Requiem for a Mindfuck
I am always cold, my feet get so cold they hurt, and then I can't sleep. So I over-dress and over-blanket myself (I've been known to wear my ugg boots to bed), all in an effort to get warm. It works, but then I get so hot during the night that then I have bizarrely vivid dreams. Like, all the time. I started keeping a dream journal, but it got too overwhelming reading back over it (much like this blog, ha).
There are some dreams though, that have stayed with me far longer than is useful for my mental state. Of course there are the childhood nightmares. You know, like the one where the alien comes through your window so many times in a row, that you have to swap bedrooms with your sister to try and escape the fear. Or the one where your next door neighbours house blows up in such a horrifying explosion that it causes you to have insomnia for longer than you care to admit No? Just me?
Other dreams have stayed with me for sheer ridiculousness. An alarming number feature me meeting Taylor Swift at a meet and great after a concert. The sex dreams are remembered, for obvious reasons - the weirder the partner, the better. Gross colleagues, close friends and church pastors, feature highly. There's one dream where I spent hours chasing beagles named after the twelve reindeers that pops into my head quite frequently. Ridiculous.
There are two specific dreams that are the most vivid in my mind of all of them. Both terrifying mindfuck's.
The first is an obvious trick my brain played on its self, taking a real life situation and interpreting it best it could. I fell asleep, for a cheeky afternoon nap when I was meant to be studying for the HSC. Maybe, the dream was my punishment. I was comfy on my bed, staring at the ceiling with my left arm above my head. In the dream, I woke up and my arm was missing after a horrific accident. xThe dream was terrifying, and I awoke in panic. I felt all down the side of my body, and my arm wasn't there! Heart racing, I slowly felt further and further up my left side, panicking more and more that my arm was actually gone. My arm had gone numb during my nap, so I couldn't feel where it was. Eventually, I found my arm and nearly cried with relief. I've never had such an adrenaline rush after a dream!
Some say that dreams are meant to mean something, tell you things about yourself that you didn't realise consciously. I sincerely hope that's not true. The worst dream I've ever had was intense, vivid, and still haunts me to this day. What if it was real? It felt real. Worst of all, I have no way of knowing if it was real.
In this dream, I was mentally disabled, intellectually disabled, or somehow slow. It wasn't specified what it was, but I was not all there. I was at work, and suddenly cognisant of the fact. I was at my desk with a colleague, having just completed a task. The colleague was condescendingly telling me how well I had done, in a "pats you on the head", kind of way. It dawned on me slowly, I wasn't the intelligent, independent woman I thought I was. I was being humoured, told how special and wonderful I was for doing exceptionally simple items. My job was a diversity quota. My housemate was actually a carer. My friends were just charity workers. My life was something totally different to what I thought it was.
The worst part of the dream though was that it was SO real. Everything was as crystal clear as it is day to day. Nothing was different, except that I wasn't who I thought I was. And once I woke up, I couldn't shake the feeling. What if that was a break through in whatever mental capacity I actually have? What if that is the life I'm living and I'm just too mentally impaired to realise it? The ultimate mindfuck, playing to my biggest fear - that I'm not as smart or successful as I think I am.
There are some dreams though, that have stayed with me far longer than is useful for my mental state. Of course there are the childhood nightmares. You know, like the one where the alien comes through your window so many times in a row, that you have to swap bedrooms with your sister to try and escape the fear. Or the one where your next door neighbours house blows up in such a horrifying explosion that it causes you to have insomnia for longer than you care to admit No? Just me?
Other dreams have stayed with me for sheer ridiculousness. An alarming number feature me meeting Taylor Swift at a meet and great after a concert. The sex dreams are remembered, for obvious reasons - the weirder the partner, the better. Gross colleagues, close friends and church pastors, feature highly. There's one dream where I spent hours chasing beagles named after the twelve reindeers that pops into my head quite frequently. Ridiculous.
There are two specific dreams that are the most vivid in my mind of all of them. Both terrifying mindfuck's.
The first is an obvious trick my brain played on its self, taking a real life situation and interpreting it best it could. I fell asleep, for a cheeky afternoon nap when I was meant to be studying for the HSC. Maybe, the dream was my punishment. I was comfy on my bed, staring at the ceiling with my left arm above my head. In the dream, I woke up and my arm was missing after a horrific accident. xThe dream was terrifying, and I awoke in panic. I felt all down the side of my body, and my arm wasn't there! Heart racing, I slowly felt further and further up my left side, panicking more and more that my arm was actually gone. My arm had gone numb during my nap, so I couldn't feel where it was. Eventually, I found my arm and nearly cried with relief. I've never had such an adrenaline rush after a dream!
Some say that dreams are meant to mean something, tell you things about yourself that you didn't realise consciously. I sincerely hope that's not true. The worst dream I've ever had was intense, vivid, and still haunts me to this day. What if it was real? It felt real. Worst of all, I have no way of knowing if it was real.
In this dream, I was mentally disabled, intellectually disabled, or somehow slow. It wasn't specified what it was, but I was not all there. I was at work, and suddenly cognisant of the fact. I was at my desk with a colleague, having just completed a task. The colleague was condescendingly telling me how well I had done, in a "pats you on the head", kind of way. It dawned on me slowly, I wasn't the intelligent, independent woman I thought I was. I was being humoured, told how special and wonderful I was for doing exceptionally simple items. My job was a diversity quota. My housemate was actually a carer. My friends were just charity workers. My life was something totally different to what I thought it was.
The worst part of the dream though was that it was SO real. Everything was as crystal clear as it is day to day. Nothing was different, except that I wasn't who I thought I was. And once I woke up, I couldn't shake the feeling. What if that was a break through in whatever mental capacity I actually have? What if that is the life I'm living and I'm just too mentally impaired to realise it? The ultimate mindfuck, playing to my biggest fear - that I'm not as smart or successful as I think I am.
Comments
Post a Comment