23 Dream).

My parents have a bunker on their property — or perhaps more appropriately, a multi-leveled underground city. The initial room is rather bland and vacant save for big boxes of candy, among them KitKat and Reecies cups. The deeper levels have areas akin to an upscale hotel or college campus where you can relax and read or watch television. Some areas mimick natural settings, like a beach and a lake, and others are akin to an amusement park. At some point I recall wondering to myself how my parents managed to afford all of this.

In one area there was a sort of train, but the cars were like glass boxes you sat inside, and as I rode along inside of one along with others, I saw my friend, Elizabeth, working inside a glass booth.

One guy talks me into going into a rather dark and crowded bar with him, where he meets up with his girlfriend. As I’m standing there, some girl leans her back on me and we start talking and there’s some mild flirtation going on. I can finally see her face somewhat and she reveals that her and I know each other from high school — some reasonably-attractive redhead I used to know.

At some point, the electricity goes out in the bunker. Once the lights come back on, as we’re trying to ascertain what had happened, one of the redheaded twins I worked with until recently — the one I tended to focus on specifically — suggests that we take a look at the security footage from the cameras placed all throughout the bunker.

I’m suddenly distracted from solving the mystery, however, when I suddenly remember that my parents are down here somewhere. I needed to check on them to see if they’re all right. I first find my mother, who is hurt, though I can’t remember the details. I go to a higher level so as to get better phone reception so I can call for an ambulance, but before I get a chance to do so, I find my father. I find him on the ground, a few others around him — apparently he’d fallen out of one of those glass box train cars. He had hurt his head, and I could feel the tender, soft, bruised area at the top of his skull.

I then tried to call an ambulance for two, but became very anxious. I wanted to take charge but was terrified I didn’t know how to handle this alone.

UFO Dreams & the Seneca Stones.

8/20/23

I’m sitting with a small group of people on a very small porch or set of stairs that hardly has enough room for all of us. It vaguely reminds me of the steps just outside the residence of the parents of two friends of mine from high school. We’re all looking up into the night sky, beautifully splattered with stars, and I become fixated on a few dimly-lit, colored “stars” moving back and fourth across the heavens above us in erratic paths. No one else says anything and I wonder if I’m the only one that sees them.

The dream leaves me with the same general emotional state these dreams, which have been recurring for three decades now, always leave me with: a sense of awe tinged with fear that lingers for the rest of the day.

8/25/23

Luminescent tube-like objects, each slightly twisted in a different manner, appear all over in the dark night sky. They don’t move, but simply hover there. No one knows what they are and everyone seems to be simultaneously awed and frightened by them. I appear to be living with my parents, or at least my mother, and I watch the glowing sky-tubes in wonder from my bedroom window, curious as to what they are and why they’re here.

The next day, a guy comes to visit and shows me a stone he found in his yard that morning. It’s a flat stone into which an elaborate design has been carved and for some reason he wonders if I know anything about it. He had a similar stone that was stolen from his house sometime the previous night, and I immedeately jump in and tell him that I had mysteriously found it lying on my bed that morning. He explains that they’re both from the Seneca Indians, which I know to be my ancestors from my father’s side, though I don’t tell him.

It’s been some time since I’ve had one of these dreams, and I find it curious that I suddenly had two of them in the space of a single week. I have, of course, been following the UFO subject in the news quite closely and watched the sky from my apartment window last night during a severe storm and tornado warning in which the power went out, so perhaps that in part accounts for last night’s dream.

Immedeately upon awakening I looked up the Seneca Native American tribe to see if they actually existed, and they do indeed. While my father’s mother always insisted she was part Native American, she was a rather strange lady and my father always doubted it, and his results from Ancestry.com revealed no indications of any natives in our bloodline. Why the dream chose Seneca specifically makes me curious…

Darkening Dreams of June & July.

6/9/23

Another person is moving into an apartment that I have to share with others, so I’ll have no privacy, no room to sleep. I look for a stash of pills I remembered having, but I’m not sure if it was in my old apartment, where I lived by myself, or this one. I look in the bookcases, everywhere I could think of.

In the midst of looking, I notice a box high up by television set that hangs from the ceiling, and its marked with masking tape on which is written “Goth Girl 1.” My friend Mitch had evidently made a deal with some creepy guy so we could get free internet. No one had asked what the deal entailed, but now I wondered if the deal was that we’d get free internet if the guy could use it to spy on a goth girl.

6/12/23

I’m marching down an endless series of hallways occupying people, gun in my hand, shooting every time I turn a corner. At some point in the process I wondered how I was managing to shoot the targets and never any innocent bystanders, as I was turning and shooting so fast its difficult to understand how I’d have time to discern which was which, but apparently, I was managing it just fine.

Store manager Kelly was talking to the former store manager, Connie, when I tell Kelly I tried clocking back in from break on the monitors several times, but it wouldn’t let me for some reason. I also recieve a text from my friend, Moe, referencing it had been nearly a year since we’ve spoken (in reality, it’s been longer).

