe in it, and I've stopped being able to do it.

Last night I had many dreams, one of which qualified as a nightmare that I can't remember, followed by a second dream that was nearly a nightmare, but not quite bad enough because I was able to fight. The thing is, now when things turn out ok in the dreams, I don't believe it. I wake frightened because of what should be happening. Let me explain.

Last night the dream I remember. It was Star Trek, a show I never watch. There was a girl who was the daughter of that captain, who I saw a blog about the other day, a joking one that I'm sorry, I didn't understand or find funny. Anyway, he had a daughter. She was the product of him (human) and his robot wife... who was totally lifelike, I'd imagine more like Battlestar Galactica, which again I never watched. There was a question at the beginning, if this half-breed had a soul, and if she could feel. Later on in the dream, when this young teen girl was researching rape on the spaceship computer, it was revealed (as like in a movie) that she had been raped, and oh yes, she could feel. It was sad. Then some men came in and started attacking with big guns. Well, first they just told us to cooperate. But her dad, and I who was now her big sister, decided to sacrifice ourselves to save her. So we shielded her and took her to the door. It wasn't until she was pushed out the door that the bad guys thought we'd done something unacceptable. On that journey to the door, this father turned from the captain of star trek into batman. My dad. We pushed her out the door, and closed it, she was safe, and then turned and they started shooting us.

In the past, my mind would have handled it somehow. But this time... nothing I did or thought stopped them. The gun was pointed right at me, and someone with another gun pointed it at batman. And they shot us. Over and over and over, I knew it was hitting my chest and my head. And I knew in real life I was dead. And it was a nightmare. I've been trying to sleep through the dreams, to let them play out because somehow I think that it will help me, because when I don't wake myself, I DO somehow cope. For example, I walked toward them, grabbed an empty rifle of someone, and started using it to bludgeon the bad guys. I fought back, and you don't understand how good it felt. How necessary.

Dreams, they think, help people take emotions of the day, and process them into more manageable feelings. And I have been feeling these two things. Helplessness, and leftover fighting energy. This is why traumatized people are often angry. When something happened to them, they had all this adrenaline to fight, but didn't get the chance to fight. That energy doesn't just go away, and even years later they want to fight to save themselves, but they look around and there is nothing to fight. If you don't understand it... you start fighting your friends and family and loved ones, physically or verbally. I've felt that urge during the day. Like I just need to get into a fist fight with someone, take karate lessons, something. So fighting in this dream, it was so utterly satisfying. The problem is, I couldn't believe in it, because I have this new dose of realism floating in my brain, and I should have been dead. Maybe that's why traumatized people have nightmares; they are cursed now with too much realism.

The other bad dream I can remember... I've been having them every night, and needing to use the bathroom triggers them. I used to just dream I needed to find a toilet. Now I get nightmares. It took me at least a week to realize this is a new pattern, but it is. Once I noticed it, I had two nightmare-free nights. But last night they came back, and I had two. Although I didn't wake up.

I only know the bad dream of the day I realized I needed to start paying attention. By the way, last night was the first time the bad dream actually related to what happened, all the other ones were awful, but random and more about feelings I guess, than events or images.. Even though I wasn't in the theater, I'm really intimately connected to it. It's only by chance that James shot some people and not others. And it's equally only by chance that he tried to shoot some people, and tried to blow up others. He could have shot up his apartment, and blown up the theater. He just didn't.

The other bad dream. Again, there was more, I only remember the last bit. And that night, I wasn't yet trying to sleep through it and resolve it. I was waking up each night in a panic. We were working with baby dinosaurs. Dangerous ones, like t-rex and others that would kill us. I had to just avoid them. Mom could scold them and flick them with the spiky ring on her finger to get them to behave. My sister kind of could too... I guess I think mothers are tough. Anyway, at one point they gasped. I saw enough around the bend and up the incline to see a pool of blood. My mom told me, no, don't come. I'm supposed to be the omniscient dreamer here, so before even looking I knew a baby dinosaur had died. I came to look, and to my shock I was greeted not with a dead dinosaur baby (and baby still means twice the size of a human), but my dad standing up. He had slipped, fallen, hit his head on a table, and been unconscious. At the time I saw him, he was just waking and standing. This was my real dad, not a pretend dad like star trek/batman-dad. And he was in a large pool of blood that ran all over the room, he was covered in blood, and he had a hole in his head. I suppose it looked more like a bullet hole than a hit-the-coffee-table hole. I think I knew that too. For the dream, he was fine. But that new helpless realist in me knew that this was stupid, he had lost so much blood, he really would be dead. And that horror woke me, and I was pretty upset, too.

