Dream Dream Dream Dream Dream Dream

Kinda hard to tell if this was one dream or two, but they were so different that I might as well call 'em two dreams.

Dream: Racetimes with Dadboy
UUGHHH so I dreamed about dad again, he'd bought some kinda NASCAR-esque racing computer game and we were all competing, not racing each other directly but just playing the single player and seeing who could do the best job. There was also an odd twist: rather than having one car, you had a whole team of cars, all with the same paintjob as yours, that would follow you around the track as you drove. At one point the game glitched out badly on me... a race had already started, but when I tried to join there were various errors and difficulties. This didn't trigger lucidity for me, I just kept impatiently trying to fix it until I'd managed to get into the game. I started trying to catch up (with my trail of allied cars), but I couldn't seem to play the game right, and the whole thing was frustrating.

Then I got into an argument with dad. He was upset (with mom?) because apparently having a whole team of cars meant that they had to be parked in the house, and there was barely room for them. And I got mad at him and called him a dumbass etc etc who cares.

Dream: A Tiger Ate My Face
So... next I was at some kind of gathering of people (including dad) who were all sitting in a circle in a ... room in a church? I'm not sure what the point was, but I remember walking in and sitting among them, and then entering a different world or story or something, featuring a bunch of anthropomorphic animals... sort of a Redwall feel to it.

Ugh. I thought this dream made sense but now that I'm trying to put what happened into words...

OK so basically, the mice were being forced to migrate by the more villainous animals, and a lot of the younger mice were upset about having to leave their homes. And my objective was to comfort them somehow, but it was hard to tell what I was supposed to do exactly. I talked to a couple young mice but I wasn't sure what they wanted. Then I ended up a bit separated from the main migrating group and ended up alone somewhere I wasn't supposed to be, and this weird somewhat-human-faced tiger jumped down and told me to stop trying to help them or stop doing what I was doing or whatever. I noticed that his face proportions were kinda weird, like his eyes were too far up on his face and his mouth was too wide and he didn't have a nose. And also he was a tiger with a human face. So that was kinda weird.

At any rate, I knew this tiger could eat my face in one bite, but still, when he threatened me and told me to stop I was just like "Make me," knowing full well that he would kill me but thinking of it as a shortcut to the start of the level. He looked incredulous for about a fraction of a second before he lunged and killed me. I didn't feel it.

So I restarted, and this time I found two tiny things: a tiny golden screw, and something else. And I was actually able to find the toy that the screw went into, and screw it in (the screw's proportions weirdly changing the whole time), and get the toy working again. It was some sort of stuffed animal where when you slid the bit I'd fixed, its arms closed in a hug. I knew I should give it to one of the mice children, and I was setting off to find him when I woke up? At any rate, that's all I remember.

Today's dreamsign is: the screw weirdly changing proportions in a very obvious and unreal way.

So interestingly enough my renewed efforts are already paying off! Better awareness, more vivid/consistent dreams, and something odd happened where I almost spotted a dreamsign but my dream was like OH, NO THAT ISN'T WHAT YOU THINK IT IS, HAHA and changed it. You can't fool me forever, dreams.

Dream: Being a Good Person
So first of all, this dream seemed to be set in the past when I was still attending church (good dreamsign, I've dreamed about that church a few times now). I was friends with a girl who was disabled in some way and needed to drink lots of sugarwater, and she'd been assigned to read three verses in front of the whole church, but didn't think she'd be able to do it. So I figured the right thing to do was to offer to read two of the verses for her so she only had to do one. But truthfully I was quite anxious about reading in front of the whole church, and the majority of the dream consisted of me worrying about it. Then my sister pitched in and offered to read one of the verses for me, which I gratefully accepted.

There were other, more confusing and less straightforward parts of the dream, but I'm not going to write down things that don't translate into real life because it always ends up not being true to the nature of the dream. And maybe if I only write down the parts that make sense, my dreams will start to make more sense?

Dream: Family Reunion
So this was a long, fairly consistent and realistic dream with a theme of something like, "traveling." There was a lot of time spent on canoes, in cars, and on metro trains (which children kept falling out of), and my mother, sister, and extended family on my mother's side all made an appearance, as well as my boyfriend. That said, I don't really consider any of them to be a dreamsign even though seeing them in person is abnormal, and this might be because I want to see them.

I think there's a part of me that is motivated to become lucid by the wish to change the dream and avoid unpleasant things. For instance, seeing my dead grandmother alive again is actually rather unpleasant because I don't know why it keeps happening, and there might be something I'm trying to avoid (thoughts like, could I have saved her from her dementia, or what does it really mean that she's dead ... maybe I blame myself for something, or maybe I miss her, I don't know what it is). So, for that reason it makes perfect sense to make her a dreamsign, because it serves the dual purpose of getting me lucid and allowing me to recognize what's happening and escape it. In the same way, seeing my father in the dream is a dreamsign because I try to avoid him in real life as much as possible, and naturally I would prefer to avoid him in dreams as well.

