Days Without Incident: Ten

Trigger warning: violent PTSD dream recolations 

So I haven’t written in a few days. Let’s talk about it. 

Do you ever have a day where it feels like everything you take in around you just kind of leaks out of you? All of the energy, the sounds, the bright lights; they all feel like they’re vibrating at too high a speed to grasp onto. Do you sleep through those days? Do you have the time to? 

I haven’t had the time to. While my life continues to slide aimlessly along this unpredictable frozen lake, I’m flailing my arms wildly trying to hold onto any sense of normalcy. I’m applying to jobs on a daily basis. I’m live streaming my crochet projects. I try to keep my blog and website up to date. And, I’m just trying to maintain a baseline of tranquility so my thoughts still feel like my own. 

Amidst my journey to peace, the burdens of my reality still desperately cling to me. My mother calls a few times a day, the rejection emails continue to stack up, and the exhaustion prevails. I don’t typically dream. Most nights are silent and quick. Recently, I’ve been struggling with something new: nightmares. Seemingly unrelated, but laced with fear, dread, shame, and violence. 

There are a few baseline facts that you should know about me before we dive into dream psychology and dream motifs. I never dream. I know I already said that, but I mean never ever. Maybe once a year. I guess it would also help to mention that I confronted my mom two days ago concerning some of the reasons I don’t wish to speak with her. Obviously nothing I said affected her that much because she still tries to call every day.

A few weeks ago, I had a dream that I was babysitting three infants. I fell asleep outside on the lawn, only to wake up with three crushed babies, one of which I tried to give CPR only to break their tiny bones and shock myself awake. A few days ago I had a dream where my mom was chasing us around with a knife in my old home. We won’t dwell on that one too much, pretty self explanatory if you know me. Last night, I had a dream that the whole world was destroyed by a giant tornado. We were all put into submarines, and I decided to sneak my cat in. We hid away in a dark room for three weeks. He slowly died inside of the dark room until his head eventually rolled off, I tried to—you guessed it—give him CPR, and then I woke up in a panic. Before you ask yourself “what’s with all the CPR on dead stuff?” I would like to ask you the same question. Because I have no fucking idea.

A writer once defined nightmares as “the shock therapy nature uses on us when we are too unaware of some psychological danger.” It’s an alarm bell reminding us to face something that’s been neglected. Carl Jung is one of the most well known dream psychologists. He believed that nightmares could be interpreted. By combining our personal unconscious—or our repressed memories—and our “complexes”—or emotionally charged groups of positive or negative ideas or images—our subconscious is able to construct our dreams like a movie directors would (Source: https://eternalisedofficial.com/2023/04/27/the-psychology-of-nightmares/#:~:text=Nightmares%20are%20the%20shock%20therapy,through%20much%2Dneeded%20emotional%20release.).

Dreams are not created with conscious intent. It can’t be used as a main source for insight into the subconscious, however, interpreting them can be useful in dealing with whatever stressor is causing the nightmare in the first place. They can take place for a number of reasons including stress, anxiety, irregular sleep, medications, and mental health disorders to name a few (Source: https://hms.harvard.edu/news-events/publications-archive/brain/nightmares-brain). Typical dream motifs that have been reported include falling down, showing up late or unprepared for a presentation or an exam, missing a flight or forgetting about one’s luggage, going about with insufficient clothing, losing one’s teeth, feeling trapped, unable to move or make any noise, injury or illness, encountering frightening monsters or natural disasters, etc. 

I like reading the workings of dream psychologists because they want to expose that there is profound darkness inside of everyone. I can relate to that. Poets, musicians, painters, and other artists have tried for centuries to accurately depict nightmares. In the repressed realms of our minds lies the truth about humanity: we’re all hurting a little underneath.