6/13/23

I discovered there was a flat tire on my truck, someone had stolen the sand bags out of the bed, and behind the glass of either my gas gage or speedometer, there was a little gear.

Back in dumpster corrall at work, I watch as a grasshopper about as big as a Bic lighter hop frantically at about chest level. It was slightly frightening and I had the impulse to kick it away, but I didn’t want to be an asshole. Just after I awoke, it bothered me that I couldn’t discern whether this really happened yesterday or was a dream.

6/14/23

I dream about Maria Cox again, but the details elude me.

6/15/23

In a very realistic dream that was more tactile than visual, I bend down for some reason and find myself amazed at my flexibility. My head now right before my crotch, I can feel my dick through my pants — either pajama pants or sweat pants — and build up the courage to wrap my lips around the fabric covering the head.

6/16/23

I hide beneath and around a small table as at least two people are shot and killed and somehow manage to survive without being seen.

7/6/23

A guy kills two people in my room and then leaves, and after some time goes buy I realize I haven’t called the police. Later, I look and the bodies are gone and the mess is cleaned up.

It’s dark outside and raining. I was supposed to watch over my parents’ house and care for the animals, but my mother’s parrot escapes. As I’m outside, frantically searching in the darkness and rain, the parrot begins to run toward me.

7/8/23

Despite the fact that it wasn’t the end of the world, different groups had formed, all of whom were living life in their own way. At my parents’ house, we were meeting a group that seemed Native American in ethnicity. I told my friend Elizabeth that I liked it this way; if living with my current group didn’t work out, I’d simply leave and come find her.

7/9/23

It’s night and I’m in a suburban neighborhood akin to the one I grew up in until I was roughly ten years of age, and I’m walking down a tree-lined sidewalk searching for the house I had previously been in. Suddenly I watch as an obese woman in black leather clothing with a black leather fetish pig mask covering the top half of her face dramatically marches down the sidewalk, a line of people marching behind her. Eventually, I make it back to the house where my friends are at and I find that all I want to do — and desperately — is eat and sleep.

7/11/23

Through the gap at the base of my apartment door, I see movement out in the hallway. Gazing out the peep hole, I see what seems to be another door in front of my door, obscuring my field of vision. After awhile, I drift from the door, but then hear the sound of a door closing in the hallway. I then get down on the carpet, on my belly, and peek through the aforementioned gap. I see toys out there in the hallway, with one toy, maybe a car, very close to my door. I push it with finger, it rolls, and then a cat immedeately comes up to the gap. I coax her into squeezing through the gap and entering my apartment, where I rub her belly and she proceeds to meow in a very peculiar manner.

Then, in a blink of an eye, the cat is now a toy car — like a remote controlled car, but this one appears to move of its own volition. It moves around a bit beside my kitchen then seems to want out, so I open door, but as I do, a dog, maybe a weiner dog, tries to come in. I then tell both the dog and car that they’re not mine, that they don’t belong in here.

7/17/23

I’m sitting down at a table, talking with my mother, who tells me about a photo she took of her doctor’s blackboard. The doctor won’t tell her something and I get the sense that she’s trying to ascertain what it was through what was written on the blackboard. She makes some reference to parsimory.

“The principle of parsimony?” I ask her. “Occams razor? The simplest explanation that fits all the available evidence?”

She seems happy and surprised I know about it. Instead of then showing me the photo, however, she instead lets me listen to her voice messages, but I have to put my ear real close. I can barely hear anything at first, and when I finally can, I hear what at first sounds like demonic mumbling. The second message sounds like a disappointed friend of mine, an old friend, who tells me about a party on the lake I was invited to but predictably wouldn’t attend. Then my alarm goes off.

7/18/19

I left a party in an apartment that was being thrown by Elizabeth and step out into hallway, where a group of people are walking by — among them, a guy I immedeately recognize as Nathan, an old friend from high school. He seems disturbed to find that Elizabeth and I know each other, and Elizabeth is disturbed to find I know Nathan. Something happened between them or Nathan and one of her friends, and while I try not to be nosey, I am curious and try to smooth the way and ensure them I won’t judge. Nathan insists that I wouldn’t want to know.

I then try to leave. I’m carrying at least three things, but somehow lose them in my unsucessful, repeated attempts to get out of the building. Most of the dream deals with me trying to find a way downstairs and to the exit, but it seems like I just keep going in circles.

7/23/23

I’m sitting on a big bed with Bella, a redheaded girl with a tragic life that I first met when we worked together years ago. There was someone else there, too. It seemed like an enduring dream involving a lot of conversation, but all I remember talking about is how I liked sex jokes and liked poop jokes, but not jokes combining both subjects. I’d said this to the other person, and Bella laughed and seemed to agree.

7/29/23

I come into work and while changing the trash I see Kara in a tight, black dress. In the bathroom, there’s a friend of hers — a guy — who has a horse, and he brings it into a bathroom stall.