At any rate, after a somewhat unrealistic visit from my boyfriend (I left without saying goodbye to him, probably represents my anxiety over doing something similar in real life and being thoughtless in some way) and a half-remembered canoe outing with my mother, I was in a car in Virginia on my way to a famous vacation spot to meet up with my mother's side of the family. On the way there, we passed something I'd never seen before: a theme park or museum or attraction of some kind that featured massive inflatable ships and things floating on the water outside, and enormous recreations of Lego figures. They may even have been moving. I noticed one of the huge inflatable ships looked a little deflated, as though it were a natural result of the thing being on display for so long with no means of refilling it. I thought about how nice it would be to go there with Alex, and figured he'd probably be able to afford whatever the (probably crazy) entry price was, and together we could have the time of our lives in ... whatever this place was.

Then I was on a train, and children kept getting confused because the train would stop and the doors would open, but sometimes it wasn't the right place to get off and the platform would actually be dangerously receded. So throughout the train ride, children kept falling onto the tracks and their family would have to fish them out. A couple times I thought a kid was going to get crushed, but the dream never acted like one was (there were no freaked-out reactions from the family, for instance), so it seemed like things were... "okay" for whatever reason.

Adam Sandler (or so my brain called him) and his son were also on the train, going to the same vacation spot as I was. I seriously don't know much about him, but my brain was like "white comedian man" and I figured "yeah he's probably one of the ones that says fuck a lot." I was thinking about how well-behaved his child was in that he wasn't trying to throw himself onto the train tracks like the other kids had been, and then I might've accidentally taught the kid the f-word. I said to Sandler that the kid had probably already learned that word from him anyway, and Sandler just sort of smiled like that was the kind of thing he would expect someone like me to say. He really had a reserved feel about him in that moment, as though he'd completely removed his comedian persona and was just trying to relax and be himself with his son. This got me thinking that I'd made a mistake in assuming that real-life Sandler and comedian Sandler were the same person, and I was chastising myself a little bit because I don't like to make mistakes like that.

At any rate, the vacation spot was some set of cabins and things next to a bay, and there were a bunch of friendly squirrels running around in one area because there were so many oversized acorns on the ground. You could pick the acorns up and hold them over the squirrels, and the squirrels would beg for them as though the acorns weren't right there on the ground to begin with. And I distinctly remember eating two of these acorns for... for some reason. Both times the outer shell was a bit pliable and tasted awful, while the inside was perfectly nice, and both times I failed to even try to shell the acorn and suffered the consequences. So... not really the high point of my intellect, there.

Then, the most interesting moment. I heard and saw my grandmother nearby, and as I observed I realized that her dementia was entirely gone. Somehow she had made a full recovery. And then, the first inkling came that this was important and odd, and perhaps... and the dream reacted. In an instant, Granny had vanished, and one of my older aunt-in-laws was in her place, sounding (though not looking), quite a lot like her. It really had the same feel as thinking you see something, and then looking closer and realizing it's actually something else entirely. Then I overheard someone say (or perhaps it was simply the dream straight-up narrating), that there was an older man who constantly got this aunt-in-law confused with Granny, and it was so sad because he'd been so close to Granny before and missed her quite a lot. Hm. Not much else interesting happened after that.

I guess I need to figure out why I want to be lucid. I think there's a huge part of my motivation that simply wants to escape bad dreams and images, because this was what originally got me into lucid dreaming in the first place. I used to have nightmares as a kid, and realized pretty quickly that these were dreams and that killing myself would wake me up. For some reason I'm now remembering one particularly memorable time this happened when I was quite young: I dreamed that I was being forced into a marriage with an alligator by my foreign royal family, and that soon I would have to climb into bed with this literal animal and be eaten and torn apart by it. Instead, I locked myself in the bathroom and stabbed myself in the stomach with a fancy pair of scissors. This didn't hurt or feel like anything, but it was apparent that I would soon die from this... when my family broke down the door, all of them crying as they realized what I'd done. They pointed to the alligator in the bed, now slain, and said that they'd killed it, and I didn't have to get married to it and there was no need for me to die. I was crying a little too at this point, if only because they were so sad, because I was quite ready to leave the dream at this point and didn't really want to stay with this odd, sacrificing-people-to-alligators family. Regardless, it was too late. I died and woke up soon after.

One way to interpret this would be to say that my dream somehow regretted my leaving. But that might be me personifying the dream when I shouldn't be, again. Perhaps I was trying to teach myself that dying to wake up wasn't necessary, and that there were other solutions? Man I'm really not sure what it all means, I need to think about this more.

