22 Dream).

I called off work, mostly because I was so damn tired. After falling back asleep, I fell into lucidity in my dreams at least twice, from what I can recall. In the midst of a dream I cannot remember, I got the burning desire to check on something in my living room (which doesn’t really exist) and recalled instantly being there, walking towards and climbing over — or perhaps it’d be more accurate to say rolling over — the back of the couch in the dark.

Sadly, the lucidity was brief, but I feel certain it happened again. Though I can’t remember the circumstance, I vaguely recall the rush of lucidity followed by the immedeate attempt to fly upward — and accomplishing this with surprising ease. Usually flying in my dreams is less controlled and more akin to swimming through the air, but here, I launched upward like a goddamn rocket.

The dream that followed is fuzzy in the beginning, but I end up at my parents house, intending to take a nap there. I may have accomplished that for a short time, for I recall suddenly confused to find myself in an entirely dark house with no one else around.

Looking out a second-story window, I see an old-looking car (maybe from the thirties) trying to back up along a fence where there were trash cans and a large puddle. It backs into the trash cans, fire shoots out from its exhaust, and it goes forward a bit before attempting to back up again, this time falling backwards into a puddle. The car then goes vertical and sinks into the puddle entirely, disappearing below the surface of the water. Fearing my sister, Eve, may have been the one driving, and that she might now be trapped and drowning, I rush downstairs.

On my way out the front door, I see my parents in the driveway. I’m about to tell them about the car, but my father says something to me I couldn’t make out, but I thought I caught him saying something about missiles. I try to ask him to speak louder, to clarify, but either my mother or father interrupt and indicate I should look up.

Turning my attention skyward, I see countless slender, rectangular shadows soaring, rushing by above the thick, gray cloud cover, all headed in the same direction. It was a frightening scene. I try to get them to confirm they were indeed missiles and not something else, with that something else being UFOs, but I can’t seem to articulate my question clearly. At some point my mother Chimes in.

“If Aunt Natty were here,” she says, of an Aunt I don’t really have, “she’d tell you…”

The World, Against Me (12/2/22 Dream).

I can’t recall the exact circumstances, but it seemed as if everyone had turned against me, hated me, and I felt hurt and betrayed. I was also enraged at what they had done and had the overwhelming urge to do something horrible, to show them that they couldn’t cross me without dire consequences, though I talked myself down and never did.

At the end of it all, I went into my bedroom, which looked like my bedroom back when I still lived with my parents, and sat at my desk, on which there was a tall glass of beer. Leaning back in my chair, I looked out the window to my left and into the nighttime sky. Despite everything, I suddenly felt at peace.

In the wake of that dream scene — which was the only one I recalled with any clarity — I stayed in bed in a twilight state of consciousness, trying to go back into the dream. I wanted there to be a resolution to those circumstances before waking up despite the fact that the dream had met what was apparently its natural ending. I finally relented and got out of bed when I looked at the clock and found it was passed 3 PM.

In reflection, I think the point of the dream was that you can’t expect anyone to like you. You can’t control their reactions, and really, it would be unethical to do so. You can only control yourself, and that can’t happen when your sense of self is rooted in their perspectives of you, when you have that external locus of control.

I’ve always enjoyed my time alone, and having my own apartment, my own private space, is often the only thing that gets me through the day. I can sit at my desk and write or draw, read or watch videos on things that I actually find interesting, explore subjects I’m actually passionate about.

This dream reminded me that it’s important to be anchored within and go my own way, and that it doesn’t pay to get so wound in the emotional webwork of so many others.

Frogs, Books, Lilly & a UFO (Four Dreams).

11/23/22

For years now, since I started balding, I’ve shaved my head. Looking in the mirror, I decide to just let my hair go, and as it grows, I find that I’m not balding as I had thought. Soon, I have a full head of hair — but not dark brown as it used to be, nor salt-and-pepper, but blond. I’m disturbed to find that my face also changes.

I go on to have another dream.

