Dream Study
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I keep having this recurring dream where I'm trapped in a dark box, gasping for air. The dream feels like it stretches for an eternity and I cannot breathe. My lungs begin to scream for oxygen and that's the point where I wake up gasping for air, as if I was not actually breathing. After calming myself down, I go back to sleep, only to have the same dream about the small box, gasping for air. It feels like the box is a coffin and that I'm being or am already buried alive.
I asked my roommate to listen to my breathing patterns when I slept, and he said that I never stopped breathing, but that my breathing did become very rapid, as if I was in a panic.
When I was about 21, I had a roommate in college who shared many of the same interests as me. Our experience in the weird started one night in the summertime when she came to wake me up for supper and was calling softly, so as not to scare me awake. I woke up with a start, like she had screamed instead, gasping for breath. I had been dreaming that she and I were in England with our boyfriends (who were actually people we'd never met before) and we had just had a horrific car wreck. I explained it to her as we ate supper.
The next morning she came to me wide-eyed, and asked me details about the dream and the people in it. Her dream matched what I had dreamed. This went on the entire summer, trading off dreams. We jokingly called it our "Saga." I could draw out room layouts that I had dreamed and she could describe it exactly as I'd drawn it. Little details were matching. It was bizarre but fun, in a way.
There was a short break in the dreams when she went to England for a trip. But one day she called me from there and woke me up from the oddest dream I'd had, where I was in this strange place, a store with odd little curios and statuettes. I kept trying to see a clock in my dream but all the clocks were fuzzy or the times on them would change rapidly with no pattern. Turns out, she was in that shop a few moments before calling me. Perhaps the problem with the clocks was the difference in time zone between here and there. Our dreams ended after that summer but echoes of them pop up here and there still today, years later.
I keep having this dream where I get bored with my normal routine, so I make a small change in my schedule. Then, everyone I care about is disappearing, one by one, ending with my mother! I go to a detective to help me find out where they disappeared to, only to discover that there's no record of these people existing! So, the detective doesn't take me seriously, and kicks me out! I have no choice, but to solve the mystery on my own. Before I even begin to solve it, I wake up.
About two to three times a year, I become "trapped" in my dream. I fall into a deep sleep, only to come back into a half-sleep/half-conscious state. In other words, my body is still asleep, but my mind is awake, to the point where I can hear and understand what's going on around me, but cannot open my eyes or wake up. The harder I try to wake up, the more difficult it becomes. It has become less severe and frequent than when I was a young child.
I have learned to better control this over the years. Instead of fighting against it, I just relax myself, and after a moment or two, I am able to wake up. Most times now, I can feel myself falling into this state prior to it occurring, and can wake myself up before actually falling completely to sleep. That usually makes for a long night, as I will doze and wake up several times during the night.
I'm at a city park that normally has a river running through it, but today it is a lake. The sky is blue, but there is a fog all around. I see the effects of a wind (that I cannot feel) blowing atop the water. There is one, randomly shaped patch of water that the wind does not make ripples on, it is just flat and sort of dark, like this spot doesn't reflect the sky. I know somehow that a young girl was just rescued from drowning here just moments before, and there are two maybe three people standing at the grassy hill, springtime colors everywhere. I'm casually explaining that I need to swim out to the weird patch. I explain that once there, you have to let yourself drown and, at the same time, believe in the story. The story being that if you believe, and allow yourself to drown, you are transported to another, strange world, an alternate reality. Once there, you can have adventures, and there is a place in this foreign land where you can drown in faith to make your way back home.
No one believes me, and I feel unsure and groggy myself. I swim out and drowned, terrified, but as faithful as I can be. Next thing I know, one of the onlookers is pulling me to shore, saving me. However, it is now winter and the water is full of chunks of ice and it is nighttime. It gets hazy here, but shortly after, I'm in a sea plane that lowers, and bounces off the odd-shaped magic lake portal, then continues to fly. I wake up confused, and oddly sad that I didn't make it through to another adventurous world. Or maybe I did, I don't know. Weirdest dream ever.
The dream I have had several times is of me running down a path. Down the path ahead I can see a city in the distance. It's night time and I can see large meteor-like fireballs raining down on the cities. I'm so scared that I'm going to be hit by one but at the same time I'm scared that my family is in the city.
When I look up, there is an airplane that is literally falling from the sky on fire, and I have to run to avoid it. People are running and screaming around me and I can't figure out how to get to my family. I start thinking it must be the end of the world, and right after that, I wake up.
I dreamt that I was in a mall and my two-year-old daughter suddenly ran to the escalator, and she ran so fast I couldn't keep up with her. I finally caught up at the seventh floor, and when I sat her down to give her a lecture about not doing that anymore, she got down from the stool where she was sitting and ran to the escalator again. Then she was suddenly on her belly and reaching out for my grandfather (who died almost five years ago). My grandfather was also reaching for her, but he wasn't moving, he was just standing there while the escalator was going down.
I will be dreaming of either a very large spider or many small spiders. The spiders attack me and I become very frightened. I will awaken from my dream, to find that the spiders are in my room. Then I will wake up completely, usually out of my bed and running away from the spider. Then I realize there is no spider, but my heart rate is racing and I still have the feeling of terror inside. It's very weird. It's that moment when I think I have woken up, so my mind seems awake and aware, and I still see the spider that makes these dreams so frightening.
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