So I'm reading Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D. and Howard Rheingold, and now my interest in lucid dreaming is somewhat renewed. The issue is that currently (and for a long time) I've been lacking awareness of my surroundings in some odd sense that makes it very hard to notice when I'm lucid, even though my dreams are generally completely unrealistic and, on top of that, have a constant "dreamlike" feel. This means that if I happen to wonder if I'm dreaming, just that is enough for me to go "Oh yes, duh, of course I am," and start doing lucid things... but it's rare for me to have enough awareness even for that.

I was thinking that my dreamsigns could be things like "a change in context," since that happens almost every time in my dreams, but on the other hand I think my mind simply accepts changes in context without thinking about them at all, and maybe I should pick something a bit more specific that I tend to notice more, such as my dead grandmother, having fully recovered from dementia, making an appearance.

Dream: Castle Shenanigans

So at first it was me, my dad, and my sister, all exploring some sort of enormous castle. And I was trying to get away from my dad (because I hate even being in the same room as him), which turned into me sprinting through the castle at night, down long hallways and up stairs, hoping to eventually lose him. But I don't think I ever did. I distinctly remember turning a corner and sprinting down a long hallway, trying to put the full length of the enormous castle between us, and trying to make it to the end and turn the corner before he could see me. I failed.

A bit later in the dream, I was exploring the castle with him (and it was daytime). It had the feel of him showing me a university that he wanted me to attend, and trying to point out to me what a cool place it was. We visited the castle library (complete with studying students), which had stacks of books against one wall, comprising about three levels of balconies that overlooked the main study space, and with an elevator that somewhat dwarfed its surroundings. I think it may have been for wheelchair accessibility. I think I explored the stacks a bit.

Then the dream changed. Still castle-themed, but now it had the feel of a movie. There was some sort of plucky main character (me) who wanted to get into the castle and join the ranks of the powerful servants of the king, but his approach was to climb in through one of the upper-level windows and try to avoid the wrath of the servants until he'd proved himself enough to be accepted. Or something like that.

Before that, there was a segment where a similarly plucky group was trying not to get killed by lackey-type knights in red who were hunting them with all the personality of machines. One of their solutions was to escape to a church, where, surely, the knights would not be able to perform violent acts. However, upon arrival in the church, they found the pews draped with the bloodstained bodies of several lackey-type knights in white, and through the window spotted the knights in red marching towards the church entrance. So, we all ran down the stairs to the basement, guided by one of us who knew this particular secret, and then crawled through a rather tight, upwards-sloping tunnel in the wall that made an uncomfortable right turn. I hated crawling through this thing because it was such a tight fit, but we made it, and on the other side was a better, safer church. And for whatever reason, my dream repeated this same scenario another few times.

Then, back to the story of the person (lizard?) trying to join the ranks of the castle servants. This time, he was exploring a tower placed just outside the castle, which he hoped to use to jump through into the castle through a window. And this is where things get confusing, because the dream just kind of made up concepts and they made sense to me at the time, and now that I'm awake I'm not sure what was going on. First of all, the main character was a sort of humanoid lizard. And the servants were also animal-themed, I believe, and quite powerful. The lizardman (me) met some of them in the tower and might have been captured by them? And then they might have started putting him through the various tasks that one must pass in order to be one of the castle servants. I'M NOT SURE. IT'S ALL SO HARD TO EXPLAIN. WHATEVER.

--

None of this gave my brain any kind of pause or made me think, "Hey now, all this is sort of unrealistic." And I know this is normal for dreams, but if I were to just have that thought for even a moment, I would realize that I was dreaming.

Instead it feels like my brain locks into some kind of "tell me a story" mode and rolls with whatever the dream does. It kind of has an automatic feel to it. Also, my dreams haven't been that vivid lately. Or it feels like even if they were vivid, I wouldn't be aware enough to notice. Uuuuugghhhhh.

Here's a couple more I couldn't write down 'cause I didn't have my computer.

Dream: Night before last
Dreamed I was having Alex (the bae) watch Pirates of the Caribbean with me 'cause he hadn't see it. But since I was dreaming it was a very different account of Pirates of the Caribbean... the pirates were all enslaved by a rather un-piratey, non-sea-related witch. As a result they were all pretty miserable. Then a somewhat younger girl showed up to try to free them all, and for a while I was her. I managed to halfway free the pirates, which got the now-angry witch's attention. She turned on me and I had the distinct impression, similar to what happened with Mr Blue Wife Beater a couple nights ago, that I didn't stand a chance vs her.

This is kind of an unusual feeling for me, because I sort of expected that if someone who wasn't a monster came at me ready to fight, I would be all over them because I love fighting. But now, not only did I not feel like trying to decimate these guys, I also got the impression that I had no hope of defending myself, so both times I didn't try and just got messed up. It's weird. I feel like defending myself should be an automatic instinct, but it hasn't been lately.

At any rate, in the next moment this crazy magic-using woman was all over me, throwing me to the ground and shaking me. And the dream cut back to Alex and I watching the movie on the couch together, watching this enraged magic lady slam this girl into the ground over and over. I was like, "This is just like when a spider's wrapping something up," 'cause that was honestly what I thought and honestly what it looked like, it wasn't the dream putting words in my mouth. It was so violent and deliberate.

