23 Dream & Synchronicities).

I’m hiding with Abbey in a cluttered room at an abandoned airport during the apocalypse. There are a lot of people at the airport, a lot of commotion, but we found this small area with what appears to be seats out of a car or plane up against the wall, where we lay next to one another for awhile, escaping the chaos. We pass the time talking and occasionally peeking out the narrow window situated just above. At some point it strikes me that this circumstance seems strangely familiar, and I confess to her that I swear all of this had happened before.

Later, I’m alone outside on the runway and I see a plane in the sky, apparently attempting to come in for a landing, but it’s nose turns upward, it’s belly facing me, and eventually it crashes in an enormous explosion.

Shortly thereafter, I see a bunch of people floating down from the sky with parachutes and I instantly feel dread. Somehow I know these are bad people, likely violent, convicted criminals. I imagine them taking over the airport and doing violent or unsavory things to us and that they wouldn’t be the kind of people we could sway or negotiate with. I feel certain that if we encounter them things will not end well.

I’m frantically trying to weigh whether it would be better if Abbey and I were to continue trying to hide here at the airport or quickly gather up our things and try to make a run for it.

As usual, there was more to this dream, but I’ll be damned if I can remember the rest of it.

Dreams about the apocalypse, about a doomsday scenario, are said to reflect fears and insecurities regarding how unprepared we feel over a chapter in our life coming to an end. The nature of my fears are likely represented by the fact that I’d taken up residence in an abandoned airport, as this is where planes take off and land, a place where people pass through on their way to and from other places, and so represents a period of transition. Given it was abandoned, it probably represents being stuck in an area in my life.

The airplane crash may symbolize my unsucessful attempts at changing, or my fears of failing to stick the landing in my present, ongoing attempts to change my life: specifically my desire to get a new, well-paying job and move closer to my family.

The violent convicts that came down in parachutes following the crash probably represent the aggressive, dark, violent emotions within me that I fear escaping me in the wake of my failures and taking over everything as I’m stuck in the period of transition — emotions that I’ve judged as dangerous and fear facing, as I consider myself too weak and unprepared to deal with them. My uncertainty regarding whether I should run or hide from them, I feel confident, requires no explanation.

So all of that makes sense. When it comes to the presence of Abbey in the dream, however, I remain confused.

For a short while a recurring theme in my dream was the presence of actors on television shows I’ve watched, or more specifically the characters they’ve portrayed, but this is the second instance in which a woman from my past who I haven’t dedicated much thought to in awhile has suddenly played a role in my dreams. First Jane, the sister of Melany, an old friend of mine from before high school, and now Abbey, who I haven’t seen in years.

Dreams about old friends can apparently deal with how the relationship you had with that person (and perhaps how it ended) relates to a similar circumstance in your life at present. Abbey and I were lying beside each other in the dream, and her and I did have some brief, intimate encounters in real life at one point. In the dream, I vaguely recalled at some point that something may have come between us and we went our separate ways, but I can’t be sure. If so, this would echo the actual circumstances between her and I.

Though I’ve tried all day to remember what the nature of the argument between us in real life was, I still cannot recall, which bothers me. Nor do I know how this could relate to any present relationship or person in my life.

Instead, she could represent qualities I saw in her that I wish to have in myself, or aspects of our friendship that I feel I need back in my life. I do miss having that sort of close, intellectual relationship with a girl I’m simultaneously attracted to. Still, I have my doubts regarding any of these potential interpretations.

The issue is that the rest of the dream has consistent elements — my fears that I’m unable to change and my fears of failing in my ongoing attempts to do so. It’s hard for me to believe Abbey doesn’t symbolize something consistent with that theme.

I kept thinking about her and what she meant for the first two and a half hours of my ten hour shift today, coming up with nothing. I thought on how I had met her, how I almost got a relationship or at least a fuck-buddy friendship going on with her — until I felt bad because Eva was fixated on her and was still a closet lesbian at the time. I eventually backed off and Eva and Abbey got together.

