DarkestDarkness

4th October 2020

8:45?

Fragment:

In one part of this dream I had gone to a computer like mine (but was it mine?) and in the dream's context I'd previously downloaded a comic of sorts, about a giant elf lady who allowed herself to be pleasured by an also rather large but sentient spider (i.e. of the same level of intelligence). The comic was incredibly detailed but it wasn't tending towards hyper-realism or anything; initially I was very apprehensive as I thought my arachnophobia might come back (because of the spider's details) but I ended up liking the comic and the high level of detail. The backgrounds seemed simple or mostly abstract, colour gradients?

The comic apparently had 68 pages, but each page was effectively a single comic tile/strip and many of them only showed small or incremental changes from the previously shown scenes. The spider was a night blue or black colour? Orb weaver type.

Before this, T and I had been talking? But after looking at the comic for a while, I became aware of T's presence by my left side at this desk I was apparently sat at. I felt embarrassed and didn't like the idea that he'd basically been watching me look at this comic, when I thought I was alone. But he made no comment about it and I didn't bring it up myself.

I remember a beautiful pine forest before all of this. Distant and snowy mountains and a river close by. Think I was walking by its sandy bank. There was some surreal element to the area, like the area was an unnatural overhanging cliff? But I think the forest was part of what prompted the comic segment.

Fragment:

I was some woman for a short bit or playing a game as this woman? But things looked realistic and I remember no HUD. I was in a third-person mode and there was something about setting a record and using motorcycles to do so. A giant plasma orb and some controller for it. I remember going up a ramp in a city area. There was a very wide river? Reminds me of some cities in the USA.

At the end of this dream segment I had taken something which was really important. Some sinister and some natural higher powers all wanted whatever this was. I remember someone mentioning Aether beings like those of Minecraft:Aether. They also said something about those beings supposedly being more deserving of this thing I'd taken. There was a feel of being like Frodo or Bilbo, having something as highly sought after as the one ring.

10-11:00?

Fragment:

In an altered version of my old home. I was trying to get to my computer in my bedroom. Emphasis on trying because interruptions kept happening. I felt some kind of compelling to look at that comic again. But this time I couldn't even get to the computer, T kept trying to talk to me or something. Then I lost him somehow and got in my room. I was about to shut the door but saw mom away in the distance; the house felt bigger and more... diagonal. But I hesitated; I tried turning on the light for my room but it wasn't working. I don't think it was night time, but it was dark in there.

For some reason the hall's light was stopping my room's light from working, as I found that if that one went off, my room's light would work. But then T appeared again.

(recall gap)

Then, out in the night in my old town. There seems to be less street lighting than I'd expect. I'm at a car park near our home and walking towards a car, but can't recall the look of it. Something about getting in and then mom was there, wanting to teach me to drive.

I get in the driver seat? But it's on the "wrong" side. Then dad turns up as I'm about to get going/started and I somehow am at the back of the car now, with dad having taken over. Then some third-person view sort of top-down, chasing the car while some kind of crazy manoeuvring is happening and the car is avoiding other cars using the road normally.

Fragment:

In the sky, kind of? Maybe this was in sequence of the old bedroom part, but I remember there are some very thin but incredibly solid platforms, nothing sways and I don't notice the absence of wind. I just remember seeing sky and clouds, even when looking downwards. It was sunny and I walked down some steps, at a quick pace? I had some sort of objective or goal.

Fragment:

In a back garden. A house that's mine and H's? There was a messy grassy garden, unkept. The grass looks yellowed or dry in parts and there are many tufts. There's a hole in the ground and on some level I remember that it could be a wasp nest like H had recently told me about and indeed some wasps do come out of the hole, but I run past and over the hole. Vague recall of the grass/ground being soft, like it's ankle deep.

Fragment:

Either H or T, stroking a cat (using the foot). I'm more at ground level, like the cat. Can't recall if it's black or white, but think white. But the cat gets up a little and hisses at him, but doesn't seem to care about me.

---

Notes:

- I don't remember looking through all the pages of the comic, but do remember seeing about 20 different strips, albeit many were only of small alterations conveying motion. I have some vague recall of text but I don't remember any text bubbles or anything.

- Although I watched LOTR a long time ago, I did watch the Hobbit recently.
-- The theme of a valuable object being sought-after by powerful entities has recently occurred in another dream.

- Although mom did use to drive, by the time I was around she didn't drive anymore because of some experiences she had.
-- Mom was a teacher for a lot of her life, so it seems somewhat fitting that she would try teaching me even if she hadn't driven at all, even once, since I've lived.