When the magic lady stood she looked like a mix between the two of 'em, and the other girl was gone. So either she absorbed the girl, or she possessed her, I'm not sure which. The dream ended soon after.

Dream: Night before night before last
I dreamed about Leffen again which sucks for me 'cause he makes me feel SO insecure. But in the dream he was actually nice to me, which somehow makes me feel even worse... my dreams are just wish-fulfillment trying to convince me that he could actually like or care about me. *gets depressed*

Anyway, I dreamed that I was back in the Cheverly house, in the living room, and Leffen was using it to stream him playing some game. I felt like I was just getting in the way a bit, and then, at one point when he walked out of the room, he walked back in at the same time that I went blind. I was between him and his chair, and I wanted to hurry up and get out of his way, but my vision was totally frozen; looking around didn't change my view at all, I just had this locked-up scene stuck on my retina. I tried to explain this to him so he would get why I was just standing there. He actually seemed a bit concerned, which, when you think about it, is a pretty realistic reaction to someone going straight-up blind.

I managed to feel my way to the couch and lie down. Closing my eyes made everything black, so I stayed like that for a bit, and after a while my vision was back.

So then Leffen let me take over his stream for a bit, and I got on really hoping that his viewers would like me (all of which was unrealistic for a few reasons). The game he was playing was something like... you're trapped in a house with a whole bunch of almost-human monsters who really don't do much but slowly try to follow you around. Even if they caught up to you, they didn't try to attack you or anything, and YET, it was pretty scary. I ran into the bathroom and tried to lock it with a key, which was an almost paper thin piece of metal that did pretty much nothing. Still, I got the door kind of locked, enough that when they tried to get in, the doors bumped inwards but didn't open. I went deeper into the bathroom, which was quite a large bathroom as it turned out, and then lost track of where I was.

Next I was in a locked room, next to a door that had a little window above it that I could crawl through. So I did, and found a couple of monster-humans on the other side. One of them was this faceless thing with rubbery brown skin that looked up at me with a small, gaping mouth. For some reason I didn't find this guy disturbing, but I did have the brilliant idea to jump down on him as hard as I could. And it worked! Unlike some dreams where trying to do something weighty has unsatisfying, floaty results, this time it really felt like I was landing full-force on this unfortunate rubbery brown guy. And I crushed him. Then I ran off andddd I forget what else happened. WOO.

I think not having my computer has had a positive effect on my dreams... Might have to explore that further.

Man, my dreams have been more vivid lately. I've had plenty of dreams where I'm not totally present, where it doesn't feel like my decisions are totally up to me because I'm not really there myself... but lately my dreams have been giving me more control. Feels nice.

Dream: A Game
So I dreamed I was playing some kinda game, like I was on a game show. Everyone was paired up in teams and each team had a different official color. We were red, me and Handsome Jack. Well, he was sort of a combination of Handsome Jack and an acquaintance of mine with similar issues. I don't remember much about the other teams. Actually, there might even have been another person on our team, but I can't really remember.

So the game kinda consisted of a sort of obstacle course. It seemed to be set in an endless white void, or a massive white room, and I believe the first thing we encountered was a great deal of water, a veritable sea. It looked kinda strange since it was in a white room; like, much paler than the average sea.

Our first task was to cross this sea to the plasticky room about 60 yards away, and there was a selection of plasticky boats to use, maybe in little cubbyholes. They looked like those circular snow sled things, but a bit deeper. I think we just had to grab our appropriately red-colored boat, or maybe a couple of 'em, and somehow boat across the sea. The dream might've skipped that part. The impression I got was, the dream sort of thought that boat + sea was pretty self-explanatory, but then realized that my trying to get across the sea with just a circular boat and no paddle would actually be pretty difficult and time-consuming, so it just skipped it.

So we ended up on the island/room, where we quickly encountered SOME kind of obstacle. I kinda remember that there was a large group of people and there was some squabbling or fighting going on. I decided (and I don't always get to decide things like this, in dreams) to wander into the next room, where I encountered a kinda scary-lookin' old guy. And that was kind of important because by choosing to wander into the next dream I was sort of cutting into the dream's story; everything pointed to me being supposed to stick with my group and take the rooms one-by-one, but I instead chose to ignore this directive and try something else. And it's cool that I got to do that, it's been a bit of a trend lately. Hope it sticks! It's more fun when I can make up my own mind...

So I fought the scary-lookin' old guy who actually might've been a zombie, and soon enough Handsome Jack showed up, wondering where I went, and helped me take the old guy out. I'm not sure what the old guy's deal was. My first impression is... shopkeeper. But old and angry and sort of confused.