As I’m sitting at a booth in a restaraunt, I see, out of the corner of my eye, something small fall from the ceiling and bounce off the floor to my side. I’m confused for a brief moment, but then my friend from across the table directs my attention towards the ceiling. There, perched on a beam high above, sits a tiny frog. I watch as the little creature opens its huge mouth, turns a bit into the dark area behind him, and turns back with a bright, green grape between his chompers, which he then quite intentionally drops to the floor below.

“Apparently, he doesn’t like grapes,” I explain to my friend — just as my alarm goes off.

Why does my sleeping brain burp up these strange things?

11/25/22

For some reason, I’ve sold or given up many of the books from my collection to a bookstore or a library that appears to be a wing off of the building where I work. I went into bookstore to look for other books while holding onto one of the books I hadn’t sold, but I lost the book, so spent the bulk of the dream looking around for it while constantly coming across other books I wanted to buy. At one point I see a group of paperbacks on a low shelf — I think they were of the horror genre — and said aloud that these books weren’t for kids as I hid them in a box. Ultimately, unable to find the book I had, I elected to buy a new one as well as a Snickers bar at the counter. Shortly thereafter, someone in the area where I work was trying to shut off something in the store using the fuse box but ended up shutting off the lights and everything else in the store and bookstore.

After I awaken, I grab the only book out of the countless books I have that was at the very least shaped like the book I’d lost in the dream. It was Mel Ash’s 1996 book, Shaving the Inside of Your Skull. Later, while grocery shopping, I go on my impulse to buy a Snickers bar as well.

11/26/22

Leaning back, watching the night sky, I see a distant but bright meteor flare up and leave a short but brilliant green tail to the right of my field of vision, though it only lasts for a a second or two. Where the meteor flared up, however, I see what at first looks like a faint star, but then it effortlessly flies across to the other end of my field of vision, and then continues going back and fourth in arcs across the sky. I suddenly feel the compulsion to get a video of it with my phone, but my screen won’t put the sky in view, and I’m confused as I frantically fiddle with it, though I never get it to work.

11/27/22

Though there was a girl in the dream that was “kind of” my friend, Lilly, this was incredibly different from a very vivid, yet very brief dream scene I had just before my alarm awoke me. This was undoubtedly her.

I’m walking down these broad stone steps, and she’s walking her way up, and we stop when we meet each other face to face. She’s wearing a yellow blouse and she wears a huge smile and has wide, pleasant, happy eyes. I feel so much joy just seeing her, especially like this. She looks so bright and happy. We just look at each other for a brief moment, saying nothing, and then I awaken.

Three Angry Dreams (11/6-11/8/22).

11/6/22

All I recall is an image of my old friend, Angela, who I haven’t seen in a decade, with a face revealing uncharacteristic anger. She also has freckles, which I thought to be strange. I text her about it, and she texts back that she does indeed have freckles, and I found it strange that I hadn’t remembered that.

11/7/22.

I’m at work, nearby the fryer vats, on the side of back line opposite the kitchen. Natalie, one of the assistant managers, is working in the kitchen, talking with someone on my side of the table. I think it’s a girl, and there’s an argument. In response, the girl takes an object out of her pocket and swiftly and angrily slashes Natalie’s throat and then walks away, toward the front counter. Meanwhile, Natalie falls back as others catch her and surround her before she falls to the floor.

I’ve just been standing there the whole time, quiet, nearly motionless, stuck in observer mode, and I feel guilty for not knowing what to do or even trying to help in some way.

Some manager — I believe Kelly, the store manager — walks up from the back, looks into the kitchen and calmly asks the small crowd around Natalie what’s going on.

11/8/22

On the bridge of sleep, I keep waking up due to what sounded like bombs dropping and exploding in the distance. It’s clear to me that it’s entirely in my head, but as I slowly drift off to sleep, it keeps happening.

I wake up early the next morning to get ready to walk down to the municipal center to vote with part of a dream fresh in my mind.

I’m with someone down at end of my parents’ long driveway, which they had just gotten repaved, when I suddenly just noticed it: a huge, freshly-dug ditch along the side of the road that’s already cut the end of the driveway in half. And to top it all off, the construction crew wasn’t even finished.