I considered writing about it in detail, but I knew I’d have to talk about the weird telepathic experiences Eva and I had, and I try not to post about my strange and paranormal experiences in this blog. I have another blog for that in a vain attempt to compartmentalize aspects of my life. And this dream didn’t seem to involve anything paranormal, anyway. It would make the post — this post — needlessly cumbersome and unfocused, and I have enough of a problem with that, anyway.

When I finally got out of the stock room and went up front, Natalie, an assistant manager, told me it was her sister’s birthday today and she was going skydiving for the first time today, so when her mother texted “he has risen,” since it’s Easter, she texted back that her sister “has fallen.” Stranger, she added, someone had fallen at the church across the street. Ambulances had rushed there and carried a lady out on a stretcher. I laughed, and as I went outside for a smoke it hit me.

Skydiving. Parachute. Just like in my dream.

An interesting synchronicity.

For at least the last few weeks I had been noticing odd little “coincidences” like that, and finally started writing them down a few days back. So as I smoked, I typed it out in the word processing app on my phone. When I was done, I opened up Facebook, and the first thing I saw was a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon from a group I belong to. In it, Calvin is explaining how he’s constructed a kit so that he’ll be prepared for anything.

In the last panel, he mentions his umbrella can double as a parachute.

Later, Natalie’s sister came up with her boyfriend after she did her skydiving. I was tired, caffeinated, anxious and weird, but I met her, and she’s fucking beautiful. I was a bit too nervous fir my own good and probably came across as a fucking buffoon.

I should mention that Abbey isn’t the real name of the girl in my dream, but a pseudonym I chose for her long, long ago. I go out of my way never to use anyone’s real name when writing about my personal experiences, but I have to make an exception here, for something struck me as I was writing this. Natalie’s sister?

Her name is Abigail.

Kind of weird.

Into the Twilight (4/8/23 Dream).

In the dream, I’m walking on the third floor hallway of my apartment complex, but it’s pitch black, like when the power went out almost a week ago. I can barely see my hand in front of my face. I’m standing before what I think is my apartment door, but the number on the door is gone, as is my welcome mat. I open the door, and it’s just as dark inside. I’m still not confident I’m in the right apartment.

Then there is suddenly a bright white flash of light that seems to come from outside the dream, and I immedeately open my eyes in bed. All seems strangely still. Eerily peaceful and clear. It’s early morning, twilight, and I can hear the birds chirping outside.

I close my eyes, fall into the dream space again, but just for a moment before my eyes pop back open. This happens a few more times before I get up out of bed, walk the short distance to my bathroom, and, with the light still off, have a cigarette.

It’s six thirty and I still have two hours until my alarm goes off. Why am I awake? Was that light just part of my dream?

After considering where this might have come from, my mind goes back to a recent conversation I had with an old classmate on social media. He had responded to a meme I’d posted, and essentially suggested that I was miserable because I was following a pathway leading toward darkness and that I should instead turn towards the light. He opened this recommendation quoting text from the Bible, of course, and this wasn’t the first religious conversation I’d had with him.

I responded by saying that I tried not to see things through that sort of absolutist, black-or-white kind of lens, even when “the light” wasn’t seen as representing a creator god and “the darkness” wasn’t seen as representing the so-called adversary. Instead, I saw it as a spectrum, and though a spectrum certainly has extreme ends, I saw the spiritual end-goal as the reconciliation of the opposites within me, a sense of wholeness or totality where I turned by back on neither the darkness nor the light within me. Though I freely confessed that I was suffering from imbalance, the target, as I saw it, was to achieve twilight.

Then, today, I was awakened from a dream of literal darkness by a blinding light into the peaceful, still, balanced, literal twilight of the morning — a rather perfect experiential metaphor for what I had previously expressed in words.

Jane, Alternate Personalities, & An Ever-Tightening Hug (4/6/23 Dream).

I’m outside in the daytime, standing on a cement walkway, and there’s other people and moderate activity around me. Just outside a doorway there is a woman who I think may have been painting the outside of the door. It suddenly strikes me that I know her. It’s Jane, the older sister of my old friend Melany, from before high school.

