It always starts the same way.
My old family home, in California, in the dream sense of it both is and is not exactly the same home I grew up in. I’m always paired up with some childhood friend or another, always looking for a member of my family gone missing.
The scene changes, shifts and morphs from my childhood home (either interior or exterior) to the very different façade of either an impossibly large department store (think a Wal-Mart the size of an airplane hanger), or a strange amalgam of every single mall I have ever visited in my life. Suddenly, though, the mood and indeed “plot” of the scenario shifts as well. While gone is the thread of trying to track down a lost family member, replaced instead with being chased through a monument to consumerism by an unknown force, the very intense feeling of desperation remains. Where once I was hunting down a lost loved one, now I was being hunted by something sinister and unknown.
Old friend is no longer beside me, but instead frustratingly far either ahead of behind me, while I struggle to outpace whatever unseen terror follows close at my heels. Added to the heightened sense of dread and panic, is the fact that movement within this twisted realm is also very different. Rather than being able to simply outrun my stalker, I instead can only move by way of swimming through the air. Common strokes have very little effect on my propulsion, so I must rely on the thrust granted by pushing myself violently off of whatever surface I can get my feet on to.
It always ends differently.
Sometimes I win. I make it out of whatever mirror horrorverse version of Target I find myself in, air swimming my way to safety and prosperity elsewhere.
Sometimes I lose. Whatever unseen horror lurks behind me catches some tragic combination of myself, my dear friend, or both of us.
In either ending, either resolution to this imaginary problem, I awake under less than ideal circumstances. When I win, I wake up feeling exhausted and confused. When I lose, I jerk awake in the middle of a full blown panic attack and spend as many as thirty minutes calming myself down. Either way, I’m drenched with sweat and usually end up crying for a good long while until I catch my breath.
I realize fully that there are several recognizable and telling signs mixed into this terrible dream I’ve been having lately. Childhood home, the presence of an old friend I haven’t seen in far too long, the searching for a loved one, the being chased, not being able to run normally. I’ve investigated the possible meanings of all of these things individually, but when strung together they make no sense to me.
Is there anyone else out there who might be better versed in “dream speak” who can help translate what these dreams are trying to tell me? I’m open to explanations from backgrounds in both science and spirituality. I just feel like, be it the spirits beyond or just my own subconscious, someone is trying to tell me something and I should probably try to listen.
Ramblings and Musings 