I scream at one of them, “What the fuck?” Its a woman, and she calmly explains to me how they’re going to curve the driveway far to the right. All the while I’m thinking, Well, what if we have to leave right now?

I walk back to house, telling my mother that she might want to walk down there and take a look. Not seeming at all that upset, she tells me she already heard. I don’t understand. I’m furious. Why isn’t she bothered?

Two Brain-Straining Anxiety Dreams (10/15 & 10/3/22).

10/15/22

I went out with a group of people to a strange restaraunt. Though I vaguely recall it was outer space themed, or had something to do with space, I remember little of this portion of the dream aside from the fact that we seemed to have spent a long time there.

Once we left and returned to the place at least one of them lived, everyone seemed tired and eager to sleep. I desperately wanted to go home, but I felt trapped somehow, perhaps anxious regarding driving. At some point Gus from work stumbled in, drunk, and wanted me to take him home. He also wanted to lay down on the cot I was laying on. I refused both requests and he left to go to the bathroom. I then put something like a wooden cage over the top of the cot, which I felt protected me from something in the sky I was afraid would see me and get me. In my mind, I connected this with two black helicopters in the sky.

The next morning, I awaken to find the place incredibly active. People are rushing about, getting dressed up, busy as bees. It appears that they’re all getting ready for a wedding. I feel lost in the shuffle, entirely out of place, so finally get out of the house, into my car and start driving.

Though I don’t know how to get home, I’m surprised to find myself entirely relaxed and confident behind the wheel at first, which is helped by the fact that I’m on a familiar state route. I feel rather proud of myself for once. As I continue driving along, however, I begin to suspect I’ve gone the wrong way on the road and come to the conclusion that I really need to find a place to turn around.

Before I get the chance to, I discover that I am indeed going the wrong way. What’s worse, I’m about to enter an insanely complex highway system up ahead. Multiple lanes branching off into still other lanes that twist up and over other lanes and so on. I am absolutely terrified.

To make matters even worse, despite the fact that it’s not raining, the highway is suddenly being flooded with water. It’s shallow at first, but quickly gets deeper, and I watch as cars struggle to go forward as they’re pushed sideways and all around. To the far right I see that there are lanes heading back in the direction from which I came, so I consider going in that direction. Maybe in the chaos I can pull a u-turn and no one will notice.

Somehow I get trapped and lose the car, making my way through the flooding to some building or complex on the far left of the freeway. There are plenty of people there, a lot of chaos. I decide if I can get out of this complex I’m just going to start walking home, but I can’t seem to find my way through all the cops, cars, and commotion.

Eventually I start following some well-dressed, professional-looking woman who seems to not only have special access through doors, but knows her way around. Something makes me suspect she’s a reporter. I finally get to an opening where I have access to the road, but at just that moment a boundary comes down in front of me, blocking my path. I try to walk further, and save a girl from almost getting crushed by the machine that closes the huge doors of the place.

Shortly thereafter, I find a way out and, suspecting I’m asleep, manage to force myself awake.

I awoke from my nap at about midnight on the 15th, my mind feeling frazzled and strained. The dream was intense and the anxiety was overwhelming. Was this because of REM rebound, because I haven’t had a sober sleep in awhile?

I had a dream that felt similarly frantic and full of anxiety relatively recently, and it also happened during a sober nap. It was the day I woke up with my leg hurting so bad I called off work.

10/3/22

I had driven to a place I had never been before, a busy main street full of stores and bars. I was there to visit a daughter of Monica, a crazy lady I used to work with. She has three daughters in real life, one of whom is an assistant manager where I work. The daughter in this dream didn’t exist in real life, however.

I’m not sure what happened, exactly, but I feel I became romantically or sexually involved with her. Whatever transpired, in my notes I wrote that this part of the dream left me feeling used, manipulated, taken for a fool, taken advantage of. It culminated in me finding Monica in a bar, looking at her deeply in the eyes, making certain I had her complete attention.