- There were a lot of themes both about my family and about my old home in these dreams.
-- I had a slight introspection not too much later after waking, about this. The interaction between my "self" and the voice from my last lucid has made me wonder about the metaphorical meanings, as I have always had issues with family interrupting things or generally being nosey about things I'd rather they weren't nosey about, but this is only compounded worse by the fact that I wasn't able to have "space to myself" in a sense, when I was much younger, many of my dreams during my youth seemingly often having an aspect of wanting to be separate from my family, at times; at least to be able to explore certain things by myself.
-- The interruptions by T were something of a recurring theme during waking life, especially in regards to not talking about something that I may have felt was awkward or sordid. But in our childhoods we were very close.

1st July 2020

Fragment:

Long dream but recall up to this point was poor. About halfway in, I was going through a busy-ish city centre with some other dream character walking along with me.

Then a very obvious dream sign appeared, a tall woman in labcoat, walking away in a different direction, possibly wearing nothing else. She had flat and very black hair, reminding me of one of my cousin's hair or come to think of it, a sort of Cleopatra hairstyle?

I recognised the dream sign and checked the fingers on my right hand, but for some reason I didn't realise I was dreaming and I didn't make further checks. Something about my fingers seemed distorted but the number was correct. I didn't remember to do any physics checks oddly and I think I was also distracted by whatever my previous dream objective was.

Later I either had a micro awakening or another pre-lucid moment during which I automatically reflected on what had happened and how I'd been unable to realise I was dreaming, but again not realising this irony.

(Missing recall)

Different part of the dream. I was somewhere kind of dark. Some dream character was showing me something? Then some of this characters pet spiders appeared on the ground out of nowhere, individually one after another, there were only a few though. But for some reason in the dream I let my phobia sort of return and take a small hold of me, mostly because of the first spider. It was a black and yellow/gold patterned orb weaver, about the size of a large hand. Even in my temporarily panicked state I realised that it seemed more afraid of me, but I couldn't shake the feeling of unease.

(Missing transition)

Another part of the dream sequence where I was at some modern-ish looking house. I was not myself, but a character for the dream plot. I was some kind of elemental creature but I don't recall any details of my form or appearance. There were four other humanoid creatures of similar elemental nature. There was an absent character that had created us and one of the other creatures had been created right in front of me. She appeared in a cloud of white smoke within a glass room, which I was standing outside of. The glass enclosing this "room" made it more like a container or cell of sorts really.

---

Notes:

- This dream was a particularly good pre-cursor to the lucidity I had later on (4th August).
-- At this point I had been becoming more diligent with my reality checks but not quite so much just yet. Currently at the time of writing (13th August) I am far more diligent with my RCing though there are still situations under which I should be checking but still am not quite so often.

- My primary issue with my RC was really the fact that I gave up on the first try but this was made much worse by the fact that the dream itself caused distraction from my RC procedure, something that I'm a bit more careful.

- The bit with the spiders was somewhat unusual in that I haven't been letting this affect me at all in waking life but it may have been around the time when I've seen bigger ones around the house more recently.
- This was the first dream with spiders for quite some time now, I think.

Over the last two days or so I haven't been able to either retain dream memories or make note of them for multiple reasons. I do still have some scraps of memories left so maybe writing those out would be a good idea.

---

Scrap, two days ago:

In the kitchen. There's a fluffy, sort of orange coloured spider thing? It's in the thing that holds loose leaf tea for brewing, maybe it's dead or not but it looked crammed in it. It's in the sink anyway, and I turn the tap on and water pours on it.

The fur absorbs the water and it gets a lot bigger. In the dream this spooks me, mostly because it was unexpected, but then it somehow becomes a bit sexual as I decide in the dream that I shouldn't be afraid of it and I show it my naked bottom, but it felt like it was partially a taunt of some kind too. I don't remember any other details except that the dream started to sort of distort, weird colours.

Scrap, one day ago:

The dream just seemed to be a Johnny Bravo cartoon or something. I just remember some really crude scene where there was a woman with her breasts bare and Johnny made a crude remark in surprise.

Scrap, today:

Lots of being outside. Day time mostly, but kind of grey. Was in a van at several points? Maybe helping H. Memory of the dream has faded more than I expected. It felt like it was a long dream sequence.

---

Some notes:

- The dream with the spider was odd. Mostly, it made me realise that while I have largely gotten over my phobia of spiders, there are still plenty of types of spider that I wouldn't commonly see in waking life, simply because they don't exist here and I think that seeing these different kinds might still make me jump a bit more than seeing the ones that do exist around here. The instinctual behaviour of getting spooked by spiders never seems to have really abandoned me even though I got over my phobia, but perhaps it's also a sign that there's still more that can be done about it.
- The sexual part of that dream probably relates to how I've realised in the past that positive emotional association can be helpful when dealing with phobia-type stuff.
- Not sure what brought on the cartoon dream, as I haven't watched that specific cartoon at all in over 10, maybe 15 years?
- Today's dream had an overarching plot to it, but I can't remember any specific detail anymore that would let me expand on the dream's detail.