OK I don't remember too much else. I'm gonna make a post about the rest of my dreams 'cause like, I've had a couple over the last few days but I didn't write 'em down 'cause I didn't have my laptop.

so this happened out of nowhere, which is cool

Dream
I don't know what inspired it or even what came before. The first thing I remember at this point is thinking that this was probably a dream, and then taking the time to confirm it with a quick nose pinch check.

Then, in the dream, I was close by DC, so I decided to go roam the cool marble buildings in that area. And, on the spot, I came up with a rad new way of flying where... basically, I spoke to the ground, and a column of hot air would rise and lift me, and I would basically become a flying squirrel. I mean, I didn't physically have the flaps between my limbs, but I would fly as if I did. Not sure what inspired THAT ability, but it was actually very effective.

So I used that to infiltrate some marble building. At some point some dude showed up like he was my faithful companion on my journey or somethin', but I kinda had no idea who he was in the dream OR in waking life. At any rate, I just kind of accepted that he was my buddy.

At this point I was close to the roof of this building, still inside it, and I came to a part where wherever I was (maybe in the vents or something?) opened into a back room whose floor was at the building's ground level. Wayyy down there, I could see a security guard getting into a jeep and about to drive off, and I kiiiiind of wanted to fly down there and take the jeep for myself, but I wasn't sure I wouldn't just splat on the floor if I tried jumping or flying down. So I went another way, which took me to a large garage-looking sort of area, with a whole array of jeeps, including a sparkly pink one that I took. I think my companion might've taken another one. There was a sort of driveway leading out, and presumably right off the edge of the building. I decided to go for it, wanting to know how it feels to be in a car plummeting off the edge of a building: would I be able to jump out and fly to safety? Would I be stuck in it, and would it somehow land safely if I was?

But the dream had other ideas, so when I drove up the driveway it merely opened onto a ground-level street made of pale cobblestone. It was a sunny day, the houses around were adorable, it was all very nice. I drove off, sort of no longer lucid, and I'm not sure what happened next.

I woke up, realized that I'd had a lucid dream, and tried to get myself out of bed to write it down. When that didn't work, I tried to go back over the dream to cement it in my memory, only to find that I was inserting new things into the dream that hadn't actually happened, as if I were still half-dreaming. And then I fell back asleep and had another somewhat lucid dream.

Dream
This one had much the same flavor as the other dream, with some sneaking around on government rooftops, only this time I was trying to assassinate a visiting queen. It wasn't too difficult; I pretty much just had to drop through a skylight, and maybe it had the same "falling assassination" thing that Dishonored has, because just dropping through the skylight seemed to cause her death somehow. So then I would climb back out and try to avoid the inevitable guards freaking out.

At some point, this dream got interrupted by another, where I was at Stone Harbor, on the beach. The waves were (as usual) a bit strong for my tastes, so I was standing back by a ... I don't know what these are called, architecturally, but it was basically a hallway with column-framed openings facing the beach. I was standing against the back wall with my sister, and I must've looked away from the waves for a bit, because when I looked back there was a half-tsunami looming over the people in the water and on the beach. I watched in astonishment and horror as it crashed down, then turned to my sister and said "I would've died if I'd been there!" I think I had the idea that everyone else in the water could handle that sort of thing, but I specifically would've straight-up died due to my pitiful lack of wave-surviving ability. The wave rushed all the way up the beach with such force that it slapped into the back wall, though by that time it was only about ankle height. The next couple waves were like that, too, and at some point I became aware of the fact that there were small children in the water who were probably screwed. At the same time, I had this wondering impression that they could handle being tumbled by a massive wave, thanks to their baby fat, which, in my mind, rendered them virtually invincible.

There was some bit about us leaving Stone Harbor, and dad being there and being annoying, and then the dream switched back to my being a queen-assassinator, which isn't a word but I like it anyway. I was doing more marble rooftop roaming, this time with my brother and a vague sense of lucidity. I decided to give something a try, one of my would-be dream powers: the blink move from Dishonored. Essentially, the idea was that I raise my hand and cause a glowing rune sort of thing to appear on the ground some distance away. Then, when I released it, I would be teleported directly to where the rune was.

It worked incredibly well, so that marks the first time I've successfully teleported in a dream. I lined up a rune behind a patrolling guard, teleported to it, and then tried to take him down... and sort of failed. He kept going, not noticing my presence (somehow), and I teleported behind him again. This time I think it worked. By now we were in a small shed type place on the roof, where the guard had intended to access some sort of guard-only device for whatever reason (I know at SOME point, guards trying to sound the alarm had been some sort of issue, but it's hard to remember).

My brother was now nowhere to be seen, as a second, far more burly security guard rushed in and saw me. Since I'd been spotted, it seemed that my only hope was to fight this guy, who was an odd mixture of muscle, fat, and sheer, intimidating size. He was also wearing a dark blue wife beater, and the impression I got from him was that he was some sort of higher-up unbeholden to the rules or a dress code, a guy with the power to follow his own inclinations, a somewhat loose cannon who was nevertheless respected. I took him on, only to realize very shortly that I was going to lose. Somehow running away didn't occur to me, so I got captured instead.