7/31/23

It was one of those dreams where everything takes place in the dark of night, where the emotions and scenery seem enveloped in shadows. I lived at my parent’s house, and though my father was the same as he is in my real lifee, I didn’t feel as though I was the same character. I had killed multiple people, perhaps even a family member, and my father, whom I loved dearly, seemed to start suspecting I was lying about where I was going at night and what I was doing, though didn’t seem to have the vaguest sense about how horrible the truth really was. As always, he wanted to believe in me, think the best of me, and my greatest fear was that he would discover, in the end, all the reprehensible things I’d done. How much it would hurt him, how he would perceive me, what position he’d be forced into given that knowledge — it was unspeakably horrifying to me.

He asked me where I’d been at night, and I lied, saying I was with a guy and a girl (who were brother and sister) that I may have killed, but I made up their names because I couldn’t remember their real ones. When he asked me to call them on their phone, I was stuck. My structure of lies was about to collapse all around me. I remember pulling myself out of the dream, it was so uncomfortable. I then fell back into the dream, or something like it, but I was no longer the character in question.

Dream Summoning Maria Cox.

In the course of my life, I’ve had a lot of odd and intense dreams, false awakenings, episodes of sleep paralysis, and other profound nocturnal experiences that most would undoubtedly relegate to this general category — and despite my passionate objections in some cases, I might add.

Typically, however, I only have dreams regarding people I know fairly well. They may be people I haven’t encountered in the flesh in decades, but I’ve known them well enough to justify their inclusion in my nocturnal, allegedly private, and (presumably) solely subjective and natural neurological simulations.

Occasionally, a person I’ve met only recently will pop up in a dream, that’s true, but it’s always a fleeting one-off. Never are they recurring, central characters.

And I almost never have dreams regarding an individual with whom I was associated with in the past only peripherally, merely second hand, and haven’t been in close proximity to, corporeally-speaking, for roughly two decades.

This amazing bitch, though?

She is a persistent anomaly. A chronic curiosity. An unprecedented, recurring character. Never do these dreams involve anything overtly sexual, unfortunately, but the connection I feel towards her in these dreams is so intense it’s absurd.

Out of curiosity, I just checked my dream logs. Since March of 2021, I’ve recalled at least four dreams regarding her, the most recent on June 14th — only yesterday.

Most recently, it involved only conversations and affectionate interactions, and though the details elude me, throughout the night I kept begging myself that, even if I failed to recall the details upon awakening, to please remember, at the very least, that I’d dreamed of her again.

Previously? She wore a leather coat and we had an enlivening hug. We had illuminating conversations that, for the fucking life of me, I can’t recall the details of. And also a dream of mine that echoed a dream of her own that she reported publicly on social media.

And yes, she’s blazing hot. Yes, I find her an incredibly interesting individual. But I barely know this dark beauty, and while her persistent presence in my dream life is certainly welcome, it continues to perplex the everliving fuck out of me.

How I wish there was wise man — or woman, or sexless being for all I care — residing upon a mountain I could climb to recieve much-desired answers.

Truth be known, though, I probably wouldn’t be able to find it in myself to believe the bastard’s revelations anyway.

So I remain perplexed. This here? This is my fucking lot in life.

Am I obsessed with her on a subliminal level, and it’s as simple as that? Does she represent something buried within me, striving to rise to consciousness? Is she an unintentional, unconscious telepath? Is this sexy soul an adept witch hellbent on being my dream invader?

I’m not confident enough to be sure in any case, but as I now drift towards sleep, let it be known: I officially place a welcome mat at the door of my dreams for you, m’lady.

No pressure. But be aware, let it be known, that you’re always free to visit.

G’nite, fellow insomniac bitches.

Dreams of Darkness & Light (5/16 & 5/20/23).

5/16/23.

As of late, my dreams have been getting increasingly darker — literally and figuratively. From what little I recall of last night’s nocturnal, otherworldly meandering, the theme continued. It involved Damion, an ex-coworker, who had taken a job that involved living alone in huge house — maybe calling it a mansion woukd be more accurate– in a dark, cold region, and I think there was some consideration that I might take on that job or one like it myself.

There was no reference in the dream as to what the job actually entailed, at least not that I can recall, but maybe its irrelevant anyway. New jobs in dreams are supposed to represent a desire to change something in your waking life, to transform some current situation, and that seems fitting enough.

I have been silently juggling the desire to isolate myself further or make more of an effort to nurture social connections as of late, so the isolation of the dream made sense, too.

5/20/23.

Under the pretense of practicing some technique or testing out a hypothesis, a girl I’m close to invites me to kiss her, and I do. We both seem to like it, so we kept making out after short breaks in between. It was very nice, and I’d missed moments like this — being so close to a girl in general, of course, but making out most of all. Her kissing technique and how she used her tongue I found to be incredibly impressive as well.

