I am so tired today.
Maj had difficulty sleeping last night, and ended up in bed with us.
Big giant glowing eyes staring wakefully at me every time I opened my own eyes.
So I stayed awake, petted her hair, and stared into the darkness with her. For several hours. Or at least, I thought I did.
But throughout the day today?
I have been having these sudden flashes of what feel like memory but are in fact dream images. Weirdly real, these images . . . like a sudden recalling of something not quite finished to which I will need to attend. Not just a memory, either . . . more like a flooding of the senses.
A transporting to something that is not real, but which demands my attention as though I am going to walk through the next door and into this other reality.
Weird.
So my disrupted sleep of last night has led to a disrupted day.
And because this is my blog and you cannot stop me?
I am going to share one of these dream images with you.
And although I am going to tell the story as a story . . . the flashes I have had all day are not of pieces of this story but of the whole thing. You know how the entirety of a dream experience can descend upon you and fill you in an instant?
Yeah, like that.
The elevator is dark and warm and humid and smells of orange peels and dishwashing soap. I am alone and I have pushed all of the buttons for all of the floors, and so the trip up to the 27th floor is very slow. I stand in the middle of the elevator, my feet firmly planted.
At every floor, the doors slide open. At every floor that is not my destination, cooler air and the taste of ocean salt wafts into the elevator. A shadowy gray-green light illuminates all of the floors that are not my destination.
At every floor the doors close. The cool air, the salty taste, and the gray-green light are gone as if they never were.
I ascend another floor. The warm orange air is slippery with the sense of soap, and I run my hand along a wall of my small moving room. The walls are smooth and dry, but as my hand comes away . . . bubbles float into the elevator. Soapy bubbles that pop and leave small gaps in the warm orange humidity.
Small clean spaces.
And then the doors slide open on the cool and the salt and the gray-green light.
And close.
Sliding doors and sliding hands.
Bubbles.
All the way to the 27th floor.
The doors open. The light is brighter here, a hard blue glow that pulses and buzzes as I step from the elevator into a hallway.
I am happy and confident. I am going to meet someone who understands me. Someone I trust, to whom I am going to share my last secrets. Not a friend, but a therapist of some sort. Someone whose job it is to hear me, but in whom I have come to place great trust.
A woman.
I swing open the heavy door into her office, and I know immediately that something is wrong. She is angry with me. Furious with me.
There is so much emotion in the air that my breath is choked, and my throat constricts to force the air I require down into my lungs.
Hostile thick air.
I move forward to offer the woman reassurances, to calm her.
But she is insane.
She is ripping at pages of a book that rests on the desk before her. Ripping out the pages and stuffing them into her mouth, chewing them as she screams incoherently.
All of her features are distorted by rage, and I look closely to find the woman I know. She is discernible, but barely. Blurred and hazed as though through a lens of her own emotion.
A lens through which I am forced to view.
I know she believes I have betrayed her somehow. I further know that someone close to me has lied to her. Someone has betrayed me.
Someone to whom this woman should not have been speaking, and so I have been doubly betrayed.
I am terrified, but I do not leave.
I take a seat in the chair in which I am accustomed to sitting when I visit this room, and I stare fixedly past her rage and frenzy through the glass walls. Try to focus on the view of the city from so high above.
A beautiful and silent city.
A world away.
I am alone with this incoherent madwoman who is eating the pages of the book.
And then there are three of us in the room.
A man.
Her husband.
He is calm, and I turn to him to explain. To ask for assistance.
And then, in the way of dreams . . . time shifts and I am on the floor, pressed against the glass of the office walls. Staring down onto the city below.
A world away.
And I am aware of blows, of kicks, of blood.
Pain.
My vision is obscured by blood.
Bones break. I feel them break, feel the splinters and shards of bone move explosively through my softer parts. More blood.
The woman stands over me, still eating the pages of the book. Still screaming.
The man is killing me.
I am dying.
And then there is the scent of oranges and dishwashing soap.
I reach a hand to caress the red-streaked glass before me.
Bubbles.
Bubbles that pop and leave behind small clean spaces.
Into which I cannot fit.
Wow
I’m going to try very hard to sleep tonight. Without elevators. Or a mad madwoman.
Right?
And this was not the only dream image that has been filling my senses today.
What the fuck?
Well, I was going to be the first comment, so very excited about that, I commented before I even read the post. And the “Renee” beat me to it. Thanks Renee. :) hehe! Anyone, stop laughing and let me read this post that sounds scary.
OK, you are making me giggle.
Go back and read the post.
Snort!
Intense!
What’s weird?
Is that I know it’s a dream, but I have no memory of it as a dream.
It feels like it happened.
Sigh.
That comment did not fit in this post. I can not tell you how sorry i am for you to be experiencing such horrible things. Hopefully tonight will be peaceful.
Silly you.
Love you.
Last night felt peaceful, that’s what’s so weird.
Today was all fucked up.
But last night felt peaceful.
It’s fun what the lack of proper sleep does to the mind!
An odd experience altogether.
I thought I was awake.
But I was not.
I have no memory of dreaming.
But today I have memories that can only be dreams.
