I have always had very vivid dreams. Even when I was a kid I would have such incredible dreams that I would sometimes get reality and fantasy confused. This wasn't in a crazy way like I thought because of a dream that I had the power of flights in real life (which is something I dream about regularly). It was more along the lines of I would have a dream about something really silly happening at a birthday party in a dream that was the same birthday party I had recently attended in real life but in the dream something that didn't happen in real life did in the dream such as my friend Bob getting a plate of cake smashed in his face. I would see Bob in real life later on and laugh about the cake that he got in his face at the party and Bob would just be like "what the hell are you talking about?"
When I was very young like around under 10 years old I would achieve a state of neither slumber nor being awake and I would have hallucinations of things going on around me in my bedroom. These were normally quite terrifying things such as witches and monsters but would sometimes take on the form of friendly things like Kermit the Frog. The scary ones were a cause of concern for my family because I would continue to hallucinate after fleeing the creature to my parents' bedroom and they creatures would follow me there. It was terrifying especially to my mother who at one point thought about having an exorcism performed on me. I would be so convinced of the presence of the monsters that were following me that my mother, who could not see them, was also afraid of them.
Thankfully I haven't had any instances of these wide-awake nightmares as an adult. Something happened around the age of 10 and it never happened again. I continued to dream very vividly and still do so to this day. A few of the ones I had recently were filled with dread and were so convincingly real that even once I had woken up and realized that they didn't actually happen that I couldn't get back to sleep. This was that power of the dread that had been put into my mind from the visions that unfolded in my dream.
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The first example pertains to my own life and made me sad and angry to the point where I couldn't get back to sleep and decided at the absurd hour of 3am, to simply stay up and type this right now. I can tell that I am sleepy because I am struggling to type correctly.
what happened in the dream was that for some reason I was riding a bicycle in some sort of Cyberpunk type of environment. It was partially outdoors and involved a lot of twists and turns. It was mostly urban but then all of a sudden I realized that my dog Nadi was following me. Her legs are 5 inches long and she can't really keep up with me on foot, let alone if I was riding a bike hard. So when I turned around and she wasn't there I started to panic in the dream. When I backtracked and was frantically asking everyone if they had seen my dog I realized that I was speaking Thai in the dream. Now, I am pretty damn good at speaking Thai in real life but in my dreams I am 100% fluent. This doesn't mean that I am speaking better in the dreams it is just that my brain doesn't know how to be wrong or confused in my dreams. Every word that comes out of my mouth in the dreams is correct, even if it is nonsense in real life.
So no one knows where Nadi (my dog) is but eventually I spot her around the corner. She is clearly exhausted and she has injured two of her paws trying to keep up with me.
she was crying in the dream, well as much as a dog can. She was whining and wincing from the pain and I felt so terrible for putting her in that position. Dogs really are amazing what they will put themselves through in order to be with their masters and I just felt so terrible that I had put my dog through this. I carried her in the dream and was apologizing over and over promising her that I would never do that to her again. I woke up at around this point because when I experience great sadness in a dream I normally am not able to stay "in the Matrix" for much longer at that point. Upon being awake in my bed I felt extremely relieved .
Even though I am a sane adult and was able to process the fact that what had just happened didn't really happen and my Nadi was right next to me sound asleep and comfortable on her bed on top of my bed, I couldn't shake the sense of sadness and shame from my dream. The dreadful feeling just wouldn't go away and all of a sudden I was thinking that this must be what people who have panic attacks experience: I was 100% aware of the fact that what I dreamt didn't really happen but the painful experience was enough to prevent me from going to sleep.
safe and sound at home, no injuries
The other dream that was a night or two ago wasn't even about me but it was so vivid that I thought it would make a good short film and I wish I had the wherewithal to make it happen. It was about someone going through dementia but the story was told through their eyes. There would be people around them and their faces would change even though they are the same people that have always been there. The person whose eyes I was seeing through saw a stranger in front of them even though it was a family member. Their surroundings seemed foreign to them even though it was their own home. Things got stranger and stranger to the point where the person suffering the memory loss started to panic when people would approach them with kindness. The man in the dream started to be very fearful of those around him because to him, these were strangers and not his caretakers.
I think I probably dreamt of this because not that long ago my grandfather went through this. It was gradual and began with him having bad memory but it progressed to the point where he forgot who I was on the phone or on video calls. He had to be constantly reminded by the people around him that I was his grandson. He carried on in a semi-friendly manner but it was evident to me as the months went by that he was just playing along with his family members who were physically around him at the time - It was evident to all of us that he no longer remembered who I was and he would get agitated that his family members were always making him talk on the phone with strangers. It got to the point where he would get upset during the calls and that is when we stopped doing the calls.
I lived too far away to go and see him in person but according to my mother (my grandfather is her dad) he started having this same level of anger towards people that were around him as well. It was really sad to all of us and especially my mother when it became clear to them that my grandfather no longer remembered who his own children were. It was soon thereafter that he passed away. I think that when a person lives in a constant state of confusion that they feel alone all the time and simply doing things like eating become a chore. I think that the body just gives up on staying alive at that point and well, he didn't do so for much longer.
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I can't imagine what it is like to be on the other side of this experience and it must just be like living in a nightmare all the time. I'm sure there are some people out there that have experienced this with their own family members and if you haven't, I sincerely hope that you never do.
The other aspects of my recent dreams were things that regularly occur and happen to a lot of people in their dreams. I was once again operating cars that were damn near on the verge of careening out of control at all times. This time I found myself at stoplights right at that point where you have to make the choice of whether or not you have enough time before the light turns red. The intersections I found myself at became vast expanses of land the closer I got to them. Unlike dreams in the past though, my brakes did work and I guess I decided to be sensible and stop and just wait. The crazy thing was that in the dream once I did stop, the light would never turn green again and I would be magically transported somewhere else.
I frequently dream of situations like this but I never actually crash. There are tons of analysis that has been done on the "out of control vehicle" scenario in dreams and psychologists suggest that it can mean that the person in question is experiencing some stress in their real life with something beyond their control. This is true in my situation in that I am always a little bit stressed when people talk about visa policy changing which is something that is happening yet again here in Vietnam and I'll write more about that once I have all the information. There was also a situation going on at that time where I was moving some crypto from one wallet to another and it is taking an extraordinary amount of time for the transaction to complete. This has happened before and it ALWAYS ends up happening in the end since it is nigh on impossible for you to send crypto accidentally to the "void" since the likelihood of you entering a valid and real wallet address but the incorrect one is extremely unlikely. I remember reading that just with BTC, there are enough valid addresses that every person on earth could have 100 unique addresses assigned to them every second of their lives and we still wouldn't even come close to running out. The odds of you entering an incorrect but valid address is 1 in 4.19 billion according to some math nerds out there. But since I worry unnecessarily I am always convinced that I have somehow managed to "hit the reverse jackpot" and screw this process up.
According to a very interesting website that I recently encountered there are enough BTC addresses for "every person on the planet to have 196,385,600,286,334,710,857,791,565,804,391,698,421 Bitcoin addresses."
This is probably contributing to me dreaming about an out of control car anyway.
I guess I don't mind being awake at 3am, but by tomorrow afternoon I am likely going to regret having decided to just stay up!