Non-dream stuff: A very long non-lucid dream. I only remember one part of it, that I held on to loosely as I was quickly forgetting everything, deciding this was the most important part to remember.

---

Dream sequence:

I was in my native country, in the dream context it had been explained why I think but I can't remember it. I was in a small town and it was day, looking to soon be sunset, as everything looked a bit orange.

This was just a typical town and I was wandering around and there was an old brown-stone church, with one of its doors wide open. I walked in, and I remember I was looking at the floor just before doing so and seeing a roach type bug, but small. In the dream context there was something about going to visit local landmarks. When I entered it wasn't like a church at all, but a community centre of some kind. It was deserted. All the lights were on, but there were many many webs... and spiders, weird ones, some almost as big as my hand. I was very wary, but something compelled me to continue and I kept my instinctive fear in check, wondering why I was fearing them, they were just stood there on their webs, undisturbed for years, clearly.

I wandered through the first two rooms, and the second room was at the "back" and had large modern glass windows that were letting the sunset light in. Everything had that orange light bath, as expected. I used my boot to clear away some webs I just couldn't avoid if I wanted to move further. After having a look around in this room, where there had been some displays of some kind, I turn back a bit and again have to carefully remove some webs from the way, feeling extremely wary of the spiders on it. I remember being in a room or common hall that connected other rooms and there was a bag of some kind on a swivel office chair. On topof the bag was a black leather wallet. Everything was absolutely covered in webs and I looked at the wallet with the intent of seeing what was inside and taking it, but I saw a slightly open door and could sense something. It was a very small room, a cupboard of some kind, and I couldn't fully open the door in, because of an object inside. The light inside the tiny room was also on, oddly. I reached with my left arm into the room and felt something stony and as I touched it, I saw the wallet and bag disappear and heard a female voice saying "You have resisted temptation. You are blessed with protection." I could "see" an interface icon showing a "buff" as in a game, but the context of the dream felt all too real.

I remember exploring a little more but there were some areas that didn't have lights on and were getting on for darkness. It is implied in the dream that I went into these areas, as next I remember being at a doorway in the same building and walking into my the room my mom uses as an office at home in waking life, except the view through the windows was part of the dream context. I found it odd to find this room, but didn't question it much. I looked at her computer screen. It was on, something about this feels emotional though I have no idea now what was on the screen, other than the fact that on some timestamp it said the date was "2013". It was 2018, I knew this in the dream context. I took a photograph with my phone of the screen, and I thought something but I can't remember what. I seem to remember that at some point before this in the dream I'd found something else pertaining to my mom, from the past also. Even in the dream I couldn't help but wonder, are these things I'm finding related to her mental health?

I know I went out of that room but I cannot remember more details, even though the dream sequence didn't end there.

---

Some notes ^{(spread out because they'd be too dense to read otherwise)}:

• The sunset is a dream-sign. I hadn't realised this before. It is distinctly different from all other times of day, and in my dreams it always represents "the end" (of time, in some way).

• Even in the dream I thought everything in that light looked beautiful.

• As I saw all those spiders, I was about to react instinctively and let out some reaction of fear, but the fact that in the dream I had strongly intended to go into this building and that I somehow felt compelled to go further in, made me remember my practice of trying to keep my fear in check. This is the first time in a dream that I have truly suppressed such a basic and intense fear, as far "consciously" as my dream mind would allow. Keep in context that I have been an arachnophobe almost all of my life until very recently, and that in dreams basic fears and instincts are much, much stronger in my behaviour.

• In the dream context I remember being told by someone to look at the local points of interest and landmarks because I could be interested in them and because they needed people to do some tourism around here. That's the context I had for the "church".

• The bag/purse under the wallet was magenta. The office chair was a deep blue, I think.

• All I can remember seeing on that computer screen was a few different windows open, and maybe an image as one of the windows, which is what had the timestamp. In my dream, I knew that my mom had not been in this office for a long time. It looked just as the rest of the community centre.

• I do not know why even out of the dream now I feel some strong emotion thinking about the date and the screen. As far as I remember, 2013 was no different for my mom, if anything, her mental health has improved greatly since then. But considering it now, it was also when I moved to where I live now, away from my native country.

• At some point in the dream I understood the sunset feeling like "end", though I'm still not certain what about.

• The community centre (which was actually the church, after all) corridors and rooms looked, actually, much more like a very stereotypical office building and some doctors offices I've been to.

• As for the context of my mom's mental health, she suffers from bipolar or something the like, but has it very well controlled by medication these days.