Jane and I somehow get to talking and after a very short while she becomes incredibly open with me. I believe she told me her therapist recommended she be more open with people about her condition, which is apparently Dissociative Identity Disorder. Though she doesn’t mention the disorder by name, she informs me that she has countless personalities because of some trauma she experienced in the past.

While I find myself suspicious of her announcement, I’m also very curious about it, given that she actually has the disorder. I know the initial question that popped into my mind was as to how she discovered she had the condition; following that, I was curious as to how she managed to integrate them, if indeed she managed to do so to any degree at all.

I’m not confident I even managed to ask the first question, however, before she suddenly gets angry and goes on the defensive, accusing me of judging her. For some reason — I don’t recall if it was upon her request or just me following through with a sudden impulse — I begin hugging her. I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable, so I consider ending it, but she almost demands that I not only continue, but hug her tighter and tighter and tighter still. I do, and she returns by hugging me tighter and tighter, and it feels good, borderline blissful.

Suddenly I’m brought out of the dream by a spam call on my cell phone, which immedeatly angers me. I can still feel the pressure and energy of the hug, and it feels extremely good, almost cleansing. I wished it could have continued and the deam could have been brought to its natural conclusion.

Though I didn’t know her too well, Jane lived with Melany and her parents in a trailer within walking distance from my house, and I spent a lot of time over there, especially during the summer months. She may have moved in and out of the trailer once or twice, and she always seemed rather reserved. She had a boyfriend who had died, I think by his own hand, and it had left her traumatized. She often seemed depressed and was prone to bouts of rage.

I can’t at present figure out why she would have suddenly arisen in my dream, nor why the issue of multiple personalities would have come up in association with her. All I can figure is that as a dream character she represented some aspect of myself, dissociated from consciousness, and therefore constituted a sort of “multiple personality” in that context. My curiosity as to how she re-integrated her personalities may have been answered in our ever-tightening hug — an act of willingly, openly embracing that divorced aspect of my mind and re-establishing a connection with it.

Two Strange & Confusing Dreams (4/3 & 4/5/23).

4/3/23

Somehow, be it intentionally or accidentally, I pour honey on the head of a rooster in my kitchen. His head is thickly slathered in it, making his head so heavy that when I put him down he immedeately tips over and falls face first onto the floor or table. He sticks to everything, seems absolutely miserable and defeated, and I feel absolutely horrible about it. I try to gently wash his head with water from under the faucet, but nothing seems to be working, and I’m afraid of hurting him in the process.

In the midst of this, I look to the stove and see the pans atop it bellowing smoke. Then I see that I’ve left a bag of something on the stove and the corner of it is on the burner, and it starts smoking, too.

4/5/23

I’m floating in a lake of green water and one of my assistant managers, Natalie, is there. The water is cold, but it gets warm in certain areas. Natalie found some object beneath the water that she was standing on where the water was warm, too. Somewhere out in the lake there is a structure that rests partially out of the water — two long walls and a roof — where supplies are kept.

Other guys are there in the water after awhile, I think three others, and we seem to be part of a group or team. I vaguely recall us having killed someone, and then we were called back later, our duty now to dispose of the body.

Before we do, now on land, we’re having photographs taken of all of us together. They have the four of us (one of whom is black, I specifically recall) stand beside each other in different orders, but while they had the others move around me, I always stood in the same place.

Towards the end of the dream, in a part that was solely conceptual, I recall thinking about how the creators of South Park had made two shows involving groups of four friends (in reality, they have not), and there was a kid with the same name in both shows, clearly the same character, though the other three were different.

Only once I was awake did I realize how this related to me in the photo-shoot scene.

Death, Power, & Anxiety (4/1/23 Dream).

A big storm hit and the electricity went out all over town. After reading a bit, I felt tired, so elected to take a nap under the niave assumption that once I awoke, the power would be back on.

In the dream, I’m in the hallway of some upper floor of the apartment complex I live in, though it is far grander and fancier than my actual apartment complex. It even has elevators. People are driving small vehicles down the hallway and out the elevator doors at top speed directly into the walls, intentionally killing themselves. I remember taking cover behind a wall as one slammed into it.

