I'm just writing this because it has been on my mind since this it happened last night. I was struggling with allergies last night, and I am still fending off a few remaining symptoms. Around 5ish I finally fall asleep for what had to be at least half an hour. In that time I had easily one of the most vivid dreams I've had in a while.
The dream began with me at this party with two people I assumed I was friendly with. As I look around the room I realize how unbelievably dark and dirty the place is. There are patches of what looks like paint, but between the darkness of the room and the strobe lighting it was hard to tell what was what. The music was deafening as the young man dancing near me makes some attempt to have a conversation, but to no avail. I glance over to the opposite end of what seems like the basement of an apartment building, to see what I could only describe as a high school aged kid dead in a pool of his own throw-up. He is just getting stepped on, and at this point in the dream I vomit a bit at the sight. It's at that moment I regain my sense of smell, and I was unprepared for what the human mind can conjure up. I throw up again this time onto my own shoes.
As soon as I begin to panic things only get worse. The walls and the ceiling shake, the music stops, and people begin booking towards what seems like the exit. The one guy who tried to speak to me before grabs hold of my sleeve, and essentially drags me in the same direction as the rest of the crowd. The other young woman who was with us follows behind me. After nearly dying while trying to get up a flight of stairs we get to a small clearing, the guy reaches into his bag for what could only be described as the breathing apparatus from Star Wars episode one. I can remember putting it on exactly like they did in the movies. He hands me a pair of goggles and the girl, and we rejoin the crowd. Once we get outside I swear shit just hits the fan even further. The clouds are black, and the sun is freaking blood red. The building we were just in begins to implode. The three of us sprint away from the building, but I look back to watch people get crushed and hit by loose debris. The only dialogue, outside of screams and cries, comes from the guy that gave me the breathing apparatus. He starts yelling that the storm is coming, and we need to get inside. I've lost my memory on what happens next.
The next part I can remember is being in some type of house with a window to outside. It starts raining, and I'm not sure what possessed me to keep looking, but I did. The black clouds were now right above us, and the rain was coming down hard. At first I couldn't make anything out from the window, but then it became clearer as I focused. People running through the streets clawing at their own faces. The wails began to permeate the walls of the house. As they run closer and closer I can see the skin peeling from their bodies. It's acid rain. These people didn't find the right shelter in time, and were being punished in the most brutal way possible. One man runs into the window screaming, crying, begging for me to help him. I can feel myself getting sick again. I look away from the window, and down at the muddy floor. When I look back up the rain has stopped and the streets outside are empty.
The final part of the dream is probably the worst part for me. I can't pull my eyes away from the window. The black clouds have broken up, and there is a clear view of the red sun. I stare at it for a moment, before I notice it blink. Or did I blink? I focus on it again, and it seems to blink again. It begins to get really hot, extremely fast. The sun is literally melting us. My vision goes in an instant, and I'm a surrounded by blackness. There is no pain, only this void. I'm dead, or at least that's what I thought. I could feel something like a heartbeat, and there I am waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel. I can feel the beat slowing down, and I begin to panic. Where is the afterlife? I think. Is someone coming to save me? Is there anything here? As the beat slows, I begin to lose control of myself. I'm drifting in and out now, I'm terrified beyond words. Nothing is happening. I'm just gonna disappear, and when the final beat stops there is a moment before I'm gone where there is just silence. Moments after that I wake up gasping for air.
This description, all the way up to the last paragraph, is basically an episode of... Walking Dead? Or was it Z Nation? The one where they are caught in a huge dust storm, and take shelter in an old hospital, or something, and are attacked by a zom-baby? If you squint and re-read your dream, it could TOTALLY be that episode! And - by the way - you do have a TV editor working in your brain? Those smash cuts and juxtapositions from scene to scene were totally from a TV thriller...
A Freudian would argue that your dream is about your fear that you lack personal agency. Finding something that matters to you that you can control, that you feel responsible for, that you have the ability to influence could potentially reduce the stress in your life. Not talkin' running for office, talkin' like a window garden. The dead kid could go a few ways.
There is no correlation between "when you dream" and "what instigated the dream". Dream state has a lot more to do with stress levels, sleep time, emotional state, what cheese you had before bed, etc. Oh yes I did. I did just totally link to an Erowid trip report on Stilton.
The description of that cheese actually sounds really good but 14 year old me would have glossed right over that and just headed to the store to buy tons. I was pretty angry at the other drivers after I loaded my groceries onto my mattress and just tried to get home so maybe it was bottled up stress.
Interesting. I often have vivid dreams, and frequently ones that sound terrifying in description, but so far, they have mostly not terrified me, especially while I was in them. The ones that have actually bothered me are thankfully few and far between. I have also never experienced smell in my dreams. I think it is more reasonable to consider dreams a way that our minds process memories and feelings, than deep signifiers of inner, unknown, turmoil full of portents which must be interpreted with books and websites which link various apparent symbols with meanings which do not often readily follow from what the symbols actually are. Is there a trauma in your recent past you may be grappling with? Or are you undergoing one of the major life stressors (move, new job, unemployment, new relationship, death in family, etc)?
There's a great Radiolab on sleep from years and years ago where they put forth all the scientific evidence that, evolutionarily, dreams are our brain's "fire drills" wherein it runs all our synaptic paths through the patterns that release the most hormones. In other words, things that freak us out are the things that it's going to hammer on during sleep. They further made the observation that the function of sleep, neurochemically, is to wash away the less successful decision trees so that the more prominent ones function more efficiently. In other words, yes - when you're tired and can no longer learn something, sleeping on it will allow your brain to accomplish the task with better utility. It's kind of like brushing away the chips before you continue engraving. It's effective, too. That dream where your teeth fall out before a job interview? Actually lost a tooth before a job interview and wasn't even stressed. That one where you wake up late and only have 10 minutes left to do the final? Fuckin' 88% bitchez. To be fair, however, both events happened in pants.
I think the most major thing I'm grappling with is really what comes next for me. I graduated from college a few months ago, and while I have been actively pursuing a new job (my current job was a part-time gig I worked through college to keep money in the bank) I haven't really been able to find where I fit in the workforce yet. It concerns me, but I never thought that I let it get too heavy on my shoulders.