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Monday, October 23, 2006

In Dreams

Saturday night I woke up not finding Miki by my side and when I leaned over to check on my son, I saw them both huddled together. Was Miki sleep walking? He must have felt me stir so he woke up and explained. He dreamt that Boz died! It was so vivid he said that it woke him up. And when he did, he checked on his son and snuggled beside him.

It must be traumatic dreaming about your son dead, I am just lucky I haven’t had that dream yet. I wouldn’t really know how to react if such dream visited me. Which brings us to the question of how dreams are made?

I googled dream and it returned almost 188,000,000 hits! Wow! So much for a boring topic, eh? Everybody’s got a take on the subject. For me, well, I have my personal interpretation of it too. Actually more of interpretations. Now, I am not an expert on the matter and the closest I got to really learning more about the subject was through a research paper I wrote in college. It was way before the internet access stage of my life so I only had the books in the library to fill my curiosity on the subject. My paper must have been good as it landed me a 1.25 mark! Either my paper was substantive or my writing skills just got the better of it. But actually the grapevine had it that my professor was rather amorous at that time which made him less of a terror that semester (thanks to Cupid!). Anyways, that was years ago and I could not even remember the details of that research, hahahhahahaha! Excuse the outburst. Well, let me just write about what I think of it now, okay?

I have this belief that what your dreams tell you depend on the emotional state you are in at the time of the occurrence (i.e. happy, sad, bothered, angry, centered, busy, etc.). Everything that follows is based on my personal experience and should not be taken as seriously as possible.

  1. Happy Dreams. When I am happy, I usually have varied dreams but they are all pleasant and they add to my good mood. I don’t bother rationalize a happy dream, I just like to think that because I was happy, my brain was getting creative, picking and pairing up good faces with memorable places, putting them on a new intertwined setting.
  2. Nostalgic Dreams. I don’t know why some people say when they miss someone so much, they dream about them; it’s never the case for me! I have never dreamt of my father (+) or my brother (+) or my past crushes for that matter, when I am thinking about them in my waking moments. Occasionally, they would visit me when I least expect them to (i.e., when I don’t think of them at all). They just come, not to talk to me about some special message or something but to just accompany me in whatever happens in my dream. These are pleasant dreams too, those that make you smile and sigh when you wake up. I welcome the visit as it reminds me of how I felt about them when they were still around. The loved ones are missed and the crushes, well, they make me smile.
  3. Horny Dreams. Hahahahahha! I can’t believe I’ve had them. Now that I am married, I find them cute, hehehehehhe. They usually visit me when I haven’t had much intimate relations (wow, what a very formal thing to say, hahahahhaha) with my partner. I rarely have them now, you would have guessed why. But when they do, they would tickle my senses and leave me feeling sexy when I wake up. I never really had many to tell but they usually involve me and my partner even before I got hitched.
  4. Haunting Dreams. Back then, I had this recurring dream which infused the people and places of my past interacting in the present setting. Usually they visit me when I’m angry or empowered by some negative emotion. I remember being subjected to a dream exercise by a friend of mine so we could decipher what it was all about. I was made to lie on a couch, close my eyes and visualize my dream. Then he proceeded to ask me these questions about symbols and what they meant to me. We wrapped up the session with the analysis that the dream’s been haunting me because it provided me with the comfort that the past provided. Something that I was holding on during times of distress. Made some sense. Did a rain check and now they haven’t been around.
  5. Crazy Dreams. They are these bits and pieces of information that I pick up from the conversations or the happenings of the day that have been interconnected in the style of Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. They are entertaining, out of this world. They usually visit me when I hear or experience something interesting, made a mental note about it but completely forget it by day’s end because of my preoccupation for the day. (This perhaps is what happened to Miki. Earlier that day we were talking about this little boy, same age as Boz, who almost drowned on a pond. Then Miki’s brain changed the background and placed us, the whole family, into a similar story. Scary huh?)
  6. Scary Dreams. Hmmmm, never had them lately. On second thought, I never had them for a very long time, actually! But I remember having them when I had high fever. Sometimes, they immobilize me. Other times, I had to be awaken because I was sleep talking too loud.
  7. Teary Dreams. Sometimes, when I’ve repressed way too much pain, I am visited by dreams that make me shed the tears that I deprived myself of. The dreams didn’t really have any relation to what I was repressing but still it gave me the chance to relieve myself of some burden that I was keeping all bottled inside.
  8. Empty Dreams. There are days when they just don’t come. Those nights when I just fell asleep, woke up the next morning with no recollection of what preoccupied my mind in my sleep. But since a busy day was ahead, I put off the rationalization part and move on with what’s ahead.
  9. Intuitive Dreams. They visit me when I am well aware of my being, when I am not preoccupied with stuff and when I am not emotionally charged. These dreams come to me to forewarn me of events to come. Usually, they leave me with a feeling of anticipation of something about to happen. And in most cases, they come true! Unfortunately they don’t visit me anymore.
  10. Flying Dreams. They say you don’t get flying dreams when you reach a certain age. Hence, they don’t visit me anymore. But those dreams, when they visited me, usually came when I wanted to escape from something. The wind touching my face left me with a sense of freedom from any care or responsibility.

Strange as they can be, I like my dreams as they are. The happy ones I don’t get to remember when I wake up, though the happy feeling lingers for a while. The nostalgic, teary and scary leave imprints that do go away with time. The horny, are dealt with in more creative ways than one. The crazy, I get to talk about with whoever cares to listen. The intuitive, flying and haunting, are missed. And the empty dreams, well, they leave me wondering what they could have been.

My, am I not glad my brain’s still at work even as I sleep. (“,)

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