Later, on a lower level, I’m with my parents and some guy who seems to be both their friend and bodyguard (who is clearly based off a character played by Jay O. Sanders on a show I’ve recently been watching called Sneaky Pete). They seem to be babysitting or adopting two kids, a girl and a boy. Though I know this, I never see the girl in the dream. I do recall the other kid, however, who is a skinny black boy, probably in his teens, who immediately tries to run away. He tries to jump out of the kitchen and into the hallway through the interior window and has a hell of a time with it. I go grab a hold of him in the hallway and as he tries to escape my grip in a panic, I casually point to the cased opening, nonverbally indicating that his overly-dramatic escape attempt could have been done in a much easier way, and he calms down and just laughs.

Later, on the bottom floor, my mother and the bodyguard were going somewhere and I was supposed to go along, but they walked out the door without me, which made me happy, as I didn’t want to go anyway. Then the bodyguard comes up to the door’s window, stares at me, and holds up his hand, where he’s holding a sheet of pills, and though he says nothing, I know he wants to know whether I’ve seen anything like them around here. I had, in fact — the black kid had them.

I walk outside and ask them to just leave the kid alone. As I look down, I realize I have two phones, so go back inside to ask the kid if the other one is his. When I go in he’s already walking up to me, and as I’m holding out the phone and asking him if it’s his he aggressively grabs it and turns to angrily walk away. I grab his arm and tell him to knock it off, that I’m on his side. Much like when I spoke with him earlier, he suddenly relaxes, meets my eyes and sort of smiles at me while kind of laughing at himself.

When I go back outside, I begin walking with them and ask my mother why she doesn’t just leave the kid alone. He’s taking pills, but it’s his body, his business, and just because I wouldn’t do that doesn’t mean I should force my opinion on him. Even if we take them away, he’ll get more elsewhere.

As I’m saying all this, however — or at least trying to say it — my mother keeps talking over me, not stopping fir a second, not listening in the least, forcing me to talk louder and louder in the vain hope of getting a word in edgewise. I finally scream at her to just let me speak, to just shut up a moment, but she doesn’t pause or slow down. I want to hit her, the urge is overwhelming, but I just put my hand on her cheek, asking, almost begging her to shut up and let me talk, trying not to let my building rage overpower me so I go ballistic. I get so unbelievably enraged at her that I wake myself up.

I’ve had a few dreams as of late where the anxiety or anger has been so intense at the end that I awaken myself out of it with a jolt. I thought the common factor was CBD, but I’ve been largely abstaining from both that and weed as of late. I’m curious what’s really behind it.

Celebrities, Authorities, & Ex-Girlfriends (3/22/23 Dream).

I’m not asleep for three hours when I awaken in my dark bedroom at 7 AM, filled to the brim with anxiety, the dream I just pushed myself out of still vivid in my mind.

I’m sharing a large hotel room with a group of people, all of us hanging out on our respective beds. In the midst of various conversations and activities, my attention begins to narrow on this one guy, who looks incredibly familiar, though I can’t quite place him at first. After some time passes, it suddenly occurs to me that he looks remarkably like the actor who played Lucus, the private investigator from the television show House, MD. I asked him, though through indirect yet strong suggestion, if this was who he was, but he responded with dodging and denial.

After he had left the room for some reason, I told one of the girls about it, and both her and the others in the room seemed to show great interest. At this point in the dream, however, there was a sudden and irrational shift in the narrative: this guy didn’t just look like the actor who played Lucus, but actually was Lucus. Furthermore, I was somehow a stand-in for House, as I had been in a relationship with Cuddy — a revelation that came to the surprise of everyone, as she was evidently our boss — after which she began dating him.

Shortly thereafter, another girl I used to date strolled in through the door — a slender, petite, sexy woman with short hair who looked like some mixture of Kelli Renee Williams, who played psychologist Dr. Gillian Foster on the show, Lie to Me, and Christa Beatrice Miller, who played Jordan Sullivan on Scrubs. She kept eye contact, slowly approaching me, and immediately started being flirty. Her knee was rubbing me between the legs, her hands were all over me, and she was speaking in that soft, seductive way.