I was then the subject of some experimentation conducted by Mr Blue Wife Beater, or at least, my character was. At this point the dream got a little confused. There was the sense that I could break out whenever I wanted due to my overwhelming lucid power (which apparently didn't come in handy at all in hand-to-hand combat), but was choosing not to. Makes sense, I'm something of a masochist. At the same time, I was no longer my queen-assassinator character; she was a blue-eyed blonde, beautiful in a sort of anime way. The dream apparently couldn't make up its mind what was happening, because it showed her, third-person, being provoked by Mr Blue Wife Beater and trying to control her anger and fear, and then in a hospital bed, missing an arm and an eye. I think I woke up shortly after.

Dreams falling apart shortly before I wake up is a trend. I wonder if it's falling apart because I'm close to waking up, or if encountering difficulties in story-telling can cause the dream to end?

yoooo I got lucky

Dream
So I dreamed I was a community college student again, and I would take the bus to get there and there was another student on the bus who'd done somethin' to me that I wanted revenge for. And I had this plan like yo, if I could beat this guy up with no consequences... was like I was hoping that soon I would be in a dream where I could beat him up, but then I was like yo lemme check and I did a nose-pinch check and realized I was already dreaming!

So then I stood in the middle of the bus and raised my arms, willing the bus to lift into the air, and it somewhat reluctantly did, so I started talking excitedly to encourage it. That helped a lot, and pretty soon the bus was like, forty feet off the ground. Think my plan was to smash it on the ground, but I'm not sure how I thought that was gonna work out because one, there were a bunch of other people on the bus who had nothing to do with this guy, and two, I was still on the bus. But then I think instead I got sidetracked and forgot all about the dude because the fact that I was lucid in a dream was more interesting than this made-up lil dream character. That said, I don't remember what happened next. Good times tho. Glad I still got my same old lucid powers.

ahhh let's see

Dream
Imma just write down the fun part, which was that I was with my boyfriend and Super Smash Bros Melee player Mang0, doing some thing or other. My boyfriend was relaxing shirtless nearby, when Mang0 upended his bottle of ice cold water over my bf's chest. And my boyfriend just did not react at all. Ice cold water just running down his chest and soaking into his pants and he didn't even move. Mang0 was surprised like "Oh, I see why you like him now," and I was like "Right??" At which point my boyfriend was sort of getting flustered by this high praise. And then Mang0 got my boyfriend working on a website for him and I was like aw yeah, people I like are working together.

Which is weird for a couple reasons. First of all, in waking life if you upended a bottle of ice cold water anywhere NEAR my boyfriend's chest, he would launch away from it like a cat. Secondly, I didn't realize that I'm a Mang0 fan, and actually I still don't even know if I am, considering my brain attributed to him the unflattering action of dumping cold water all over someone with no regrets.

If my brain's sending me any kind of signal it's probably that I shouldn't treat my boyfriend like he's more unfeeling than he is. Or at least, I'm worried about doing that. Originally, it was something that I liked about him, because with my depression I didn't like the idea of getting close to someone I loved only for them to be dragged down by it. But I think that train of thought might've mutated into something more along the lines of "it's okay to disregard his feelings," which would be. Unpleasant. I mean, for someone like me who worries about screwing up and isn't always sure what will hurt people or why they feel the way they do, it would be a relief, but still. That sounds more like I'm treating him like a punching bag or a ragdoll.

Gotta keep learnin' about relationship stuff. I don't really know what I'm doing or the best way to love someone. I'm the kind of person who tries to approach emotion with hardcore analysis. I don't feel like I can rely on my feelings to guide me in anything, they seem too inconsistent. And I like the idea of rationally and deliberately choosing an approach that'll make my boyfriend feel more cared about. But sometimes it just seems too mechanical, somehow. It makes me feel like I don't know what my "genuine" actually is. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

aaanyway. Thoughts and feelings continue to be a complicated matter.

For whatever reason my dreams last night were a little more normal (and less uneventful), plus there were a ton of them. idk tho let's see what I remember

Oh right, also for some reason last night I had this sense that I could picture things in my head very, very clearly. Sharp shapes and contrast and vivid colors, when normally my visualization feels like it's got a thick layer of film grain overtop it. It felt very... refreshing. Not sure what triggers it.

Dreeaaaammmm
So, there was something before this that I can't recall, but at any rate, whatever was going on before got suddenly replaced by me being a ninja in some well-populated castle, and climbing all over the walls trying not to get caught. I had cool abilities that made me super agile, which was fun. This kinda went on for longer than I'm making it sound, but heck I can't reMEMber what HAPpened.

