I had a dream I was on a plane. A totally normal flight. Going in for a landing when things went wrong at the last minute. I swear I could feel the heat of the flames as I saw them coming through the fuselage as the plane is breaking up around me. I woke up on my feet beside my bed sweating. I’ve never had a dream like that before or since. I’ve never done drugs or other vices. That was over a decade ago and I can still remember it like it was a real event in my life. Like it was landing in Denver, I was sitting a few rows from the front on the left isle on the emergency exit row.
I had a dream about watching my dad die in a factory accident (he worked a lot of factory jobs in the 80s and early 90s).
I could smell the machine oil, hear the thump of the presses (feeling it in my feet, too), and even remember the brief bruised feeling in my shoulder when the paramedic shoved past me to get to him.
It felt so real and vivid, I felt very strongly for the longest time that I’d had a premonition about how my dad would die.
It somehow even sticks with me every now and then, despite him having passed from brain tumours 13 years ago this month.
Weird.
Two.
Once I dreamt I was stabbed, and I can still feel the sensation of a blade tearing my flesh, despite having never had more than a nick.
Plus a super real, super long dream that spanned decades. I lived an entire other life. I grew up with a best friend either named Emma, or Emily. I saw her every day. We grew up together, had families alongside each other, lived our entire lives. I still miss her, despite the fact that she never existed.
Quite often in fact.
It’s pretty nice as I do a lot of creative work so if I’m struggling for inspiration I’ll usually take a nap or just go to bed a little early with a notepad nearby.
The crazy part is since I started taking meds for my ADHD it’s basically every night.
Edit: Most of mine are surreal or hyperreal though if that makes sense. By hyperreal I mean that every detail, every sensation, everything is there. Every single tiny sensation, except they are all cranked up to like 11.
For example: There you are standing on the edge of a cliff looking to the vista below. The trees sway with wind and life, flowing like seaweed caught in the current. The winds reach your face as a soft caress, lightly brushing your cheeks and running it’s fingers through your hair. The smells of earth and water fill your lungs with each breath with a slight chill. The sounds of the trees jostling and the wind swishing consume all sound but your breath.
You close your eyes to take it all in.
Your breathing deepening with each breath.
You feel your self slipping backwards away from the cliff but you know the ground will welcome you.
You gently stop on the moss covered ground. It’s like velvet on your skin.
Running your fingers through it you feel every little branch.
You let yourself fall deeper in sleep as the darkness consumes you.
The smells leave your nose, the wind leaves your hair, the velvety moss loses its touch.
You wake in your bed, feeling more rejuvenated then you have in days.
I stole my friend Andy’s plane, flew it and crashed it into the forest. I survived and hiked out, and he was extremely angry.
In real life, Andy doesn’t have a plane, and I don’t know how to pilot one.
Totally. A few actually. Some of them I had when I was very young such that the dreams themselves are really the only memories I have of the time. All nightmares. One of my newly born little brother in a pram on top of a hill being let go and me running to try to catch him before he hits a car. It was on a real hill that I occasionally see if I’m around that area again, but was so realistic that it’s my only/best memory of that hill.
Another was basically a zombie apocalypse and me being around while my dad turns (I must have seen some zombie film on TV or something). Another being chased by apes and spiders with the dream ending with me sinking under water and spiders jumping in the water and knowing how to swim downward to get me (eeek).
