Dreams are quite possibly the most unpredictable sequences of images that can pass through your brain at any given moment. They say that some dreams are really just your subconscious thoughts coming to life so for example if you were watching Halle Berry on your T.V. before you fell asleep, it’s not really a surprise if she later shows up in your dreams that night.
Other times though, Dreams can be absolute nonsense. Random set pieces that contain people you know, places you’ve been, and things you’ve seen, all of which are thrown into a huge gumbo pot and left to simmer in your brain for the time you stay asleep.
Nightmares, on the other hand, don’t always seem to be so random. While the definition of what makes a dream “good” is subjective ( You might consider being able to fly in one dream and being a billionaire in another to be equally good dreams) the components of a nightmare usually seem to be very exact and specific. I think it’s because nightmares are built around real life fears that a person has, or at least they have been in my experiences.
How many times have you come this close to “dying” in your dream before you woke up at the very last second? Or something happens in your dream that was very embarrassing or horrifying within the context of that dream.
I’ve had my fair amount of both great dreams and terrifying nightmares, and I’m sure my readers have had their share as well. Recently though, I’ve had a sequence of back to back nightmares that I wanted to share with all of you.
If you’ve followed me on here for a while or know me personally, then you should know that the things that I aspire to be have a very small window of becoming an actual reality.. not saying that I won’t succeed because I believe that I will, it will probably just be a very long, very tough road. Despite me having that confidence though, somewhere in the back of mind there is still that slight bit of fear that I just may not succeed.
This is how my brain interpreted my fears these past few nights:
DREAM #1– I don’t know how exactly I’d gotten to this point, or if I was still even in Florida, but one thing I knew for sure was that I was years older than I am now, possibly even in my early thirties. I was working as a counselor at a summer camp, and most of the dream was me just going about some typical camp counselor duties, until the time came to play games with the kids outside. I was getting the kids all organized in lines to get started with the sports, when a kid comes running up to me with his iPad in hand, and on the iPad was an old clip from a film project I was in years and years ago. The question the kid asks me was, “You used to act?!” And the answer I heard come out of my mouth was “Yeah I did, but I never made enough money from it to earn a living so I had to quit.” That’s when I woke up.
DREAM #2 &3– Both of these dreams occurred in the same night and one could have been a continuation of the other. In one dream, it was never made clear if I was still living at home, especially since my room looked about the same as it does now, but the point is I was in my parents’ house, although both were now considerably older and my dad was walking with a cane.And in what I guess was a continuation of the dream, I was in my room with my sister watching T.V. and I looked over to my sister and I said, “You know, looking back I can honestly say that my childhood was the happiest moment of my entire life.” Then I woke up.
And I know what you may be thinking, that those don’t really sound like nightmares. And in terms of what can really make up a scary dream, you could say that there are worse things that can happen in dreams in terms of embarrassment, fear, etc.
But basically, those three dreams are some of my biggest fears and real life nightmares that I hope to never realize. They all have one common theme within them, me coming to terms with the fact that I failed in every thing that I had originally set out to change.
The first dream is pretty obvious, it’s basically my fear that I won’t be able to earn enough money doing what I love to do to make a living off of it. They say that if you love something enough you’d be willing to do it for free, well trying to be a working actor is right up there as far as a career that requires that kind of love. As of now, I could make a shorter list of acting gigs that I’ve actually been paid for as compared to gigs that I’ve done for free. This is a natural part of the process, and I’m definitely not complaining but of course I would like to move up in the acting world enough to the point where I can start making some decent money, at least to the point of paying my bills every month and being able to support myself. So the small hint of fear is that my career of choice would actually not be profitable enough for me to actually live on, let alone, get married, settle down and start a family, all of which are things I plan to do by my thirties.
The second and third dreams represent two other fears of mine. It’s one thing to want to support myself, but I would really like to make enough money where I can tell my mom that she never has to work another day in her life if she so well pleases.
You could say that possibly I was able to retire both of my parents in my second dream and that they were just enjoying their quiet days at home but the feel of the dream told me that scenario was not the case. That again, I had failed to make that goal manifest itself into reality and now here my parents were, working well into their old age.
The third dream and what I told my sister about my childhood is in regards to my fear of my personal future. I know it’s not a guarantee that people will have a good childhood growing up, but I did. There were a lot of good memories, and overall I would say that I was a very happy child. However, I’m looking forward to the next set of great memories, the next phase of my life that I’m going to be able to look back and say “wow that was an amazing time in my life.” So going off of the dream, I still hadn’t been able to find any new memory of mostly happiness that didn’t involve memories of my childhood..
I felt like sharing all of this with you guys because I feel like most people can relate in their own way. The most important thing about all of this is that they were only dreams and all of them could very well never come to fruition. I can also acknowledge my fears for what they are and continue to work past them. But what about all of you? Are there any fears that you feel may have a possibility of coming true in your own lives?
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