She takes me into hallway, clearly suggesting she wanted to get it on, and I ask her if there’s anything I should know. She says that she doesn’t like condoms, and I say that that’s a problem. I don’t want kids. She says, regarding raw-dogging, “but it feels so good.”

We go through another hotel room door down the hall into what I presume will be her room, but other people there, sitting at rows of tables, busy with paperwork, handing off folders to agents that I know to be assignments. This is the FBI. They hand me a folder, but I refuse. I don’t work for them. Turning to her, I tell her I was under the impression that we were going to have sex. She then tells me she intended on getting an assignment alone so we could go find a place somewhere.

They aggressive insist I take a folder, specifically some large black woman who is sitting down, handing it to me without even looking up from her work, but I still refuse. As i go to exit the room, my ex says my name and then says, “take a folder or I’ll kick your ass.” I say no and casually grab a weapon off the table — like a fancy police stick — on my way out the door.

I go down the hall and enter what I think k is my hotel room door, but as soon as I’m inside, weapon in hand, all the fa es of the group turn to me, and none are familiar.

“Sorry, wrong group,” I say and promptly exit. I don’t want to go towards the exit of the hotel, as there is a police station there, so I go in the opposite direction.

I’m frantic because I’m lost again, and then I wake up with a jolt.

The three central symbols in this dream — hotels, celebrities, and authorities — are all symbols associated with transformation.

Hotels aren’t a place you live, of course, but constitute a temporary residence, and so may suggest a transformational change in one’s life and their uncertainty about the coming change they’re reaching for. Given the group I was with seemed to be my present workmates and the FBI tried to forcibly recruit me, this is likely in reference to my search for a new job as of late.

Sex with celebrities (or the roles they’ve played in television or movies, if referenced) may represent ideal qualities that you desire to develop and integrate — or once had and have since lost and wish to re-integrate. Given both Cuddy and the slender girl were exes in my dream, they perhaps represent lost aspects of myself I want back — or that I’m “flirting” with the idea, in the case of the slender woman.

In either case, they represent, again, a desire for transformation, but perhaps once again a hesitancy.

In this case, it may reference a desire for sex and intimacy with a girl and the confidence that develops during those frustratingly rare periods in my life. In a dream I had the night before, some guy was trying to get me to do at least three sexual things to Melania Trump, and I refused, likely on account to the disasterous douche nozzle she’s married to. I don’t know what the other two acts were, but after repeated insistence I agreed to lick her pussy. I did, too: a simple lick upwards between her lower lips. It tasted salty, but nice, and the taste felt so real.

Given this repeats the celebrity and sex theme, I’ve got to wonder.

Authorities in dreams are said to represent parts of ourselves that organize and control the aforementioned integrations and transformations, and given that we supposedly often dream of them when trying to make big changes in our lives.

As for the end of the dream, new rooms represent new or old and unconscious extensions of ourselves. At the end of the dream, as has been a relentless theme lately, I felt lost. That one probably needs the least explanation of all.

Origins Of Anxiety (3/19/23 Dream).

While most of the dream is lost in memory, I remember that my family and another family had met at the house of Danny Sable, after which we were going to all go to a party. The rest of my family had left, but I for some reason stayed behind, and I increasingly felt that I was overstaying my welcome. I remember investing a lot of time putting on my belt, and I was having a host of issues with the process, which confused me.

The entire time I was there, Danny said nothing to me, and actually appeared to be avoiding me, and right before I left some people walked with him to the bathroom door, talking with him quietly before he went inside.

I then go outside and walk into a small field of tall grass beside the house and alongside a road, where I find my two sisters. I’m surprised to see them there, as I thought that they would’ve been picked up by now and left. I then see my parents, who were apparently the ones picking them up, and they’d been patiently waiting on me, too, which for some reason I didn’t suspect. Dad was in the back of a pick-up truck and I was talking to him about seeing Danny, and how much I wanted to punch the asshole in the face, and we both start laughing.