In retrospect, I’m not entirely certain who this girl was, but she seems to have been a mixture of three short brunettes I have been close to at different points in my life which I suppose took on similar roles during the aforementioned periods. I was friends with all three, and in all cases there were accusations from others of a sexual tension between us, but in all but one case — the second girl in the timeline — there was never so much as a kiss between us. Though I’m still convinced the girl in the dream was some mash-up of all three, I do recall while kissing her in the dream that I thought to myself how much better she kissed now.

In another scene, I’m running down a curving highway devoid of traffic in the pouring rain. While it feels like I’m in a car, I’m certainly not, but there’s a disturbing amount of water on the road and I’m incredibly anxious about potentially hydroplaning. I’m going so fast I miss a turn and it takes me awhile to slow myself down. When I finally do, the rain has stopped and I’m standing on a structure, maybe a wooden structure, atop which an extension of the highway will ultimately be built. Deep down below there are people working on machines that for some reason will be buried beneath the road in the future.

In yet another scene, I’m sleeping in bed with the lights on — or perhaps light is just coming in through the windows — covered in a white sheet. I soon feel some creature moving beneath the sheets, feeling soft as it rubs against my leg. I initially assume it’s a bunny, because evidently in the dream I had in this dream I had dreamed about having a pet bunny, but it actually turns out to be my pet chicken.

Elsewhere in the dream, I’m cleaning the bathroom at work, first successfully unclogging a drain and then seeing the feet of someone in a nearby stall. I felt bad, feeling I shouldn’t have been in here if it was occupied. I also remember that I’m not wearing pants, though I have two pairs of jeans in there with me, but only one has a belt.

Someone I work with comes in to talk with me, and while I’m not embarrassed regarding the fact that I’m not wearing any pants, I do feel embarrassed that there is no doorknob on the side of the door facing inside and that I should have fixed that for the inspection we’d just had. I then proceed to take out the trash, and as I do so I realize my pants are around my ankles. Despite there being cars in drive-thru, the occupants of which could clearly see me, it doesn’t really bother me.

When I come back and I’m near the back door, somebody asks me about the door knob, and while I initially felt responsible for not having fixed it I suddenly recalled having mentioned it to manager Steve just before the inspection. It wasn’t my fault after all, as it had been his responsibility to tell the proper authorities to get a doorknob for me to put on.

Connie pokes her head out the door, complaining because we didn’t get 100% on the inspection, but I immedeately counter with the fact that we did, after all, achieve the high 90s. She asks if that’s really good enough in my eyes, and I immedeately answer, yes. She then disappears and the store manager, Kelly, is preparing to leave. I ask her if she had to pass a certain test to pass her Junior year of high school and her grade was in the high 90s, would she be satisfied? She laughed and said she most certainly would.

At some point before I woke up, an off-screen voice tells me to not forget to record the dream I’d had regarding having sex with Connie, a thought which disgusted me as much in the dream as it does now, writing it. As I woke up, I considered not recording this recommendation and just letting myself forget it, but — obviously — decided otherwise. More disturbing is that I vaguely recalled a dream in which I had sex with Connie as well as someone I’m actually attracted to, though I couldn’t remember who she was.

Dreams of Sociality, Change, & Violence (5/23 Dreams).

5/10/23

I’m at a party taking place in a house I’m living in with others. Someone had bought food, but ate most of it, having left empty pizza boxes on the counter of the vacant kitchen. I found a warming burrito on the counter that I proceed to hide behind something in fridge so I can eat it later. I met the daughter of an old friend, Mr. G, at the door.

5/12/23

They’re remodeling my apartment complex. I come into my apartment, but its like my old efficency, essentially just one, big room. My current sink, stove and refrigerator are gone. Someone tells me that they always move them when they remodel.

5/14/23

It’s dark and I’m outside at some crowded gas station, where someone I know is backing up a semi alongside one of the pumps. He’s scraping against other vehicles, against the gas pumps, and I scream for him to stop but he just keeps going. Suddenly there’s nothing left to do but run away and take cover, as I’m terrified the place is going to explode.

In another scene, it’s still nighttime and I’m by the open door at the end of a long building, and the area, inside and out, is crowded with people. There is a scuffle outside and just before the door closes I see a blur as one girl suddenly bolts to the right just as a train races by the building from that side at lightning speed. The most horrible scream from outside fills my ears, the kind that seems to wound your soul, and I see another person vomit at the sight of whatever is left of the body.

While I didn’t see it myself, immedeately I feel the overwhelming horror, knowing that she had gotten hit and that there is a gruesome sight beyond that door. As the door swings back open I look away and begin navigating through the crowd, walking in the other direction.

In yet another scene, I’m walking on some crowded campus at night and see two familiar people approach me, one in a trench coat, and I want to follow them. I become momentarily distracted by a bar I come across as I make my way towards them, however, on which people hang their jackets. As I walk by, I grab my big, blue, fleece jacket off of it. As I struggle to gather up and get a good grip on the jacket and the metal hangar, I look up to see I’ve lost my friends.