“When you see your daughter, I say, “tell her I’d much rather her be like you, fucking with the system, then fucking with people.”

Someone in the bar laughed when I said Monica “fucked with the system,” too. The rest of the dream dealt with me unable to find the truck, knowing that even when I did I’d get lost trying to get home. My frustration and anxiety led me to forcing myself awake.

Both dreams involved my fear of driving and getting lost, I lost my vehicle in both dreams, and in both cases I felt as if I forced myself awake. While the anxiety in the more recent dream was higher, the feeling of frantic anxiety and “brain strain” followed both as well.

Intrusions & the Omnipresence of the Past.

9/20/22

I woke up once or twice during my sleep, scattered remnants of my dreams flashing through my mind. In one scene, somebody had spotted someone trying to get into my house or apartment and informed me. In another, some guy and I try to deal with another, more threatening guy and kick him out of the building, but he keeps maneuvering away from us expertly.

On one occasion when I temporarily awakened, I walked out of my bedroom and into the kitchen to get a glass of water. In the midst of doing so, I heard a clicking, which I immediately interpreted as someone fiddling with the lock on my door. Reason told me that this was not truly what it was, but I stuck my eye to the peephole anyway, seeing nothing, no one.

I fell back asleep and slipped into another dream.

I’m sitting down, talking with Raine Madia, lead singer for the band Our Lady Peace. He had come back from the bathroom as I was listening to what I felt was a rather soulless cover of an old song of his. I ask him about the band, if they’re putting out a new album anytime soon, and he calmly tells me no, as they broke up and they were never getting back together. He vaguely references an argument with one of the guys in the band, but seems reluctant to get into it. Now he’s just involved with his brother’s band and some other project, he tells me. I apologized for asking, insisting it wasn’t my intent to open old wounds, but he seemed fine. He openly confessed that he even liked the cover and that they sometimes played it at the bar he frequented.

The initial dreams I recalled upon awakening may have symbolized some dissociated, unconscious aspect of my mind trying to break in to consciousness, or that my sense of security was under threat in my outer life. As for why I dreamed of Raine Madia, there may be two reasons. First, I was listening to Ray Kurtzweil on the Lex Fridman podcast last night, and Our Lady Peace once made an album, Spiritual Machines, that drew heavily off his concepts. In addition, I listened to the band quite frequently during that intense period I knew Angela, and I was supposed to be seeing her in a town close to my hometown on Saturday.

In the dream, I noted that the cover didn’t have the same spirit as the origional, perhaps symbolizing that the emotions that originally inspired the song had been exhausted, that he had relinquished ownership of it. It seemed like he was able to just let the past go, put it behind him, and was willing to just move on with his life. He wasn’t haunted by the past, felt no urge to get drunk on nostalgia. He just accepted it and moved on.

Perhaps what was intruding or attempting to intrude into my consciousness, then, was some aspect of the past that I had to acknowledge and let go of. This seems to be a potentially valid interpretation in my eye, especially in light of what intruded into consciousness on the bridge of sleep the following day.

9/21/22

On verge of sleep, having slipped in the hypnagogic state, a childhood memory suddenly erupts in my mind.

I’m about ten years old, and we just recently moved into our new home, pushed back in the woods. The previous night, my family and I, along with my childhood friend, Jimmy, had gone out to a few stores when the car had started overheating on the highway. We got home late and all went to bed.

Jimmy and I slept on the floor of my new, largely vacant bedroom in sleeping bags, and when I awoke he was no longer in the room with me. I heard voices from the driveway below my second floor, sliding glass window, and peaked between the curtains. Jimmy’s family had arrived to pick him up. Strangely enough, they were moving at the same time as us and my parents had let them set up camp in our old house as the father set up their new place in Washington.

I was fairly certain his father wasn’t down there, but the possibility, however uikely, loomed in my mind. I didn’t go downstairs I was so filled to the brim with terror. I couldn’t. If I never saw that monster again for the rest of my fucking life it would be too soon. I remember later that day, after they had gone, my mother scolded me for not having come down and say goodbye, telling me that may have been the last chance I had to see him.

