guff

Why My Dreams Suck (Now)

I can remember some seriously loopy dreams from when I was young. My unconscious certainly played around with many of the standard Jungian plot twists, such as flying, or invincibility, or having sex in weird places. Thanks to the psychological effect growing up in the tornado waistcoat of the Midwestern US, I had to deal with twisters roaring down on our house at least once a month (fortunately it was only in my sleep). And I had my share of the more universal fears take shape in my nightmares, like losing a loved one, or enduring a nuclear attack, or discovering oneself naked in school. That last one never bothered me as much as it does others. But as I said, more than a few of my dreams took routes somewhat further off the beaten path.

A recurring one involved having my family abducted by extraterrestrials, and my furtive attempts to reach them on the alien spacecraft. The story line changed slightly for each rendering, so in one only my parents were taken, in another I was somehow aided by law-enforcement officials. The only constant feature throughout these serially replayed dreams is how they’d slowly work towards but never reach a successful movie-ish conclusion, where I, the Hero, get to rescue my kidnapped relations, escape from the craft, and narrowly avoid being caught in it’s destruction — which I’d have been responsible for, though there’s no exposition on how I came by explosives. This series of dreams is less evidence my household experienced visitations of a nature Whitley Strieber drums on about, and more a release of childhood angst strained through an overdose on Hollywood SciFi Movies.

There are other, much stranger ones, some so disjointed and disconnected from any reality on Earth or in my head they evade any method of description. The complication in this for me is not that I experienced such dreams, but that I’ve lost the ability somewhere along the way to adulthood to generate these unusual nighttime narratives (with or without a trailable plot).

Grownup dreams can be deep, interesting, scenic, electric, all-consuming, generously pornographic, and occasionally worthy of contemplation. But the issues I deal with and the adventures I end up on have become far too grounded on the boring side of the reality marker. I’m not sought after to battle aliens or required to run from monsters. Instead I stumble across challenges not much larger than a typical work ethic or critical family matter. Locations may sometimes be unique or previously unknown to me, long dead relatives can return to life and start walking and talking with unusual vigor, and my hairline may magically revert to a pre-deforested state; but I no longer wake from a dream and find myself saying in complete bemusement “what in Hell was that all about?” I might worry over the meaning behind some nonsensical event, or that my ex-wife was living with me (never sure if this represents a nightmare, or something altogether else), but the fantastical and truly weird have vacated my sleeping self. I can think it, but I don’t desire to dream it, and I miss that.

However, there is one good thing about my dreams now: I don’t wake up from the bad ones having pissed my pants. Strange how our adult fears seem that scary only while we’re awake.