Anyway in the end some magic dude or chick caught me, chained my arms, and then blew out a corner of the room. Beyond was empty air and clouds, so it turned out it was some kinda floating castle in the sky. Then whoever it was looped my chains over a broken part of the corner so I had to sit there like, right on the edge, though at that point it was third person so I didn't get the full "oh boy I'm right at the edge" experience.

THEN I dreamed that my family and a buncha other people were refugees migrating to a more modern culture, and to be allowed to settle there we had to beat 'em in a dance competition. Or maybe it was just a jumping competition. We took some time preparing and then when I was up it was versus this kid who like, did this awesome hip-hop dance that I really couldn't compete with... and then, when it was my turn, I just jumped in the air a few times. But I was having a great time. But yeah I don't think it helped us win the competition.

And THEN. UGH. I could feel one of my lower teeth getting loose. And my dad was like yeah, all your lower teeth are baby teeth, so they're gonna fall out. I'm like SRSLY?? Because IWL and in this dream, I have a permanent retainer on my lower front teeth. So then this loose tooth just kept getting looser until it was gonna fall out, except it couldn't because of the retainer, and I'm like toying with it with my tongue and it just didn't feel good. At all.

Lastly I dreamed I was bein' attacked by this rude nerd who had a buncha rubber bands. And I was holding a baby so I couldn't go on the attack, I had to stay curled up protecting this baby from this madman's continuous rubber band storm. They kinda stung, too. I tried shooting a couple back (not sure how I did that while still holding the baby), and I remember that there were quite a few piled near me that he'd shot at me, some wide and flat and some pretty thin. One of the thin ones was broken, and they were all kinda old.

Then Morty from Rick and Morty showed up and beat the guy up in this crazy aggressive way. He was wearing gray pants and yelled something like, "I LOVE IT WHEN THERE'S A GRAY AREA" like, y'know, when crazy violence got totally justifiable. The rubber band guy seemed to be starting to get up, and I just landed on him from above butt-first, tryna crush him, except it didn't really work 'cause I was too light. And then Morty joined the fray and the three of us became this flailing ball of limbs that, from third-person, looked totally hilarious.

Then I think I woke up.

Dream
Pretty much just dreamed about stressful things. Ben came back from college but I was so angry with him I wouldn't even talk to him or acknowledge he was there. Granny woke up in her coffin and hurt her hands banging and clawing at the lid until she was let out, though once she was, she looked even healthier than before she died. And Dad got into Harry Potter lore and said something casually about how he thought I was like Voldemort, a racist sociopath, and I snapped and yelled at him so much he ended up physically backed into a corner.

BLEH. No fun dreams lately.

w0w I'm tempted to start losing motivation after a mere WEEK. I'm just gonna give it more time.

Dream
Part of the dream was that I was part of this druggie community but we weren't actually supposed to have drugs of our own, or somethin' like that. AND YET. I had a whole bunch of L-Theanine stashed in my room. Which isn't much of a drug, but I had to keep it a secret like it was heroin or something.

Also, my room was more like some abandoned apartment in a halfway-destroyed building. You had to climb some rubble and collapsed stuff to get up there. Getting down was a bit easier, since some of the rubble formed a sort of slide, I think?

I also dreamed a cute lesbian was tryna get me to cheat on the bae and I was like uhm. Sry I can't. Then she was tryna show me how to give my hair a really intense undercut one-sided style and I was like idk if I'll look good with that ?? I'm just not punk enough.

I wannttt mMOOOORE SLEEEPPPP

Dream
OK so a lot of things happened but again recall is tricky
but I DID happen to remember that my brother and I were playing Roller Coaster Tycoon 2. It functioned like a multiplayer game, where the two of us could work on the park independently of the other. This really only worked out well because it was a dream, so we didn't end up doing something like putting down two of the same ride by accident because I always intuitively knew what he was doing.

we put down a bunch of small, thrilling rides, and I can distinctly remember the struggle to get the entrances and exits and queues and paths all properly laid out, owing mainly to the dream's apathy for consistent game behavior. This seems to be a trend in my dreams, that something will be working not quite as well as the usual, because it's a dream, and I'll get a little annoyed but fail to connect it with the fact that I'm dreaming. I want to turn that into a reality check but it's something that only happens in dreams so... maybe I should just do some visualizations and have myself reality check in response? I'm not suuuure.

Anyway once we had all the thrill rides laid out I was ready for money to start pouring in, because people were queueing all over the place. Like, all the rides were very popular. And yet. We failed to get rich. In fact, it looked more like we were actively losing money. I was like, what the heck, game? And then it turned out that since we'd put down only thrill rides, we were missing out on potential profits from the pansies of the world. The game flat-out showed us where to put down a merry-go-round, like that was the one thing we were missing. So we did. But I feel like I might've woken up shortly after so ohHHH WELL.