I know why this memory played out before my inner eye. Again, it was Angela. All week I’ve felt tense, and I’ve had this scenario playing in my head where her and I met up somewhere to have coffee and one or both her parents came strolling in through the door.

I clearly have a lot of shit I need to work through and must learn to let go of. I just don’t know how.

On the Silhouette of a Significant Other.

What is frustrating about interpreting your dreams is that, for all you know, dreams aren’t really symbolic messages from your unconscious, as you assume, and even if they are, there’s no way for you to approximate certainty regarding your interpretation being the correct one.

Now, I do happen to think they mean something, and while I can never be entirely certain I’m decoding them correctly, when a dream embodies what appear to be several metaphors for the same, underlying thing, or metaphors which elaborate the meaning of one another, I feel I’m on the right track. The intentions of my dreams can also seem fairly clear during those periods where themes repeat themselves throughout a single night of dreams, or weeks, months, even years.

A recent theme to emerge that hasn’t been present before, at least so aggressively, is having a girlfriend — particularly odd, as I haven’t had a girlfriend in roughly a decade and a half. This girlfriend theme first emerged, if I remember correctly, with her cast as a seeming background character, but then she slowly began taking the foreground.

Then we come to the most recent dream from a day or two ago, when I awoke having remembered a dream of sleeping beside my girlfriend in bed, waking up at one point in terror that I had been blowing earth-shattering trumpet farts in my sleep and that she’d find it, and consequently me, as revolting.

One curious element in most if not all these girlfriend dreams that have infested my dream-life as of late is the fact that she’s generic — no personality, no name, no hair color. No face, even. No real identity. Just an outline of a person; just a role devoid of true character.

In the earlier dreams it seems she was just standing there, but more recently we’re embracing each other or very physically close to one another and I just feel the warmth, love, and comfort of being there with her. There’s no conversation, no making out. There’s no fucking, of course, despite my horny nature at 43, despite over a decade of not having sex, or even making out with a woman, because apparently I can’t even get laid in my dreams.

I assume these dreams are reflecting a deep need, but I’m such an introvert, such a private person, it’s hard for me to imagine myself in a long-term relationship. My dreams are growing persistent, however…

Roots of My Distance (9/11/22 Dream).

My mother, who is sitting down around the corner and just out of view, tells me that she had found a letter I wrote to Jimmy in his bedroom. “You mean MY bedroom,” I said, correcting her angrily, and it wasn’t in the tone of a question. I felt possessive of my room and angry that she’d intruded and read the letter. She leans from around the corner to look at me, sort of smiling but saying nothing, as if I’d given her the reaction she was after. So I go into my old bedroom (at my parents house), and some things are still in there. An old dresser with drawers missing and a lot of old writings that I stuff into my book bag to take with me.

It may or may not have been part of this particular dream, but at some point I’m kissing a girl — or rather, what we’re doing would be kissing if either of us had opened our mouths in the midst of our face-mashing. It was “dry-kissing,” I suppose, which would be the lip equivalent to dry-humping. I used to have dry-humping dreams quite frequently, and over time I came to the conclusion that it signified my fears of intimacy despite my simultaneous desperation for it.

Interestingly, interpretations of the more detailed dream resonated with the apparent meaning of this one.

My mother may represent the Jungian anima, the feminine aspect of the male psyche who traditionally guides us through difficult periods. Given the rest of the dream, however, it may have more to do with the fact that my mother and I didn’t really bond in my youth, and in fact fought fairly consistently.

Bedrooms allegedly represent aspects of ourselves that are private and hidden — personal thoughts, emotions, and issues we don’t wish to reveal or discuss. With respect to our childhood bedroom specifically, this suggests that something in our current waking circumstances triggered hidden memories from our childhood.

Understandably, a bedroom intruder is supposed to symbolize a sense of insecurity or fear of trusting people. Given a lot of my insecurity and trust issues likely originated with my relationship with my mother, this may be quite fitting.

