Last night, I had a dream that I was in a burning house. I’ve never seen the house I dreamed about before, but I could describe the floor plan to you as if that house were my own. I could tell you the color of the walls and how I unlocked the door to escape, and this is not uncommon for me. I wake up after most nights from a new dream. Sometimes, the illusions are so vivid it takes me hours to separate my imagination from the truth, but I’ve learned to embrace the imagery.
I recently realized my sleeping habits are very abnormal. I can fall asleep in under two minutes, and I’ve mastered the art of 10-minute naps. Within those short naps, I’m perfectly capable of having full-length dreams and telling them back to you when I wake up, completely re-energized and refreshed. When I dream, all five senses can be triggered at any time, not just sight and hearing. If I’m dreaming of a picnic at a park, I’ll be able to touch the trees and grass around me, and I can smell the flowers and taste my snacks too.
However, the most strange thing I’ve come across is that I lucid dream (a dream where the dreamer is aware that they’re dreaming and may then be able to exert control over the plot, narrative, action, scene). Most often, my lucid dreams relate to a supernatural ability to fly, and once I find my awareness within my subconscious, I’m able to run into flight, and control where I go and who I see. The lucid dreams can also involve people from my life, who I can manipulate into speaking with me or telling me secrets that solve real-life interpersonal conflicts.
My most vivid dreams occur when my social circles are under pressure, or my personal relationships are not stable. In high school, I experienced many of these dreams as a result of the social stress, but they did not stress me further. Rather, they gave my brain a subconscious chance to get to the bottom of my insecurities and fears I was too proud to discuss during the daytime.
Most people don’t understand how dreams this powerful can exist and how mesmerizing they can be. Lucid dreaming is a wonderful tool for me to explore my own subconscious and find some peace within a chaotic mind. The images my mind can paint often stems from rational thinking, which makes it that much more difficult to refute when I wake up. But, mishandled it can also be very bad. My brain takes any images it had seen and projects it at night. It’s entirely possible for me to get trapped in my dreams, so because of that, I can’t watch mentally manipulative or horrific films. For me, nothing is “just a dream” until I can prove why it’s unreal.
When I was younger, I hated going to sleep because my dreams were too scary, as I could never separate fiction from real life. But since then, I’ve learned to embrace the good qualities of my gift. I’ve come to understand that imagination runs wild in the dark, and I have learned to respect the limitations that will allow for a good night’s sleep.