So Sick of This Dream Theme II (5/8/23 Dream).

While they were at some celebration being held elsewhere, I go inside the house owned by Channing’s parents in order to play with their dog. They suddenly return unexpectedly, however, with Channing’s father — here a tall, Jewish-looking guy for some fucking reason — irritated, borderline enraged at my presence, though the mother remained silent on the matter.

It seems like a good time to leave and I grow increasingly anxious when I realize that I don’t know how. The house was positioned high on a hill with wide, wooden stairways, turning on at least two occasions, leading down across several smaller hills. Though I knew where the truck was at the time, there was no apparent way to get back to the road. Not that it would have mattered, I suppose, but I didn’t even consider in the context of the dream how I’d gotten the truck to that location to begin with.

Suddenly the aforementioned celebration moves to their house, with crowds of people everywhere. Still unable to discern how to get back to the road, I bump into Channing, who I haven’t seen in ages. I woukd have considered my best friend in high school, but over the last two or three decades he had grown tired of my isolationist tendencies and failure to ever reach out.

In real life, he woukd often be a total dick to me online. Once he sensed that he’d legitimately pissed me off, he’d send me a DM and say we should hang out and catch up sometime. I’d fail to respond, because: fuck that.

On the rare occasions I would go to a social gathering and we’d cross paths, he’d spend at least the first fifteen minutes giving me that side-eye stink-eye of his. Once I called him out on it, he’d proceed to have a passive-aggressive conversation with me. Early on, I spent most of the time aroubd him apologizing for my need for solitude and almost begging for his forgiveness, but I’d grown tired of that shit over the years. I have a limited social battery and work drains it. I hide away off the clock and often enough, on the weekends. I needed to. It’s how I’m wired. If he can’t get over it by now, it’s just not my fucking problem.

In the dream, however, we spoke, had an actual conversation, and he actually seemed happy to see me without any of the underlying bullshit. He only got angry when I told him I was going to leave, but I really needed to.

Not only is it still the case that I haven’t the foggiest clue how to get back to the road, now I couldn’t find my truck, either. It was dark out now and there were cars parked everywhere, every which way, utterly randomly. I used my clicker, but it apparently worked on vehicles that were not my own, too, and at one point I even remotely started someone’s car.

My need to leave is boiling over now, and like in another recent dream, I had the suspicion that I was dreaming — but unlike before, I gave up on finding the truck before it ended and just escaped the party through intentionally waking myself up.

Matricide & UFOs (5/3/23 Dream).

I wake up in bed, feeling entirely rested and somehow cleansed, after having had the darkest, most depressing, angriest and horrible dream I can ever recall having.

Getting up out of bed, I sit on my computer chair. I don’t make coffee or even have a cigarette. I don’t turn on the laptop. I just stare off into space, stunned, disgusted, horrified, just marinating in the dark, quiet, still sort of emptiness it had left in me.

Everything in me wanted to believe that the dream didn’t come from me, but from somebody else Eventually, I pushed myself to write it down, but it was difficult, and I couldn’t do it all at once

In the dream, I’m looking at the back of some guy, who feels as though he is an older brother. He’s sitting at my desk and using my desktop. I’m angry at him and he’s acting as if I have no right to be. Either he broke the computer or I want to break it so he can’t use it, I’m not sure which, but I comfort myself by thinking to myself how at least I’ll still have my laptop.

In the next scene, I’m in a van with my family. My mother and father are up front, with my father driving, and other siblings are in the middle seats. I’m in the back seat with my younger brother, who is wrapped up in a tan blanket. From beneath the blanket he reveals three items, all of which are from my past but which I had entirely forgotten about, which he then gives to me. The only item I can remember specifically is an old book at least partially on the subject of UFOs.

There is then some tense conversation between my mother and I in which I prove her wrong about something, though she is unable to admit to it. Rather than cowering and backing down, despite being terrified of her and her power over me, I keep pushing the issue. Doubling down, though through a teasing kind of humor. A part if me is trying to get her to admit to it, though I know it’s unlikely; a greater part of me simply wants to anger her and give her a small sample of how she makes me feel all the time.

We all walk into the lobby of an apartment complex or hotel, where I see the unoccupied table for the receptionist. On the desk I find old photocopies I’d made during high school of the MJ-12 documents. I pocket them.

Later, in a dark apartment or hotel room, I keep pushing it, pushing my mother to admit she’s wrong about whatever it was she said in the van.

“The holidays are coming up,” she tells me. “There’s consequences.”

I follow her out into the equally dark hallway, where I confront her with what I suspected all throughout my youth.

“You never wanted to have me.”

“No shit,” she snaps back, not missing a beat, showing not the slightest hint of empathy with me or love from her, and it confirms what I’d always felt in my youth: I am an unwanted burden to her. I am worthless to her.

I am nothing, and I am hated.

