My lucid dreams have become lucid nightmares against my will. I don’t know where else to write about it other than my dream journal, so in my journal it’ll go. Hell, I might as well post this entry verbatim and see if this has happened to other people. My break time is coming to a close and I don’t have too much spare time.
Well, in that case, I’ll give you, mysterious mystery reader, an intro to lucid dreaming.
It isn’t that hard to maintain; most of the work is keeping a consistent dream journal. It helps to train your brain to remember what’s most easily forgotten. My dream journal is a few hundred pages long by now and it’s my favorite part of waking up in the morning these days.
What was a calm morning ritual (for a decade now, no less) has become a mental sandpaper drag of my nerves that leaves me more on edge every time I wake up. They’re only getting worse. I can’t even find anything on the internet with people having similar dreams and there’s nobody around me to ask.
Even writing them from memory is enough to make me shiver. It’s funny, my dream journal at this point is my laptop, and sitting down to write this was like waking up after a night of playing in my dreams like they were a sandbox. The only thing missing is the joy: the real reward of being able to relive my dreams.
Now? I’m pouring over someone else’s horrible memories. But they’re mine. They have to be.
My dreams are still lucid, but not for long. They always devolve into random scenes where I’m the lead actor for a production I don’t have the script for. One moment I’m in front of a crowd who are eagerly awaiting a speech, yet I’ve never given a speech in my life and have never stood in front of a crowd that huge. Next I’ll be trudging through a swamp, my legs as heavy as anvils as I drag them up and through the mud - the holes in the mud squelching as mud and water rushes to fill the holes my feet are making. In both of these scenarios I don’t know where I’m going or how I got there, yet I’m certain that it’s all as real as my waking life, and it’s vitally important that I don’t get it, whatever it is, wrong. If I’m moving in any of these dreams, it’s away from something I can’t fathom and towards a destination I’m uncertain of.
These dreams, even the brief ones that are flashes of imagery and feeling, leave me with a horrible sense of… Longing? Sorrow? Like I was close to the end but was taken away just before I could do whatever I’m supposed to. This wouldn’t all be so bad, but something about the dreams is consistent now.
At the end of every dream, I see a man in a long brown jacket with hair covering his face. Even if the wind is blowing or it’s hot enough to burn my skin wherever I’ve ended up while asleep, he’s wearing a long jacket with his brown mangy hair covering his face. He might not be a man at all, but his hands are white, bony, and covered with hair.
Like my uncle. I haven’t spoken to him since I was a kid. In fact he hasn’t crossed my mind since I moved into my apartment. I haven’t thought of any of my family since I’ve gotten here.
But it’s not my uncle. My uncle’s dead. My only memory of him is a polaroid that I keep in my physical dream journal from around the last time my family got together.
The last time my family got together… For some reason that memory is split in two even as I try to recall it. I can see a firepit surrounded by white plastic chairs in some public forest, my dad grilling brats and hamburgers while my extended family talk about local legends around the fire.
We used to go to the library I’m writing in right now. It’s always been my favorite place to write, even more so than my bedroom. Between paragraphs, I took a quick drive here to help clear my mind but I feel more foggy than ever. The library doesn’t feel or look like the one I’m familiar with either and I need to leave. There’s only a few minutes left before the party I need to be at and I know everyone’ll be pissed at me if I don’t make it on time.
I can’t find anybody and the doors are still locked. The only constant is this laptop and a journal with a polaroid of a group of people that I don’t recognize with their hands on my shoulders.
I can’t read what I’ve written before; it all looks blurry and misshapen whenever I try to look at my screen for too long without typing something.
But it doesn’t feel like I’m in a dream. It hurts when I pinch myself and the numbness in my fingers is a physical dullness, not an absence of feeling altogether like how it's supposed to. The courtyard is dark and overcast and that man is still beyond the hedges, his flowing brown hair covering his face as he waves at me and beckons me to join him… Somewhere.
I’ve picked up my laptop and moved somewhere else countless times by now. There’s always a place to sit and write, and the letters appearing on my screen are my only respite from the man in the brown coat and the emptiness of the field around me. Was it always this overcast? Has it always been raining?
I feel like I’m dying, but I’m not. At least I don’t think I am. I don’t know whether to give up or not. I remember stepping through a thick, muddy swamp to get where I am but I’m as lost as ever and the past is trying to get me while the future, both in space and time, slips from my fingers. The man is there, always, waving at me to join him.
I’m awake. I fell asleep moments ago. I’ve been here forever. My skin is sloughing off of my arms as I wade through open air in a home I’ve never been in before. I’m running in a body that feels alien down a highway that can’t exist.
There’s always a laptop. Always a dream journal. Always a polaroid.
Or is there? The cover of the dream journal changes yet remains the same. Now I’m typing on a typewriter, trying to ignore the hairy man waving slowly at me, and slowing down as I sit and try to focus on typing to experience something I won’t immediately forget. There’s not much time left.
He’s stopped waving. He’s walking towards me.
He’s running.