I realized i was dreaming, but felt stuck.

Last night i had several dreams, i remember like 3 or 4 of them. The last one of them was the one i realized i was dreaming.

Here goes... It was a weird-ass dream. i found myself in front of a house down the street from my home. I was hung over (even though i didn't drink last night). so i had the keys of my car in the pocket, i pressed the button to unlock the doors without actually taking the keys out of my pocket. i heard the sound of my car unlocking it's doors, but couldn't see my car. I discovered another set of keys in my pocket. Didn't take those out either, but pressed the button the same way to unlock the doors. there was an old car in front of me that blinked it's lights. i knew this car wasn't mine though, so i kept looking for mine.
oh right - i guess because i was "hung over" i blacked out every 10-15 seconds, i couldn't see anything and i got disorientated, lost my sense of balance.
Anyway... i went into the back yard of the house i found myself at. kept pressing buttons on the remote to hear the sound of the doors locking/unlocking. There i found my car in a pond(???). i got closer to the pond and suddenly, it pulled me into itself, i couldn't help it. the ground was flat and i wasn't even close to the waterside. so there i was - in the pond. the shore was really steep and slippery so i couldn't get out. i panicked.

This was when i realized it's gotta be a dream. I tried to do my reality check. (mine is trying to put my fingers through the palm of my hand) I already knew it must be a dream, but the reality check didn't work. it was just like what happens in real life, the fingers didn't go through. despite that i was still sure it was a dream, because there is no pond in that place in real life - plus why would my car be in there?

so there i was, helpless, in the pond. knew i was dreaming, but couldn't help anything. i felt like i was about to go underwater and drawn. (un?)luckily, that was when my girlfriend moved beside me or something and her movement woke me up.

the fact that i blacked out every few seconds was really weird - it's never happened to me before.

so... why the heck couldn't i induce lucidity??? i knew i was dreaming but felt powerless.

i'm really hoping someone would help me on this one people :/

Not entirely sure why, everyone is a bit different in how they dream. Sometimes I have dreams where I think of lucid dreaming but don't do RC's or anything.

My advice would be to try and go through in your head what would happen if it was a dream, and what will happen if it isn't.

Say I do a reality check like checking my hands to see if the scar's I've gotten over the years are still there. I look at them and then say in my mind, "if my scars are not there or are changed in any way, then I'm dreaming." Visualizing what they might look like if they were different in a dream. Then I'll think "If they're the same as they are now, then I'm not dreaming."

There's plenty of other reality checks you could do, too. Like reading a sentence somewhere, closing your eyes, and then reading it again, checking to see if it's changed, aware of what it was before and knowing that if it's changed, you're dreaming.

When doing a reality check, you should be more aware and attentive while doing it, knowing what might happen if it works, maybe visualizing what it would look like if it did work, and believing that you might be in a dream, at least in that moment.