Later, at my parent’s house, I’m in the kitchen making coffee, though the filter and the filter basket is huge, like it is at work. In the distance, I think I can hear my parents talking, and I don’t feel as though I’m welcome here. There’s this horrible feeling in my chest. As I’m scooping the grounds into the filter, my younger brother enters the kitchen, comes up to me and tells me that my parents are “cutting me off.”

Abruptly, the dream shifts to the next scene. I’m walking down my parents long driveway towards the house with the family and some other guy. He walks just beside me, with a coat that makes me think he’s a cop or an FBI agent, and he’s holding a long gun. He’s talking as if he’s trying to creep me put, assert power over me subtley through instilling a sense of terror through words that seem playful only on the surface. I suspect he intends on murdering me. As he’s talking about the gun and proper gun safety, I finish his sentence for him.

“… and always keep the safety on.”

In a swift moment, I quickly turn around, grab the gun, aim it at him and fire.

It all goes black.

I don’t see the act itself, all is still black, but I know that I then shot my mother as well, then chopped her up in pieces I then rolled up in bedsheets. I then see a flash, like a still image, of the blood stained white sheets wrapped around severed body parts.

I wake up in bed utterly fucking horrified, but also calm, rested, and cleansed, as previously mentioned. This painful and finally gruesome horror story that played out in my head somehow served as catharsis, and it has made me really concerned about myself all day.

After getting over the horror of the dream, as well as the guilt and shame I felt in the wake of this dream, I was able to look back on the dream symbolically.

My mother had looked younger — which is to say as she did when I was a kid and I still hated her for how she treated me. She also carried the same vibe she did back then: always angry at me, dismissive of me, desperate to maintain power over me and unwilling to accept any ignorance or wrongdoing.

This notion was reinforced by the fact that, in the dream, she was unwilling to accept that she might have been wrong about something: to her, this would mean her sense of superiority would be diminished, and she couldn’t have that.

“The holidays are coming up,” she had told me. “There’s consequences.” What the hell did that mean?

Holidays are a break from the routine, robot life, in which you commune with family and friends — those with whom you have the most enduring connections. She was threatening to abandon me, and this notion was reinforced when, after my confrontation with her. during which she confirmed that she had never wanted to have me, my younger brother approached me in their kitchen to tell me that my parents were “cutting me off,” or severing ties with me.

That’s what it meant. My fear of abandonment. My trust issues.

I think that the matricide may represent my intense desire to rid myself of the ill emotional effects my mother had on me in my childhood. For years I would have spontaneous memories and chronic daydreams about arguing with her, often trying to make her feel as small and unwanted as she made me feel. After my mother and I made amends, my old boss, Connie, took over the role in my head, and it still happens. Connie treated me pretty much like my mother treated me growing up, so it makes sense that I would try to distance myself from my issues with my mother as she had been by using Connie as a sort of stand-in. This dream just returned me to the source material, I guess.

The act of killing her in the dream may represent my effort to eliminate those old feelings and their present effects on me, but the chopping-up part still seems like the most extreme, literal form of overkill.

Honestly, the end of the dream still bothers me, still leaves me disgusted with and horrified by myself.

As for the rest of the family, I hardly noticed my father or sisters in my dream. Though I know they were there, they served only as backdrops here. Present, yes, but otherwise ultimately irrelevant. My older brother was only highlighted in what I remember being the opening scene, but I think he was also there throughout the rest of the dream, though after that initial scene only as a member of the backdrop population. My younger brother played a fairly active role, of course.

I have no brothers in real life, though, only two sisters, so what was that all about?

Brothers are clearly not you, yet are related to you, and so if you’re a man and have no brothers in real life, in dreams it would make sense that they would reflect aspects of you and your relationship with those aspects, and perhaps those in your life which you project them and your relationships with them upon.

What does the older brother in the opening scene symbolize? I’m not at all sure. Given that it dealt with me being angry at him using my desktop computer, however, I do have some initial thoughts, what you might call potential interpretations.

An older brother may represent what I fear I might become. As for the desktop he’s hijacked? To me, computers, as well as the internet – which today is more or less synonymous with computers, let’s be frank – represents my ability to explore what I wish to explore and express how I think and feel, be it under my own name or, if I prefer, anonymously.

A desktop, to me, seems more sedentary, rooted in the stable home base – the Jungian persona, if you will – which is to say something I can step away from but for now must come back to. A laptop or a cell phone, I feel, is more nomadic in nature, is something I can always carry with me, something I certainly can yet need not escape from, wherever I may roam.

So maybe the older brother, representing future-me, comandeering my desktop, represents my fears of ruining myself, my name, my Jungian persona in the eyes of those I care about in the future, and the comfort I still have in thoughts of my laptop represent the fact that I can start again under different names, different faces, or even keep it all private – it is something I can take with me, and which no judgements of others can take away from me.

If he broke the desktop, perhaps my fear is that I will render my persona in this lifetime unsalvagable. If I broke the desktop so he couldn’t use it, perhaps that suggests I’m determined to interrupt the current trajectory.

