There’s an old song that goes “Dream, when you’re feeling blue….Dream, that’s the thing to do…”
Oh, yeah?
I don’t know about you, but my dreams tend to fall into three categories – variations on the previous day, complete nonsense, or a lovely flickering old-time movie replaying all the stupid or thoughtless or clumsy or cringe-worthy moments of my life, of which there is a large selection.
And those are the relatively GOOD dreams.
Then there are nightmares. These also fall into categories. There’s the ‘back-to-school’ dream where I’m wandering hallways that remind me vaguely of my old high school, trying to find the right classroom and worrying about the final exam because I’ve skipped classes all semester.
There’s the road-sliding-out-from-under-me dream, where the road is literally sliding out from under me. This dream became more intense once I moved to North Carolina and discovered slippery red North Carolina mud.
There’s the HGTV dream, where my family has moved to a new house and, at first glance, it seems pretty great. Lots of large rooms. Maybe a wonderful view of the ocean. And then I begin to notice the weird stuff – a labyrinthine layout, low ceilings, a weird creepy basement, a roomful of antique furniture with secretive hidden storage spaces. Horrible steep staircases. A roomful of leftover babies from the previous owners.
And my all-time favorites, the incredibly loud, incredibly angry dreams. Where something has happened that makes me so outraged, so furious, that I’m SCREAMING at whoever caused it. And the ‘something’ is always something that would never happen in real life. Like my younger sister insisting on wearing my wedding dress to her prom. Or finding out that my husband has seven other wives. (I don’t think that would happen – he finds one wife quite troublesome enough.) Last night I had a dream where I had built a huge LEGO town, with dozens of buildings, streets, cars, the whole LEGO catalog basically, and someone had come in and swept all the bricks to the floor, mixing them up impossibly and being completely nonchalant about the whole thing.
I mean seriously, that’s a nightmare! I have LEGO! I know!!!
Now, why do we have nightmares like that? Are we stressed out? Are we uptight? Have we watched too much Netflix?
I dunno. Honestly, I think it’s just my body trying to tell me to wake up and go to the bathroom. (Don’t get me started on bathroom dreams.) But I wanna say, “Body! Don’t be so dramatic! A little tap on the bladder would do it! I got through four pregnancies that way!”
I wake up exhausted from these dreams. And sometimes still a little angry at whoever was in the dream. (Trust me, my husband knows this.)
Why can’t I have dreams that are more like novels? You know where you stand with a good novel. Obviously, not a thriller, but something cozy, like Rosamunde Pilcher or C.A. Belmond, or Elizabeth Berg (but not her sad ones). And if you get to a part of the book you don’t like, then you close the book. You’re not stuck forever, lost in the corridors of Mr Rochester’s mansion, or wandering through the smoldering ruins of Twelve Oaks.
A little is all I ask. A few hours of decent sleep. For me AND my husband.
Then again, if I had slept well last night, I might have nothing to write about today. OH, how I suffer for my art!!!!
Well, if you enjoyed reading this, maybe give a try to some of my books. Go here – https://www.carolynsteeleagosta.com – and buy one (or two). Read it. Post a review. Trust me, you’ll sleep like a baby afterward.
Would I lie to you?