This was the first time I knew I was getting nightly nightmares, and I tried to go back to sleep and resolve the dream in a tweaking way, make it turn out alright. I did it, but can't remember how. It helped take away the horror though. So now I'm going to try doing that without waking myself up, just resolve them, even if I can't believe in it.

I have yet to dream about bombs, other than during that nap. A couple days after, while we were still evacuated, I was taking a nap during the day. I slept a lot that week. Almost like I was sick. And while I was sleeping, a thunderstorm showed up outside in real life. The sounds of it entered into my dream, like alarm clocks do, and were transformed into bombs. I woke nearly in tears. Since then, I haven't dreamed of that. But somehow, I suspect I will. That, and scary people breaking into my home, and other feelings I had.

I guess it's just part of the body's way of processing things, and I hope that by trying to sleep through them, I can heal some. But we will see. Traumatized nightmares can get really bad for people, more like relivings than dreams. I wonder if it's that dose of forced realism we get; we are not in control in the world. People die fast, and people die without warning. I might die in ten seconds. Other people have real impact on us, and no, we can't fight and protect ourselves from everything. Home is no safer than out and about, and out and about is no safer than home. There is no safety. Just odds. How can you dream fantastical stuff, when you dream feelings you have, and that is the feeling you have? But regardless, I beat the crap out of those shooters last night, even though really I needed to be dead and knew it. And it felt good. So... we will see. But I think writing down the bad dreams needs to happen now. Sorry, I might skip the good dreams. I still have them, lots and lots of them. But... not my top priority right now.

Dream; Shark

Last night my second dream involved making something I was holding disappear. It's harder than it should be, doing this on purpose. I told myself, it's a dream, so make it happen. But the cord would not disappear. I've never been able to do that. However, last night, I finally did it! I don't remember what that dream was about, but I do know I learned another skill.

The first dream was different. I don't remember much, but I remember waking up to a glorious day. :) I was a shark, and I swam a lot in a huge huge huge lake, in the mountains, full of colorful coral reefs and clear blue water, surrounded by green pine forests. Yeah, not a real place. There was also a building nearby, and something bad happened. I kind of morphed between swimming/walking/climbing human and shark and maybe mermaid. Point is, another shark was with me, a boy, and he loved me and I loved him, beautifully. And when something bad in the building happened, we worked together well as a team to help out. I loved the feeling, and then I started to wake up. On the verge of consciousness I realized, oh, this is a dream, and when I wake up, this lovely boy will be gone. I tried to think, maybe I have that in real life? But do I? I could not remember, and I knew that waking would be a risk. I held onto that dream for as long as I could, held on to that boy. Because waking would lose him. And then I woke, and I thought, now, what is reality? And I remembered. That boy is real, although not a shark. He is real, and he loves me, and I love him. And that was the best waking ever. To find that for once, the beauty of the dream is still there when you wake.

Yeah, it was so great, I fell back asleep, totally at peace. And when I woke, I told the boy about my dream. He liked it too. :)

Dream; Cooking frustrations

I was trying to cook a meal, a sort of Thai sauteed noodle bowl. But I couldn't. First, I couldn't do it because there wasn't enough room at home. So then I did part of it there and moved part of it to my childhood church. Just like at that time, I'd run down the darkened hall of mazes when no one was there, and back in what was always my favorite room to hide and read in, I began to cook parts of my meal. I had to travel around to the city, which was more of a wooden tree city in a forest, to get ingredients and parts. I don't remember a lot, but it was all in the local area and one of the tables was now a stove. Sometimes outdoors and sometimes in the church. I had to get butter, garlic, and onion, but when I went to the refrigerator it was on stage in the old sanctuary and they were having a weekday evening meeting, and I couldn't just go to the front and interrupt and get it. The female adminstrator from my work was there also. I was trying to boil the noodles in one bowl, and saute them in another, but I never got to it, because honestly what can you do without onion, garlic, and salt? They are important. And the vegetable portion of my dish was cooking in another location. It was just this huge spread out affair of cooking in many locations and being unable to get all the pieces and put them together. I never was able to cook it.