I found this dream interesting, as I haven’t remembered a dream involving Danny Sable in many, many years. He essentially constituted the devil of my childhood. One of his sons, Jimmy, was my best friend when I was young, and on more than one occasion Danny would mercilessly beat Jimmy and his siblings in front of me as I hid behind a door or beneath a bed, terrified beyond description. I would have flashbacks regarding the household years later, after having forgotten abput Jimmy and those circumstances for years, and then began having a host of dreams in which I could not, for whatever reason, see his face.

In retrospect, I noted that I didn’t see his face in this dream, either, but that the terror I typically associated him was suspiciously absent.

After some contemplation after waking up today, I reflected on last night, and what may have triggered the dream. I’d been getting down on myself for wasting my weekend, on not filling out applications to find a new job. Instead, I’d spent most the weekend binge-watching a show, Preacher, which contained the elements of religion and violence — two elements also deeply associated with my childhood experiences in that house.

Just as relevant, perhaps even more so, I watched a short clip from The Joe Rogan Experience podcast last night in which Rogan was speaking with one Gabor Mate, who spoke on his perspective on anxiety disorders. It hit me deeply and made me feel hopeless and depressed, mostly because what he had to say seemed very relevant with respect to my own anxiety.

He said that when we’re children, some parents will not pick up a distressed, crying child because they want to instill in him a sense of inner strength and independence, and the parents don’t want to train the child to be dependent on the comfort and security the parents can provide.

He insisted they had it wrong. Backwards, actually.

It’s nature’s intent to make us independent; that’s the plan — what the child needs is a solid foundation of comfort and security provided by the parents, namely the mother. When the child is not emotionally nurtured but left to cry in distress, the emotional foundation that results is debilitating. It communicates to the child that he lives in an unsafe world. He grows to feel insecure and hopeless at his very emotional depths. It made me think of reading about the “separation cry” years ago, where the child will cry for the mother but if it goes unanswered for long enough he’ll just give up, solemnly accepting his fate.

It also reminded me of a story my mother told me years ago. Evidently when I was a child I would just cry and cry, and it was driving my mother crazy. She consulted the doctor, who suggested she just let me “cry myself out.” That she essentially ignore me and I’d eventually just exhaust myself. She explained how she did as suggested, and how it worked.

This was exactly what Mate said a parent shouldn’t do.

I had constant power struggles with my mother in my youth, and she acted like a cold-hearted bitch to me until about my mid-thirties. We’ve since made amends and we’re good now. She seems like an entirely different person. All is forgiven, though not forgotten, and I’ve always noticed how the nature of our shitty relationship back then influenced me — and influences me still.

Maybe it really began with the unanswered separation cries when I was still an infant.

I still remember Anne, my girlfriend from eons ago — my last girlfriend, in fact — once making the comment, when I was complaining about my mother: “I know, you never bonded with her.” She said it so matter-of-factly, as if explained so much about me. Maybe she was right. Perhaps it does.

After seeing the video, I fell into this well of despair and solemn acceptance, thinking: maybe this is in me too fucking deep. Maybe it cannot be changed. Maybe I can’t change.

For a big period of my young life, I focused on trying to let go of things that held me back, but this was different. It was the reverse: it was about needing something I don’t have. A sense of security, of confidence, of independence forever fucking lost to me.

But then I remembered that book, A General Theory of Love, and how it said that attachment styles and the lifelong issues we develop due to our bonds with our caregivers can be changed through subsequent, intimate relationships in adulthood. That gave me a glimmer of hope for a nanosecond until I realized I hadn’t had a relationship with a woman in almost two decades and could never imagine having one again because of my isolationist tendencies, trust issues, and fears regarding commitment.

Anne would’ve been my best bet, but I killed that hope permanently. Worse still, me ending it all was based on what I’ve since come to recognize was a false assumption.

