I Don't Trust My Dreams

When I was in sixth grade I once had this nightmare that I still remember to this day. I remember it, not because there were monsters or because I thought I was going to die; I remember it because it was the first time I realized that, sometimes, dreams aren't something that get jumbled and lost when you finally wake up from them. Sometimes they leave this eternal effect upon you that no matter how many dreams or nightmares you have since, you will always remember that specific one.

The dream I remember wasn't even that frightening in retrospect; I have since had many different degrees of nightmares since, all more vivid and heart-pounding than the previous. In fact, what made the dream stick in my mind for so long was the fact that everything up to that specific REM cycle and everything afterwards were so impacting. It wasn't a strange night by any account; my bedtime was earlier than my friends' bedtimes - it would be 8:30 PM until I was in seventh grade, in which case I was allowed one more hour - and I went to lay down in bed when, like most summer nights, it felt like it was still too light out.

I shared a room with my younger brother, Jordan, who complained about the bedtime as much as I did, but he was always the first one asleep, his head hitting the pillow as his snores hit my ears. I didn't expect much from him, though, since he was only in fourth grade. Regardless of how excited he was for whatever event would be happening the following day, Jordan was always passed out five minutes after having gone to bed. I didn't mind it because it meant I could lay on the top bunk with my headphones over my ears and listen to whatever Elvis Presley CD my Granny had gotten me at that time.

That night, though, I didn't have anymore energized batteries to play my walkman, so I had to settle for leaving the window open to listen to the crickets and other bugs that I couldn't - and still can't, unfortunately - put a name to. Regardless, I fell asleep staring up at a night sky that hadn't yet turned to reveal the stars in all of their unknown splendor.

But I don't remember falling sleep.

What I remember, is laying there, finally watching the oranges and violets of the sky turning to navy blue, then black as the stars pooled out across the sky, like a giant game of billiards that the gods were still playing, thousands of years later. I tried to count them as a means of forcing myself to fall asleep when I heard a snap of twigs outside of the window to my right, the one my bed was pressed up against. I figured it was an animal - I had seen a coyote only a few nights before while talking on the phone with my best friend - and I continued counting, though I just did it with more concentration on listening for the animals as well.

Then, for some reason, I remember looking to my right, having had some sensation that I should have glanced harder earlier, and I saw what had been moving int he night.

A man stared back at me with an eerie smile scrawled across his slender face, and for some reason I always imagine he looked mid-forties, with a bald head and out-dated clothing, even for the early 2000's standards. I don't know if this is what i actually remember, or what I believe a creepy man would look like walking around in the dead of night outside a child's window.

The man, seeing my wide eyes and frightened look, put one finger up to his lips and shushed me, and somehow it worked. I tried to scream, but nothing came but a whimper, like I had no air left in my little lungs, and all of a sudden I was awake.

Awake? But I just was...Oh...it was a nightmare.

See, any idiot with an internet connection and Google at their fingertips would probably call it a mild form of sleep paralysis, or just a simple nightmare, but it was more than that for me. Even at whatever age I was at that time - I studied English, not math; numbers aren't my strong suit - I realized dreams aren't these metaphorical shindigs where I either remembered them in bits or pieces or I didn't at all; I realized dreams could literally grab hold of some part of me and squeeze until I something was left with me.

Flash forward nine years, and I'm at what is supposed to be the height of my life so far. I was twenty-one, in love, and engaged to this man that, in all honesty, was what I would describe as a soul mate. I don't believe in soul mates, but that's another tale for another day. All you need to know is that I was in love and I was happy, or at least, I thought I was happy. I had everything at my fingertips: the perfect guy who, even though he was drop-dead gorgeous and could have any other likewise woman, he chose me, a chubby nerd with bad eyes and a bad habit of fucking up good relationships; I had a a year to go for my degree in English; and I was doing well in school, surrounded by friends and family that seemed to be relishing in my strange gust of good luck and peace of mind.

