Dreams and Nightmares

I don't know much about dreams or what they mean but I do know that I have some weird dreams and it's not sometimes; it's all the time. I know that lucid dreams are dreams that you have when you know that you are dreaming, kind of aware of what's going on. Basically I am ignorant to anything else about dreams. But my problem is I am an incurable insomniac, and have been ever since I can remember. I have been through therapy after therapy sessions about this and they always have the same outcome. Give me some advice, some prescription and I leave. Nothing ever changes and I am never cured, but that is not what this hub is about. This hub is about the strange dreams that I have when I do fall asleep and how they scare the living daylights out of me.

One of the many dreams that I have whenever I do fall asleep is of myself falling. I have a general fear of heights, and maybe that is why I dream this but there has to be more of a deeper rooted meaning to this dream. Once I dreamed that I was on top of the Empire State Building, at the very tip trying to hold on. My palms get sweaty just thinking about this dream because I remember the fear I felt in my dream of trying to hold on. I have heard people say that if you see yourself fall in your dream that you will die when you hit the ground. I don't believe this because I have hit the ground on more than one occasion. But mostly it is just trying to hold on. The fear of falling is just so overwhelming to me.

I saw a Twilight Zone episode one time of a man who wouldn't fall asleep because he felt that he would die if he did. I kind of feel like he does because I do not want to dream anymore, and that is why I hate to fall asleep. If I fall asleep I want to be so totally knocked out that I don't even want to think or dream about anything. But that never happens to me. No matter how tired I am or what sleeping pill I take, I always fall asleep and I always have weird dreams, the same weird dreams.

There is another dream I have and it is of me flying. Sometimes its a great flying dream where I can see myself flying over the ocean, and beautiful landscapes, and I am having a great time. But most of the time it is of me flying and being scared to death of where I am going. In my dream I cannot distinguish if I am falling or flying. I have had this dream since I was a kid and I always wake up shaken up by it. I wish I knew what it meant.

The worst dream that I have ever had, I guess you could call it a nightmare; is one that I still have. I have had this dream for over 23 years now, not everynight but at least every few weeks and it haunts me still.

When I was pregnant with my daughter who happens to be 23, I started having this dream about her. I was about 8 months pregnant when I had the dream and I knew by then that it was a girl. My dream was of me going into labor, going to the hospital, screaming in pain. I open my eyes to a huge light above me and I can hear the doctors telling me to push. My daughter is then born and they say that she is dead. I don't get to see her or touch her or hold her, just like that she is gone, and I wake up. That is the dream and I still have it to this day. My daughter is grown and healthy, but I still have this dream. Maybe it is that my daughter is elusive and doesn't communicate with me well. I don't know, but I always wake up to feel the need to talk to her, to hold her, and tell her how much I love her. I said she is elusive because ever since she was little, I could not hold onto her long enough ever, she was always ready to go somewhere, out the door to play, later on as she got older she was always out with her friends. She always pulls away first when I hug her, I don't know, maybe I am reading too much into this. Now she is at Univeristy and majoring in English and I don't get to see her very much. Maybe I just miss her too much, but why does that dream follow me around so much? Why for 23 years and counting? I guess it is a question that doesn't have an answer.

By now after a few of my hubs people out there must be thinking that I am this weird crazy person that has had some shit happen to them, and for the most part that is true, but aside from my bad experiences and hard roads the ones that I have taken have been lovely. And I make beautiful babies.

 Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

By Langston Hughes