I’d always thought that if I got in a relationship, I’d surely remain stunted, because the other would compensate for my shortcomings. I’d just ride her coattails for the rest of my life and never develop those aspects myself. But when I realized how my parents changed over the years, how they’d learned from one another and developed strengths where they were once weak through their relationship with one another, I saw how wrong I’d been, and how right the authors of the aforementioned book were.

I’d made my choice to be alone and it had been the wrong one.

I wasn’t getting tired last night and was no longer drunk, so decided to take sleeping pills, but I thought that maybe I’d already taken them an hour or two earlier. I wasn’t sure. Eventually I decided to take them anyway; in either case, I didn’t get tired. At all. Ultimately, I decided to lay down in bed anyway, and just found my mind spinning the same thoughts as before. I’d fall asleep for what seemed like a moment and would then wake up into the twilight state, vivid images in my mind, feeling the comfortable paralysis of my body.

Finally, I fell asleep and had the dream about Danny.

Was that dream suggesting my relationship with my mother wasn’t the issue at all, but rather my chikdhood experiences of that house — or that it wasn’t just my relationship with my mother, but watching what he did to those kids as well?

I can’t be sure. And I have the sinking suspicion I never will be, and it wouldn’t help me change things even if I did.

More Dreams of the Lost.

3/17/23.

I’m walking along a sidewalk when I put down my bookbag for a moment to do something, maybe check my phone. Then I start walking again and some time passes before I remember that I’d forgotten my bookbag. I look down the sidewalk, retracing my steps, but I couldn’t find it. I found a gathering of other bookbags in the bushes, but they weren’t my own.

In another dream, I’m on an outing with the Critical Drinker, a guy who runs a movie review channel that I find amusing and insightful. He drives me to his house, and it’s time for me to leave, so I say goodbye very awkwardly not once, but twice. He remains staring forward, saying nothing. I exit the car but forgot how I got here or how to get home. I don’t see my truck anywhere. So I start walking, using Google maps in the attempts to at least figure out where I am.

Fear in the Dark & a Dream of the Lost.

3/9/23

I had taken a CBD gummy and watched two episodes of the Netflix documentary, MH370: The Plane That Disappeared. Early into the third episode, I began feeling dreadfully tired, so went into my dark bedroom and crawled into bed. Immediately, I had the distinct sense that I was being watched and felt this overwhelming fear. Only moments ago, I could hardly keep my eyes open, now I was suddenly on high alert. I told myself I was being irrational, but I couldn’t shake it. I leaped out of bed and walked back into the front room, grabbed the pillow from my papasan, and laid down on the couch, continuing to watch the third episode. Again, I found myself struggling to keep eyes open, so I turned on my bathroom light in my bedroom, crawled back into bed, and finally managed to go to sleep. I woke up around 8:30 AM, still tired. Around noon, I took a nap and had a dream.

3/10/23

I go to a small apartment where I had previously met Peach, a friend of mine, though I knew she wouldn’t be there. I was inside for a short time before Nicky, an old friend of hers, walks out of a room. She seems mildly annoyed that I was there, and I immediately felt guilty. I apologized, explaining how I didn’t know others lived there. Almost hurt now, she goes, “Oh, you came to see Peach.”

Others turn up and walk in to the living room, and feeling out of place, I make my exit, but I’m entirely lost. I dont know where to go. I passing by a group of people to go down stairs, but then walk back up, passing by the same people, from whom I sensed annoyance.

Ultimately, I climb out a window onto these barrels stacked at least three stories high, then hop down other stacks piled closer to the ground. Eventually, I jump down maybe a story and land surprisingly gracefully on sand, where I feel myself sinking for a brief moment before hopping to solid ground.

A group of people are behind me, and one says something about a cop. I see him and pass casually by, though I think he stops me. I explain I’m lost and that I’m just looking for my truck.

I then proceed to walk around town, unable to find it, thinking I did at one point only to discover it wasn’t really my truck after all. Finally, I use the clicker on my keys and hear the chirping, even the reflection of the flashing lights, but still can’t locate it, though at least now I know I’m in the general vicinity. I think I find it before waking up.

So I had another dream about feeling out of place, afraid of the judgement of others, and being lost and seeking motivation. I suppose that’s fitting enough.