While writing in general represents, for me, trapping a moment in amber through self-expression as well as catharsis and psychological alchemy, writing a letter is supposed to represent the desire to establish a connection with someone — Jimmy, my childhood friend, apparently. Yet I didn’t send the letter, but rather left it in my old bedroom, which again, suggests a fear of making such a connection. So again, all signs point to: trust issues and fears of intimacy.

One element of the dream I have yet to understand, however, is why she called my bedroom Jimmy’s bedroom — and why I so angrily corrected her, feeling so possessive of it. My only thought is that she was implying that I was taking on his pain as my own, and so the private, secret, childhood matters my bedroom represented were more his than mine despite the fact that I’d taken them on.

Actually, having written that out, it makes a good deal of sense.

I met Jimmy when I was maybe five years of age. Our mothers worked together at a day care and given we were both the same age and both rather shy, they thought we would hit it off as friends. And we did: in no time I came to consider him the brother I never had.

He had two brothers and a little sister and, at least for awhile, I would often visit him at his house, even sleep over on occasion. The way they lived was quite different than in my own family. All the kids lived in the same room, took showers together. For a time, they had no television, and only had so many toys that they could store in a relatively small chest. Most of all, his parents were insanely religious — and the father was incredibly abusive. I would hide beneath a bed or behind a door, unable to defend my friend and his siblings from their father, who would beat them right in front of me. Most haunting of all was the image of the young sister, a blond and petite girl, face red, wet, and twisted into an expression of absolute terror. It’s haunted me for years.

For years I had buried all memories of Jimmy, and when they emerged in flashbacks back in high school (along with many other, far more bizarre memories), I even questioned if I had made him and those circumstances up.

As it turns out, I had not.

One of the questions that plagued me and, honesty, made me feel guilty and ashamed since remembering it all is why it should effect me so strongly. After all, it didn’t happen to me, so what right do I have being traumatized? It was similar to how I felt regarding how I felt about my relationship with my mother in childhood: I was never physically or sexually abused, so many others have been, so what right did I have to complain about how cold and dismissive my mother was towards me in my youth?

Only when I deduced that I was a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) prone to involuntary empathy did it begin to make sense to me. How I’d described myself as an “emotional sponge” all those years finally had some rational footing.

When I met Angela in my twenties in the fast food joint where we worked, I was quite taken by her, and when I learned of the abuse and mindfuckery inflicted upon her by her parents — really, her fucking family as a whole — I became very emotionally involved. I began having haunting dreams about Jimmy, his family, and most specifically his father around that period and it was all too clear to me what triggered it.

So what triggered this most recent dream?

Well, the evening before the dream was the birthday of my ex-girlfriend, Claire, who I stopped talking to a few years ago. After getting drunk, I started having a text conversation with Angela, who I associate with Claire (which was also revealed in the dreams I had when still working with Angela) as well as Jimmy.

So Claire’s birthday likely triggered me texting Angela, which in turn triggered the dream regarding Jimmy.

In addition, either yesterday or the day before, I considered adding the story of Jimmy to my book on strange, often apparently paranormal experiences. He was associated with at least two strange experiences in my childhood, though we never talked about it and those particular memories, unlike the others regarding him, are nearly impossible to verify as accurate. As it turns out, Angela has also had strange experiences all throughout her life, but like so many, she chooses to ignore them.

In any case, the dream seems to have been exploring why I keep my distance from people and remain afraid of nurturing connections despite my desire to.

Dreams of Freedom & Death.

8/27/22.

At some point in the dream, I suddenly remembered that I owned a motorbike, and I found myself utterly confused that I had somehow forgotten about it.

In any case, I felt excited about riding it again and desperately wanted to do so before summer was out, but I still couldn’t remember what had happened to it. I knew I wouldn’t have sold it, thrown it in the trash, or given it away. Did I forget it in one of the places I’d formerly lived in during the process of moving? Did I leave it at my parents house in the garage, or their barn?

I remember asking the middle child — my younger sister, Eve — though I don’t recall what she said. I think this was when I was at my parents house, where I remember standing by the sliding glass windows, looking out into the front yard (which was strangely full of cars), waiting for the torrential rainfall to stop so I could check the barn.