It may be a hell of a stretch, but that’s all I’ve got.

A younger brother in a dream, however, at least one that you don’t have in real life, it is said, may represent yourself as you were when you were younger. And this makes a good deal of sense to me, at least in the context of this particular dream, and for several reasons.

In the scene in the van, for instance, he sat next to me in the back seat, essentially hiding under a blanket — a tan blanket, like the one I always liked to have on my bed when I was between maybe seven and ten and we lived in our first house. As children (at the very least) we tend to hide under blanket because it provides some semblance of comfort and security in our feeble attempt to hide ourselves from what we fear out there in the darkness of our bedroom. I did a lot of hiding from the monsters of my youth behind doors, in closets, beneath beds, and under blankets such as that tan one, so that tracks,

If he represented a younger aspect of myself, it is perhaps telling that he was hiding not just from the rest of the family occupying the van but also from me. Perhaps he represents some aspect of myself I dissociated from my conscious personality as a child out of fear, and so he became stunted in that child-state for that reason, and so manifests that way in this dream. To carry this interpretation further, I can’t help but notice that from beneath the blanket he had given back to me those three items from my childhood that I’d forgotten about. This could suggest that this compartmentalized, childlike aspect of my consciousness was releasing some contents of my past, formerly unconscious, back into consciousness.

The only item out of the three that I managed to recall from the dream, however, was a book dealing with UFOs. Given the sightings and encounters I’ve had throughout my life and the flashbacks of those creatures I had when I was a teenager of encounters I’d had when I was even younger, this is also consistent with the notion of unconscious contents from childhood rising to consciousness.

The UFO subject was again referenced when my family and I entered the lobby of the hotel or apartment complex, however, so this subject was reinforced in particular.

Hotels are said to suggest one is a transformational or transitional period in their life, and a receptionist suggests a need for assistance or guidance. Though I saw no receptionist, I did see the table, upon which I found photocopies of the MJ-12 documents. I had actually made such photocopies as a teen when I found them in one of the countless books I was reading in efforts to build up a context through which to better understand my experiences.

While the issues with my mother were similar in that they were unconscious contents that arose in this dream, I’ve been uncertain as to how it relates to the UFO issue more directly, but I think I may understand now. I think I may understand the meaning and purpose behind this haunting dream as a whole.

As a whole, perhaps the dream reflects my fears of expressing my true thoughts and feelings and memories because I fear that in doing so I will be judged harshly, whether I am truly understood or not, and subsequently abandoned by the world at large, particularly those I care about. It probably also references the people-pleasing habits of keeping my mouth shut and hiding those parts of myself out of that fear — and the guilt I feel when I’ve expressed myself nonetheless. Perhaps, in a symbolic effort to overcome these fears and regain myself, I had to symbolically kill this fear at the roots, and those fears originated in how my mother treated me in my youth.

So Sick of This Dream Theme (5/1/23 Dream).

It’s dark outside. I park the truck in what seems like an alleyway and begin walking towards the house some distance away, passing by some people outside, clearly members of the birthday party already well underway. A short distance away, I see Lilly near the door, and just as her eyes meet mine I realize I had forgotten my hat, and tell her I’ll be right back before turning around. Before I make it back to the truck, however, I realize that my hat is on my head. I feel like a fool, quietly and intensely hoping that Lilly — my friend, the birthday girl — didn’t notice it.

After being at the party for a short time, my parents and sisters show up, and we sit with Lilly at a big, wooden table. I feel embarrassed and confused as to why I woukd elect to meet up with my family here, and my sense of how awkward this is just grows and grows.

Lilly eventually leans in close to the side of my face and whispers in my ear. The essence of what she said is that they’re going to smoke pot, so I might not want to have my family around. With that, I kindly escort them out without revealing why.

After they leave, I remain at the party for a short time before that familiar feeling of overstaying my welcome and being too socially awkward overwhelms me and I elect to leave as well.

Once leaving the party, however, I can’t find my truck. Its not where I was sure I had parked it. Then begins an enduring period of wandering around the town, with its elaborate alleyways, houses, yards and buildings, still unable to find my truck and now having not the faintest clue as to how I could even make it back to the party if I wanted to.

It suddenly occurs to me that this is remarkably akin to dreams I had periodically in my childhood and began having more frequently the last year or two. The town in question is always different — as a kid, it always used to be the same, desert town that gave off Old West vibes, where I’d either be running around on foot or riding a bicycle, trying to escape something that was chasing me. Nowadays it was a modern town, though always different, and I was always lost in it, looking for something — usually my vehicle. In either case, it always seems to be a labyrinth of a town and I feel frighteningly lost, frantically trying to find the vehicle as I wander through houses, buildings, yards and alleyways, just as I found myself doing now.

At some point I run into my father, who had apparently moved the truck for some reason, but then he leaves and somehow I manage to lose the truck again, so my wandering continues for what increasing seems like an utterly absurd amount of time.

