My name's Ryan. I don't know if dreams are just our subconscious minds entertaining us while we sleep or processing stimuli of the day, or if they're messages from aliens, or memories of past lives, or even out of body experiences in the multiverse. When it comes to beliefs, I call myself a nomad, because I've never really come across a belief that felt like home; one that I can plant my flag in and call it a day. What I do know is that I've had some wild freaking dreams, and I'd like to share a few w you. Today, I share my most vivid and intact one. Normally, I only remember like five seconds of a dream, but this one I remember from start to finish; maybe because it was recurring, I don't know. The TL;DR version is that I had a recurring dream about an event that actually happened just the way I had dreamt it would. So, for the first week or two after the event, when I'd wake up in the morning, I'd have to take a few seconds to make sure of where I was. Now, the full version:

I had this dream many times while in war; a recurring dream about going home. No biggie, I was told that many of us have dreams as such; "it's just a stress dream , we've all had them." I can buy that. The war part I'd prefer not to talk about in detail. I graduated boot camp on 9-12-01, and ended my tour in 06. I was an FMF Corpsman; a type of battlefield medic for the Navy and Marine Corps. That's about as much detail as I like to give about that period. I joined, I served, I came home. Anyway, in this recurring dream, I was on a commercial plane, coming home. I'm sitting there, drinking my jack n coke, eating crappy imitation Chex mix, when a wave of...something hits me. I'm not sure how to describe it; the sameness and normality of the civilian world was a little disconcerting. I don't know what the heck I was expecting; that because I had undergone such internal changes in the military, that it would somehow be reflected in the external environment when I came home? That might sound pretty dumb, but that's the best way I can describe it; the fact that home was just the way I left it was unsettling for some reason. I asked the flight attendant for a ginger ale; she asked if I get air sick, and I told her it was nothing like that. It's the 180 degree turns that my life's taken. I had called the recruiting office on little more than a whim. It felt like in a single twinkle of an eye, I was enlisted, in war, and then home again, just bam bam bam, without any time to really process stuff. She whispered that she had a welcome home present for me when we land, if I had a little time. No details needed there. After that, everything was just so...normal. I don't know what I was expecting to have changed, but the fact that everything was the same felt trippy to me. I was going to live with my parents for a tiny bit. They picked me up, we went back to the house, ordered pizza. I was sitting, looking around my room, with that bizarre sensation of being disconnected because everything looked exactly as I left it. I stretched out on my bed, and the dream was over. I had that dream many times in the service. Again, I was told " bfd; we all have those".

When it was my actual time to come home, it wasn't the same plane as the dream; I'm not sure if I believe in prophetic dreams or premonitions. But I had my jack n coke with the crappy imitation Chex mix, same feeling of everything feels off because it feels the same, I ordered a ginger ale, not the same flight attendant but her welcome home present was the same. Same car ride home, same pizza, same feelings, on top of the deja vu feeling of this being exactly the same as the dreams. Maybe that's not a big deal; maybe everyone in my situation has had the exact same thing. My point is that it's a little trippy to be a little nervous about going to bed, because that's where the dream ended in my dreams, so I was a little nervous to go to bed and wake up back in war. That crap happened for the first week or so. It's strange to wake up relieved to find yourself in the same bed, it's even stranger to wake up and be disappointed once or twice that it's the same bed.