Something else about fighting large humanoid bugs.

oh whoops I forgot to post this ooOOPPSSS

hhaaaaa

Dream
Dreamed mom was telling me about this like, cross-country runner guy who'd been converted to Christianity. So I'm like okay hold that thought and we're at this strip mall place at night (kinda feels like I've been there before in another dream) and I get outta the parked car and make my way over to an ATM that gives me the deets on this guy.

So it shows a nice lil illustrative graphic video of him running all over the place in West Virginia, complete with little numbers showing how very far he's gone, and then he runs into this Christian dude who's got a pamphlet. And he's just kinda standing there in the path in the middle of nowhere waiting for the guy. And then the Christian dude says something challenging like "Jesus died for you, how can you be allowed to have your own pamphlet when you haven't-" and I feel like the cross-country runner guy and I both get the same thought like "...if the runner guy hasn't jumped off this cliff and died...!" like, y'know, to show his dedication and stuff, except then the Christian guy finishes his thought and it's something a lot more mundane.

So I'm like, unconvinced by this display, and then I have to eat a big bowl of cereal so I'm tryna hurry up and do that so I can get back to mom. Except then she just pulls up while I'm walking to her like yup here I am! And I'm like cool.

Once again I feel like there was somethin' else cool goin' on but apparently my recall is not THAT good so oohhhhhhhhhh well

aaaaaa
this is really tricky to try to remember

Dream
okay so there was this queen and I was this worker dude, really more like a peasant, who wanted to be all subversive and it's hard to remember more details than that? But I know at one point that like, I was uselessly messin' around with bales of hay on a long cart (which was my main purpose, it seemed), and out of nowhere a couple of arrows whistled right past my head from below me. There was this guy hiding in the corn right next to the cart who was, I think, angrily posting to his twitter account about how he didn't like the queen so he was taking it out on her workers, which maybe inspired me to start posting on MY twitter account about the "literal" (I made very sure to note that these were literal arrows and not, say, metaphorical ones) arrows that some madman had just fired at my head because he hated someone else entirely (surprisingly I did not then attempt to hunt down the perpetrator in question, who I'm pretty sure was still RIGHT THERE in the corn posting on his twitter account).

And there was something earlier about how I was a gay dude looking at a guy on the front of a magazine and it was like, my favorite magazine cover of all time. Which reminds me of other things but honestly this dream does not translate to reality very well at all.

I don't feel very aware in my dreams, which bugs me because instead of encountering something weird and going "Oh, maybe this is a dream," I just accept it. Guess I should practice my reality checks. Probably something like "what if this right now is a dream?" and then giving everything a good hard look would help. And also being like "wait maybe this is a dream" and doing a reality check every time something weird happens.

ANYWAY.

Dream: "It's Not the Actual Her"
Dreamed that various relatives had gathered for whatever reason, which was fine by me except that one of them was my recently dead Granny. She seemed to be acting pretty normal, so it wasn't as if the doll-looking thing that served as her corpse in the viewing had been cruelly reanimated. It really was like she'd somehow come back to life. And I was like, what, this is impossible (because I do have SOME dream awareness, I guess). I said as much to my sister, who scoffed and said that of course it wasn't the actual Granny. And then something like, "It's like if they made another one of you. It wouldn't be the actual you." So then I was thinking, what, like a clone? They grew a clone of Granny in that little time and now it's here? They could make a clone of me? And I was just, like, confused. But I didn't think it was a dream. FOOLISH ME

Then there was a bit about Granny being casually psychic her whole life and not wanting the ability to go to waste, so sometimes she'd inform us of stuff she knew. Like, okay, to describe it more fully, I was in some building, and when I looked out one of the windows I saw a younger Granny driving her car and boasting of her never-wrong ability to just know things, viewed from the perspective of the front seat. So I was like yo, cool, if she's 100% psychic then maybe I'm like, 25% psychic?

Then I was in the 1319 house and saw these two black cats outside in the rain, so I let one in (the other was still away from the door for some reason) and got a towel to dry it off with. And it was very well-mannered about this, snuggling into the towel to make things easier, and I was like yo this cat's pretty smart. But again, even though I got this mental ping like "that's weird" it didn't translate into a reality check. I needa practice these things IWL aaaaa.

Eventually I let the other cat in and toweled him off as well, and it was pretty vivid. So that was cool. Tryna dry off these cats. Man, they were really soaked.

I woke up and I was like ehhh I could use more dreams, maybe I could WILD? And then I just fell back asleep like normal so whoops.

Dream: Chillin' with the Bae
Then I dreamed the bae and I actually lived within walking distance of each other, which I then got totally confused with waking life. I was like, dude, we live so close to each other, how come we don't hang out like this all the time? So I was a little confused. Also I was going to college, and although we didn't really go to the same college we'd walk to class together. It was super nice tho. Bein' able to hang out with him.

Ugh I am too lazy to remember much more, but there was some part where I think the bae and I went to some kinda welcoming seminar to welcome me back to college, and it was pretty hella boring. Oh right, and then I met Mang0 the melee player which was rad. He was super chill.