How does one distinguish between dreams and nightmares? While many of the dreams I have can get pretty dark in content (Doomsday is a popular topic in my subconscious, apparently) upon waking I realize they're more ridiculous than anything.
I've talked about my dreams before, but just the purely stupid ones. The wedding dreams. Yeah, I had another of those a month or so ago, I think. Still no face for Mr. Groom. Stink. But I'll not go into that.
The last time I had a dream that haunted me for weeks afterward seems silly now: weasel-like rodents racing around an apocalyptic world, gnawing through 2-foot thick metal and taking down whole buildings; sick and injured people stumbling around in the streets and taking refuge in makeshift hospitals in libraries and such; and the only way to stay safe was to carry some sort of talisman that surrounded you in a circle of light that acted as a shield. (I felt certain it was a Bible. Hmmm.) Yeah. But man, those creatures were creepy. They had teeth like rats, and they were big, and I don't really have an aversion to rodents but I hated these.
For a while I was plagued by bad dreams. Just a couple years ago, a while after we moved into this house. I don't remember what they were about; probably some of them involved people I loved dying. (In one, people tried to console my grieving self by tempting me with a trip to an amusement park. Right. Like that would ever make me feel better in any circumstance!) I once had a dream were both Wes and Dad had died (and possibly Hershey), and I woke up in the middle of the night and was desperate to be a little kid and stumble into Mom and Dad's room for a hug. I felt fine after a late night shower and some time in my Bible, but Mom was at a loss as to how to console me. It wasn't even a realistic dream.
That's the worst part about some of my dreams. In the dream, I'm struggling to figure out what's reality and what isn't, and when I wake up I'm overwhelmed with sorrow and spend the next few minutes trying to figure out if the bad parts of the dream were memories or pure fiction. (Like when I was little and dreamt about having telekinesis. I spent the better part of the morning trying to bring various objects to my side with a wave of my finger before I was finally resigned to the fact that I couldn't do it.)
And then there are the dreams where we're running from something. When I was little and Wes's obsession with Bionicles filled my subconscious, it was some creatures in an underground land filled with lava, and my favorite Bionicle heroes came to the rescue and got me out. Last night, it was a tornado.
Of course. Always a tornado. I can't count how many times we've had to run from tornadoes. I guess I'm glad now that most of the characters in my dreams lately are human and stay that way. (Have you ever had a dream where someone keeps shifting from human to animal, all the while the same "person"? Hate that. Can never keep up a good conversation.)
I can usually trace parts of my dream to things I was doing before I went to sleep: that stupid zombie show I watched, the book I read, on occasion the food I ate, though no lumps of mustard or undercooked potatoes. I'll venture to guess that the end of last night's dream - where some guy who'd been following us in our escape from the massive tornado proposed to me - can be traced to the fairy tale book I was reading before bed. I was only half-way through when I put it down and already anticipating a proposal.
And yes. Dream guy had a face. Hurrah!
No. I didn't recognize him. No, I won't tell you what he looked like, either.
And to think that my subconscious begged me to stay asleep long enough for the bumbling idiot to just get on with it. Of course, I woke up before that.
And then there's the moment when you're between sleeping and waking and your conscious starts fabricating a quick ending to tie everything up satisfactorily: give me the ring, open the door, kill the beast, stop crying and get out.
Some people say they don't dream, which I refuse to believe. I think they just dream like me and not like the "normal" style of dreaming where it's harmless and dumb and boring, and they're afraid to admit they're haunted by rabid rodents or getting proposed to when there's a cyclone on the horizon. That, or they do dream normally and it's too insignificant to remember. Poor people; even in their sleep, their lives are so boring.
How I sometimes wish I were they! But, as far as dreams go, it's probably my own fault, considering the wild and adventurous stuff I read, most of it fantasy.
And then there are the recurring dreams, where I'll have a dream and be certain I had practically the same one a few years before. Or the series dreams, where I'll have one dream and then a while later another one that seems to pick up right where the first left off.
The annoying ones are where I'm wandering through some creepy place and keep coming upon things from horror stories. Although, Heather gets those more than I do. In those dreams, I berate my subconscious self for being so stupid hanging around those dark, creepy places instead of running while dream-me has the chance. I really hate horror-style movies and dreams alike.
But then, what can be described as a "normal" dream? They all have those stupid twists and dark moments, at least in my experience. And in answer to the question I posed at the beginning, about the difference between nightmares and other dreams: I really don't know.
I once had an idea for a story where a girl was cursed to wander the land of dreams. It wasn't a happy place, and she was one of the most miserable characters I've ever tried to write. She must have been spending a lot of time in my dreams.
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