When I was in college, my Intro to Pysch prof made us keep
dream journals because he wanted us to learn to control our dreams. (Yes, we
all thought he was certifiable. And sadly he was tenured and spent most of his
time talking about Native American dream catchers and not Freud et al.) Despite the 500 of us
diligently, or not so diligently, writing down our dreams, none of us learned to
control them.
It’s a cool idea though. I’d especially like to control my nightmares.
When I have them, I wake up drenched in sweat. And often when I fall back to
sleep I end up in the same nightmare. I did learn to “finish” my nightmares
when I woke up and that usually keeps me from going back into the nightmare. So
if I was being pursued and my legs were frozen and I couldn’t move or scream, I
finish the dream by being able to run/scream/shoot/etc. I’m not too creative at
2am. But I’m considering adding a bullwhip and scythe-sword to my post-dream
arsenal.
Lately, I’ve been having these semi-nightmares. Not really
scary, but disconcerting. First, I’d get tied up and thrown into a tiny box—I had
about four nights of these. Thankfully, I’m not claustrophobic, but getting
thrown into an igloo cooler was a bit much. The next night, I had a dream that
the stalker was back. (If you’ve been reading my blog for a long time, you know
that I had a stalker in college—back before anti-stalking laws—who made my life
and that of a couple of my friends a horror.) At any rate, in the dream I
captured the stalker!! And I slapped him across the face.