Around then I started waking up, but fought to stay in the dream so I could find the motorbike — which is an odd thing I’ve done before when striving to find things in dreams. Somewhere in the midst of this fighting, however, my normal, waking consciousness intrudes and it finally hits me: I do not, nor have I ever, owned a motorbike.

Despite that fact, I have dreamed about it occasionally over the years.

A popular interpretation of dreaming about motorcycles and motorbikes is that it signifies our desire to feel freedom, independence, and excitement in life. Given that I had been on an ultimately futile search for the motorbike, particularly given how I’ve been increasingly feeling in my waking life, I suppose that makes a lot of sense.

9/1/22.

As my morning coffee is percolating, my sleepy mind remembers the dream.

I’m standing among one of a few groups of people surrounding a central something, though it’s not initially clear what that something is. I’m engaging in an enduring conversation with at least one person nearby, and while I can’t remember what was discussed, this part of the dream seemed to last an absurd amount of time.

At some point, it’s brought to my attention that we’re all at a funeral. And right before my alarm goes off, as if in a rush to enlighten me before I awaken, someone — a man — informs me that it is, in fact, my funeral.

Assuming this isn’t some form of precognition, popular dream interpretations suggest it could symbolize a recognition that some part of my life or some part of myself has come to an end.

Drugs, Missing Time, False Awakenings, & a Girl (8/19 & 8/23 Dreams).

8/19/22

I had hooked up with a girl. We were sitting in a yard with a crowd of other people, as if we were watching something, like a concert, but if we were, I cannot recall what it was. I remember I wanted to take her somewhere alone so we could make out, but I never did.

I also saw pills in the dream. They were Vicodin, and I’d forgotten I’d had them, but they had all melted together, along with something seemingly plastic. I broke off a piece and took it, and I recall at least once spitting out a peice of plastic.

8/23/22.

I’m temporarily living in a small house while I’m in town visiting, and it’s occupied by other people as well. I’m driving alone along a vacant road during the day when suddenly, everything goes dark. In what seems like an instant, I suddenly come to, only now it’s nighttime, the car is off and I’m no longer in the driver seat — instead, I’m in the back seat right behind it.

Somehow, I convince myself it’s all due to car issues, so I take it to a shop in town within walking distance of the house. When I walk back to the shop later to see if they’d fixed it, they aren’t there, so I walk into the garage and start cleaning out my car. Just as I’m finishing up and preparing to leave, the mechanics come in through the door and I explain the circumstance.

I then walk home, but as soon as I walk in the door I suddenly fear I’ve gone into the wrong one. It looks vacant, for one thing, and the neighboring houses looked the same as the one I’d been living in. So I start walking down the road, but then I see people I know walking towards me from that direction, at least one of which lived with me, and I follow them back to the house. It seemed to be the same one I entered earlier, but it’s no longer vacant of people and possessions. I’m confused.

I woke up, intending to write the dream down, but instead walked out my bedroom door. I didn’t get far, however, until I realized I was dizzy and hallucinating people that weren’t there. It was as if part of me was still in the dream.

In reality, this was a false awakening.

I think it was then that I fell into another dream, which partially took place at work. There I’m working with a new girl that shows all the signs of actually being interested in me. At one point we were looking out the drive through window and she leaned on me, putting her arm around me. While we were unsuccessfully trying to fix one of the machines on front counter, she stands incredibly close to me, and Kelly, the store manager, squeezes between us to tend to the machine herself.

Later, we’re outside, and she seems to be covertly trying to videotape me with her phone. She immediately notices I notice and then moves the phone all around, as if I were just caught in the crossfire. When the camera hits me again, I sort of lean in, showing I don’t mind, and then she puts the camera ridiculously close to my face and starts moving it all around.

At some point in one of these dreams — it may have been before the blackout at the opening of the first dream — I’m gazing at the sun and it seems to be too bright and it keeps getting brighter. I feared that something horrible was happening.