Now it’s getting light out and my frustration has elevated to a mixture of panic and rage. While I slowly begin to realize I’m actually dreaming, I’m determined to stay in the dream and find the truck before awakening, as I always seem to wake up before doing so. I suddenly cry out to the sky while in some alleyway something along the lines of: “I’m so fucking sick of these dreams where I’m lost and can’t find my truck!”

Then I let myself wake up.

This is the most I’ve been able to remember of a dream for the last week or two, though I have recalled remnants.

In a dream I had on April 22nd, I’m Cassidy, the character off of the television show, Preacher, though I’m not a drug-abusing vampire. I’m sneaking around a building, hiding in various places — at one point, in some guys bedroom, where I smoke a cigarette.

In another dream, I’m driving the truck up a hill, but it won’t go fast enough, so I somehow reach out my hands in front of the truck to claw at the road and pull the truck up it faster. Suddenly, the truck is gone and I’m just walking and clawing my way up the hill alongside others, all of us wearing Depression-era clothing.

In the dream I had on the 23rd, though I don’t know if I’m the main character in the dream, it deals with this middle-aged, worn-out looking Secret Service guy who’s job it is to protect the president. I had a vision of him, hair and slight beard graying, sitting on a chair, smoking a cigarette and loking very tired and worn out. I also remember something about a pond or a lake.

Most recently, however — maybe a day or two ago — I had this elaborate dream about visiting some structure like a hotel that was either right by the ocean or atop the ocean like an oil rig. At the end I leave with others on a huge boat, though we leave some people behind. My ex-girlfriend, Claire, was a central character in this dream, and it’s been some time since I’ve recalled a dream of her. In terms of character she seemed very young, almost child-like.

Now my dream recall was returning again, and even within the context of the dream I was getting annoyed with the recurring themes. I know it’s because I’d failed to motivate myself to get a new job, and that I’d failed to find a new apartment. If I don’t by the end of May, my rent will increase by 200 fucking dollars and I’ll be stuck paying it every month for another year.

So I’m stuck with these dreams of being “lost” and not being able to find my “drive.” Of that part of the dream — of so many dreams the last bunch of months — the meaning is clear.

I need to get accessed for ADHD, and soon. If I have it, maybe it’ll give me the focus, the direction, the motivation, the drive I need to get my life in order.

Of the Campus & My Dream Guide (4/12/23 Dream).

I’m on some enclosed, concrete porch just outside a building on a college campus, with others around me, as if we’re just hanging around or waiting for a bus. From the distance, a guy with sunglasses and the kind of posture and clothing that clearly conveys he thinks he’s some kind of cool badass just walks up to me, punches me in the shoulder a few times, then walks away.

This very thing had happened earlier, too — a stranger coming up to me, punching me on the shoulder wuthout saying anything, and then just casually walking away — and while I had gotten good at enduring the punches and felt rather proud of that fact, what I really want is for it to stop. I think to myself how I need to learn how to punch.

At some other point, I’m inside a building on campus and no one seems to be around, so for some reason I take off my shirt and ballcap. I think I may have spilled something on my shirt, but I can’t recall. After a few moments, however, I notice my pastey skin and beer belly and suddenly I feel exposed, embbarrassed, self-conscious, so I quickly throw back on a black shirt and my cap.

I then go outside, where I meet up with my friend, who I think was a woman, but who in any case serves as a kind of guide. I have a vague recollection of her driving me to campus at some point earlier in the dream. In any case, I’m standing outside of the building, on a concrete (but this time, not enclosed) porch with my friend and guide, and my plan is to find a woman who I had seen on campus earlier who had been selling a book on atheism. I had failed to purchase it but now decided I wanted to buy it after all.

At the urging of my friend and guide, I walk up to a cute girl a short distance away from the building and ask her if she had seen the girl selling the atheist books. While she doesnt really answer my question, she responds by telling me that she herself has plenty of books on atheism. In retrospect, it seems this may have been her subtley hitting on me, and my guide may have sent me to her with the intent of trying to hook up with her, but neither of these things struck me at the time. I just told her that I did as well, but I wanted to get my hands on this one specifically.

She then asked me if I had been inside earlier with my shirt and hat off, and I said I had and gave her the reason I had done so. She makes a comment regarding the fact that I’m bald, and my friend adds, “and he has blond chest hair.”

For the record, I do not have blond chest hair.

In what was perhaps a different dream entirely, I’m in my apartment with someone and we’re watching a movie on my laptop.

In real life, I’ve been using my laptop since the power outage, when the monitor for my desktop stopped working.

When we had to pause the movie for a moment, perhaps because my friend wanted to use the restroom, I for some reason decided to hook up my monitor to see if it worked. I vaguely recall my friend and guide from campus being the one to suggest it. To my amazement, it did. Though I was eager to use it and the screen was much bigger than my laptop monitor, I reasoned it would be too difficult to find the movie and the right point in it on my desktop, so I decided that we’d just continue watching on laptop anyway.