Dreams of Early 2023.

1/2/23

Saw S.M. in a dream and we hung out for a bit. I left him in my room for what I intended to be a short time but then got distracted by a bunch of junk of mine I’d left downstairs and had forgotten about, and it had to deal with aliens and UFOs. I thought how when I went back upstairs I’d tell him how I had had three dreams of him over the years, all dealing with UFOs, but the more I thought about it, I could only remember two. I kept wondering: why did I think three?

I didn’t realize until awakening that I may have been referencing the very dream I was having while I was still in it.

1/4/23

I’m walking around college, unable to find any touch screen monitors to clock in, nor can I find the right buildings, and not because just they replaced all the names of the buildings with numbers. My memory seems frighteningly absent. Someone, I think Emory, tells me that I’m late for class, that they were asking about me, but someone had said that they had seen me on campus. I finally walk home, but then realize that I had left my phone somewhere on campus, so I go back. In the end, I’m watching some spacecraft in the sky. Then I wake up.

1/6/23

In the dream, I was cleaning the break room at work when I found something like a strong fishing line coming out of the ceiling. I kept pulling it and it didn’t seem to end, so I took it in hand as I exited the break room. My intention was to ask one of the managers about it, though that never came to pass. Instead, I just started walking home while holding the line and it just kept going and going.

1/7/23

I’m driving, but it was as if I were one with the car and running super fast. I think I missed a soft turn and kept on the road as it turned into a dirt road, at the end of which I stopped. I asked a group of people, at least some of whom were from work, what road this was. “Andrews,” someone said, I think manager Steve. I was on the wrong road. Then manager Beth was there, and they all piled into a van I assume was hers, but there was no room left for me.

1/17/23

I’m in bed, it’s dark, and I’m awakened by my paternal grandfather putting a Bible beside me. I make some offhand comment about my atheism, I think, but it goes unacknowledged. He says farewell and, assuming he means to indicate he’s about to die, I begin to cry, but within a moment I realize my grandparents have been dead for decades. The intense emotions of sorrow and loss bubbling up within me, overcoming me in the emotional equivalent of a tsunami, is abruptly cut off as I realize this and I fall away from the dream.

In retrospect, I was never that close to my paternal grandfather. Also in retrospect, it seems as if I was the one dying, perhaps even in an open coffin, and my grandfather was saying farewell to me. I didn’t move and when I spoke, my voice seemed only to be in my head, and he made no sign to indicate he’d heard me.

1/22/23

I dream of having just crossed a river, and then felt an earthquake.

2/12/23

My two sisters and I are in pond or a river with rapid waters and we suddenly become aware that we’re approaching a waterfall. Eve hangs onto me, Linda onto Eve, but Linda loses her grip and falls over. It turns out it was a very short waterfall, however, so she’s all right. I’m suddenly worried about all the litter and sewage I suddenly remembered being in this pond, however, and frantically want to get out, so try not to touch the bottom as I make my way to the shore.

2/18/23

I’m outside on someone’s lawn, looking at Gwen’s sketchbook, and come upon a drawing of a threesome. It’s expertly drawn and colored in colored pencil. It depicts a guy sitting on a chair with two girls in positions I can’t remember. I then look up and find a sex act actually taking place nearby me on the lawn, and I end up talking with this girl as she’s getting banged. She has streaks of purple in her hair and tells me she’s from Wisconson, but she likes it a lot better here (presumably, in Ohio). After the fucking is over, she puts on these purplish blue, one-piece pajamas that covers all but the top half of her face. She then goes into a public restroom a few feet away. It has a large doorway without a door and most of the inside is exposed. I look at my phone and find that Gwen has sent me dozens of texts.

2/25/23

It seemed like a post-apocalyptic situation. We were hiding out in a building, but I kept seeing this one guy through the windows and doorways of an adjacent building and feared us being seen by him. It made me want to leave before he did spot us, though we stuck around. Even so, I was in constant fear, wondering if I should have my bag packed and nearby at all times just in case I had to make a sudden run for it.