Monthly Archives: October 2017

The Illusive Dreams

I awoke seven times from within the same dream.  I was stuck.  It was a dream within a dream, within a dream, within a dream, within a dream, within a dream, within a dream.  Each time I crawled out of my mind’s subconscious, I saw a new reality.  Each time I had to learn that I was still dreaming and none of it was real.  On the seventh time I awoke, I was awake, but wondered if I was still dreaming. I could not tell, at first, what was real.  I didn’t want to be fooled again.

My body was drained of any energy that should have been replenished during slumber. I got up to move around, as I had in each of the dreams. My eyes struggled for a moment to focus on my surroundings.  My legs were shaky as I tried to walk.  My thoughts were hazy with memories of weird, vivid images that were very real.  Except that they were not real. My body ached, but that was not proof enough that I was no longer trapped in a dream. I have felt pain in my dreams.

It is one of the strangest feelings, waking up to find out that you are still dreaming. How could I have fallen asleep in a dream, then fallen asleep with that dream, and then again, and again, and again, and again, and again? I remember during one of the dreams thinking that I was trapped in my mind, or that maybe I had fallen into a coma. While still dreaming, I tried to figure out what would have put me in such a state. I find it odd that most often I cannot control my dreams while I’m dreaming, but that I sometimes have my wits enough about me during some dreams to think rationally and try to force myself awake.

But each time I awoke, I was dreaming. Each time, it took me a few minutes to realize I was still dreaming. Each time I had to force myself awake. And even when I woke up from the last dream, I questioned whether or not I was, in fact, awake. I don’t often sleep well, but I deal with it. However, when a dream involving multiple dreams plagues my sleep, it’s horrible. It’s a nightmare. It ruins my day. I would be better off not sleeping at all. I think that’s why my body and mind will sometimes make efforts to avoid falling asleep. Maybe they’re trying to protect me. I don’t know. Just a thought.

By the way, Sigmund Freud was wrong. I do dream in color.

Sometimes I wake up yelling, sometimes shaking or sweating, or otherwise disturbed. Sometimes a combination of those. And it’s always worse when I can’t even remember what I dreamt. When I wake up in the middle of the night from a dream I remember, I can usually go back to sleep after coming to terms that it was just a dream. Not every time, but more often than not. But when I can’t remember what startled me from slumber to fear, I lie in bed trying to piece it together, trying to figure out what is causing the turmoil in my head. But I have no memory of it and it can’t be proven because I have no evidence that a dream happened at all. There are no pieces to put together. It’s gone. I am chasing something that does not exist. And I’m losing sleep over it.

I call these my Illusive Dreams, the ones that wake me up in a state of terror but I can’t recall them. The ones I know I had, but I have no idea what the dream contained. That bothers me deeply. No, we don’t always remember our dreams. On many of the nights that I do sleep well, I don’t remember my dreams more than half the time. But I think most of us will remember a dream that jolts us from sleep into a brief paranoid mess as we come to the conclusion that it was just a dream. What if the illusive dreams aren’t dreams at all? What else could they be? Although I wake up feeling like I experienced a nightmare, I still have no tangible evidence or memory of it. Maybe it wasn’t a dream at all. Maybe it was real. But what is real in the subconscious of slumber?

Or maybe my life is just a dream that someone else is having and none of this is real. If that’s the case, whoever you are, please wake up. And wake up soon, I really don’t want to go work tomorrow. For the rest of you who are awake and reading this, thank you for stopping by. Sweet dreams, sleep well, happy thoughts. Good day, God bless.

Dave

The Ceremony

Source: The Ceremony

Nothing new this week, but I hope you will enjoy this post I wrote while in Afghanistan in 2013 about the weekly ceremony at ISAF to honor the fallen from the coalition forces, as well as the Afghan Soldiers.  This was my front row perspective of the emotions and thoughts I had and saw during that ceremony.  Click on the link above to view original post.  Thank you for being here this week.  Good day, God bless.

Chapter 6 Complete

This week I finished chapter 6 of the book I’m writing. This process is taking much longer than I anticipated when I started a little more than a year and a half ago. The first four chapters seemed to flow effortlessly. Then life, writer’s block, work, and occasional laziness with my writing project each took turns keeping me from the keyboard. I started this project in February 2016. I feel like I should be further along by now. To be honest, I thought I would be done and on my second novel at this point.

I seem to lack the discipline in using my time wisely to write like I had in the beginning of this project. My motivation I once had is not as consistent as it once was. I come up with some wonderful “writing” in my head most days while I’m at work or hanging out with my kids, but I fail to follow through by putting the words down. I’ve probably written two or three books in my head in the last year. But, for the most part, I still make time to write to my blog weekly. That is something important to me because I made it part of my personal therapy after coming out of the lowest point in my life a couple years ago.

Sometimes I go back through my blog posts and read again what I was going through at a particular time. For some of the posts, I see the title and can recall everything about the piece I wrote. For a few of them, I need to read every word again to remember what was going on in my head. I find some of my posts still very powerful. Some of them remind me the dark place I was once at in my life. Some of them remind me of victories or progress I have made. Many of them make me smile. And there’s a couple of them that are just bad writing. But in keeping with my effort to post weekly, that will happen sometimes. (That might be happening now since I didn’t really have anything prepared!)

I did have more I wanted to write this week, but sometimes life dictates how much I get done here. And that’s ok. I’m living life and sometimes that means I don’t get to write as much as I would like. I do need to be more aware of that, when life really does slow me down, and not just use it as an excuse sometimes when I’m staying up until one in the morning watching reruns on television. In my defense, sometimes that’s my only time to decompress and relax.

I don’t know if my book will ever be published, assuming I finish it. I have already looked at some options. All the traditional publishers want a finished product. I don’t think vanity publishing will be the way to go. There are some self-publishing options online that are interesting. But I’ve always envisioned my work being printed. I guess I need to finish it first. I’m about half way done. I WILL get started on chapter 7 this coming week. Stay tuned for more updates. And thanks for reading Story of My Life this week. Good day, God bless.

Dave

Previously posted excerpts from my book:

https://storyofmylife.blog/2016/07/23/448/

https://storyofmylife.blog/2016/09/17/2nd-excerpt-from-my-book/