Whatever happened to me year and years ago when I was a lost kid - dad was a man with a past he hid with a wife I hated, and my mother was a drug addict - wouldn't let go of me as an adult. Remember how I said I fucked up every relationship I ever had? Yeah, well...Surprise. Like Britney Spears said, "Oops, I did it again."

See, I have this really bad habit of liking anybody that gives me an ounce of attention. It's not that I'm an attention whore, because I'm actually very introverted; it's just that I never got it growing up as the middle kid of seven unrelated siblings and the daughter of either an absent father or absent father depending on which few years we were talking about, and...whatever. Same excuses over and over again. Either way, this guy gave me undivided attention that even my own fiance seemed to be lacking as of recently. The guy, Chris, he's amazing; when I was bored, homework was finished, and Jacob - the fiance - was either working or studying, Chris would say, "Hey, let's go to Eagle Point Park since you said you have never been there," and I would let Jacob know and I would go. Chris would give me new music, I would help him with our homework, and on the weekends we partied.

(Look, Jacob and I have a long history, and if you want the full details of that demise, it would take another blog entry, so if you do, cool, let me know, but that's another tale for another day.)

So I made a dumb mistake, or maybe I made a good one, I have no clue. Sometimes I think the former, and most days I believe the latter; either way, I kissed Chris, Jacob has been out of the picture since, and I now write from mine and Chris's bedroom that we share in his mother's house until we have money saved for an apartment, hopefully soon.

Remember what I said about my realizations about dreams? About how they take a hold eventually?

I haven't slept one night without dreaming of Jacob, and it's been almost two years (May 4th will be exactly two years since I kissed Chris). I see his face when I close my eyelids, and sometimes I wake up so unsure of what emotionally happened in my dreams that I just don't move or talk, or do anything but lay there.

And sometimes, I feel like I did something bad in those dreams.

I learned when I was in high school and miserable at home how to manipulate my dreams, how to take control of their situations and plots and make them my own. Lucid dreaming is what i believe it's called. Anyways, I could do things in my dreams that were not just being played out in front of me anymore. Now I was the one calling the shots, and I wasn't going to let some creepy dude frighten me or some stars blind me to what was going on around me.

When we first split, Jacob and I tried to stay friends, because we really were all the other had when it came to an emotional crutch. At first the dreams had nothing to do with us, but with the years before we were together and were just friends. Some of them I chose to approach him, and we did nothing; we remained friends. From these I woke up and wondered if I really had a say in them at all. But then Jacob and I stopped talking and he grew angrier at me and I grew more withdrawn from our old friends, and probably angrier with myself as well, and the dreams changed.

I remember one where I got on my hands and knees and I begged for him to just look at me, to see me for the Amanda he had and not some rabid dog that disgusted him. He shook his head and told me I was less than that imagery portrayed, and that he never loved me. I woke up grinding my teeth and clenching my fists and Chris knew what emotional turmoil was taking over me, so he would just hold me and that would be that.

Then Jacob and I tried to work things out again, to be less than friends but more than just strangers, and when he refused to tell people I was his ex-fiance and acted like our relationship was something simple, something naive, I wondered if my dreams had ever been dreams at all. But then they shifted. At nights, I now found myself being loved back by him; in most dreams I was actively loving him back as well, kissing lips I knew all too well, smelling skin that made me yearn for the days we would lie around naked, just talking about the future...

I don't know if I ever really stopped loving him, but my dreams obviously never caught up. In my dreams, I save him from deaths, from bad relationships, and from himself, and in the end I am back with him. When I wake up, I feel like I am doing to Chris what I did to Jacob all over again, and I don't want to anymore.

I...I don't really know where this was going, but I know I don't trust my dreams to know what is reality anymore. Sometimes I am afraid to let my mind fully grasp that Jacob has moved on, and how he moved states away to be with a woman I called my friend, who was supposed to be my bridesmaid, because I am scared to know what i want to do to her while I sleep, too.
April 12th, 2015 at 12:22am