So yes . . . the mind is a fun place indeed.
Snort!
Absolutely wow.
And, from one sleep deprived mama to another, “sweet dreams” tonight Kris!
Seriously, take some Benedryl or something. ;P
Won’t be taking Benadryl.
Maj and I are both tired today.
I am sure I will sleep fine.
But yikes.
And thank you.
Damn. That’s some heavy shit.
I know those kinds of dreams. The dreams that don’t feel like dreams, but surge into your life (usually at inappropriate times for me) and fuck me all up with emotion and bewilderment.
Crazy, crazy, stuff.
I have to say, I’m impressed with how well you are able to lay that dream out. Normally, I can coherently explain those types of dreams, as things are shifting and I end up sounding crazy when I try to explain them to someone else.
Exactly . . . this dream (and other weird dream images) have been pressing into my consciousness all day.
Surge is a good word.
And because this dream kept surging into my mind? I had time to look at it and get a sense of it in its entirety. And so what I tried to do here was to reproduce the feeling of the dream without some of the details that would have taken the reader astray from the overall feeling of the dream.
For me?
I have captured what I wanted to capture.
I’m delighted that you can see it.
Thank you.
Trippy.
Lucid dreaming at a whole freaky level.
A lucid dream is one in which you aware during the dream that you are dreaming.
And so what is a dream called that feels like it was never a dream, but reality instead?
Impossible reality.
But reality.
That was some dream.
It’s one of the odder, disquieting things in my post-parenthood life that I no longer remember my dreams.
In order to remember dreams, I have found that I need a moment upon awakening to remain with one foot in each world, and that no longer happens. I get no half dreamy state in which to recall and mull. I wake up leaping into action either to wake a child or because a child has awakened, and then it’s all about the doing. Sigh.
Even when they are deeply disturbing like yours was, I miss my dreams.
Really?
I remember many many dreams . . . most are not as intense as this dream was. But I remember many dreams.
Although?
I do not leap into action in the morning. I set my alarm so that I have time to NOT get up before it is time to get up. Maybe my love of that halfway state is why I remember so many of my dreams.
Set your alarm a few minutes early and then don’t get out of bed. Lie there and try to get back to sleep. Linger in that hazy half-place.
See if dream images come to you.
I would hate to lose access to my dream-life.
I would hate that.
But from the time before, when I was remembering my dream? I have some dreams whose images and experiences are as crystal clear as my memories of real events. There are some places I have visited in my dreams… special places that when I woke up I was filled with flashbacks of them for days. Often beautiful, sometimes terrifying, always powerful.
These special dreams, these special dream places? They are as real to me as the places my body has visited in my life. Because really, once something is memory, what’s the difference between a dream and “reality” anyway?
You are exactly right.
A memory is a memory . . . whether it is real or dreamed.
And you need to figure out how to get access to your dreams again.
Seriously, lady.
I hate those dreams. I get them when I wake up too early to get up & decide I have time to sleep a little longer.
Disturbing annoying dreams that make me feel off balance all day. Dreams where people are nasty or mean to me for no reason.
Though so far I only get chased with guns. Having someone beat me up in a dream does not sound pleasant at all.
If I have a bad dream tonight involving elevators & weird women eating paper I’m coming back tomorrow to complain.
:)
Yes . . . and if you come back to complain?
I will be more than happy to give you your money back.
Wait.
Hmmmm.
I read a book recently called “The Magicians,” that had a disturbing chewing image. Gives the book chewing an extra creepy dimension.
I remember many of my dreams.
I wish I flew in my dreams.
I never do.
Making a note to avoid that book for a while.
I never fly in my dreams.
I fall.
That’s like flying, right?
Downward flying.
All speedy and fabulous.
For a bit.
I am one of those people who have had lots of flying dreams, especially in my childhood.
They were such a mixed blessing. The feeling of flying was almost always wonderful and amazing. Sometimes it would be real soaring, outdoors zooming and swooping, other times it would be this kind of funny gravity-loss floating/bobbing around the ceiling like a human helium balloon.
Problem was, nearly always? What would trigger the flying was some very dangerous thing/person that I needed to escape. So there would often be chasing involved.
But still, the swoosh was glorious.
Hmmmph.
There is often danger in my dreams.
But there is never flying.
I am all jealous and annoyed.
I want swoosh.
holy craptasitcalness, batman! What did you smoke? I hope you find yourself a good night’s sleep, and SOON. Let’s hope there aren’t any sequels!
I have some pretty crazy dreams, but mine are either all about my demise, or are a hilarious acid trip (like riding giraffes and holding bonfires to burn Li’l Wayne CDs.)
Oh, and, if you happen or do not happen to be interested, I have a new blog. :)
Me?
I smoke nothing.
And I find that there is usually more to this sort of dream that meets the eye.
Pretty sure.
As for your new blog?
Send me a link.
Make me come.
Dreams can be horrifying, can’t they? Of course the beauty of dreams is that we wake up, mostly fine…
Mostly . . .
How beautifully terrifying. Even your nightmares appeal to me in a strange twisted way.
I love you.
Thank you.