Tagging my dreams 🎧

I couldn’t find my silky sleep mask and was too tired to look for it, so guess who had trouble sleeping?

When I finally fell asleep I was treated to unsettling dreams. I’ve noticed this recurring dream pattern for me, where I’m responsible for my niece.

I used to regularly dream of a towering wave. I’d be on a ship or even a small fucking boat, and I’d look off to the horizon and see the slow build-up of this epic wall of water in the distance. Ready to swallow up everything. Fear wouldn’t necessarily grip me like you’d expect, but I was always with my niece, so I knew I was supposed to take care of her.

I was sick of this damn dream, though. Sometimes it had other delightful twists inside of it. Like a man would also be hunting us with the clear and unnerving intent to harm us? Because a giant wave coming toward you wasn’t enough, there had to be some other adorable detail.

I always got her to safety right before I let the wave hit me, or my eyes would dart open just as the man would get to me. I’d wake up panicking in my skin and remind myself, “You’re in bed. It was the wave dream, you idiot. Sleep.”

It was such a staple in my dream world that I researched lucid dreaming to figure out how to beat it. AND I DID!

The key was the repetition of the dream. The brain lays down strong neural pathways around your dream space. Because I had that wave dream enough times, my brain started to recognize it while dreaming.

At some point in my waking life, I reflected on this dream and wrote about it enough that my brain literally started giving it tags. Like, “If the wave shows up, I’m dreaming.” Then I started to think about this old podcast Nick used to listen to, Radiolab. The episode was called “Wake Up and Dream” and it was so memorable and compelling, it stuck with me over the years. It was basically this guy that figured out how to change the outcome of a nightmare by taking it back.

So, why couldn’t I?

I didn’t necessarily prepare for it in any big way. I can’t give you the recipe to my lucid dream success where I not only took it back, but the wave never showed up in my dreams again (I think it’s been about two years). All I know is, the wave came, but this time, I wasn’t protecting my niece on a boat. I was standing side-by-side with my mom, on the shore of a beach. We watched it approach us and didn’t say anything. If I could guess the contents of my brain, or what I wanted to say, it would be, “Here’s this fucking wave dream again.”

We let it move toward us, and then walked through it. Inside the wave was a shopping mall from my childhood. Not just any old shopping mall, but the crusty oasis of the Macdade Mall. Which, as a kid, just smelled like soft pretzels and the chance to get a Beanie Baby.

Poetic, right?

Last night, I was surprised to see my niece in my dream. I was also surprised that I was having to protect her from a man pursuing us. Or maybe not pursuing us, but keeping us locked in a house where there was seemingly no escape. In this dream, my niece was ten instead of her actual age of almost freaking fifteen. Her cheeks were more full and childlike, but her hair was a white blonde instead of her ashy brown.

I said, “Blonde? You told me you hate blonde.”
She really did, complete with a “No offense.” dagger to my heart.

Dream-her looked at me and shrugged.

I grabbed her hand and said, “Let’s go,” to try to figure out where to take her. How to save her. Only I really had no idea. I kept opening up room after room to find nothing that could really help us. All while catching glimpses of the sinister dude watching the house we were stuck in. Can I just say, he kind of looked like Adam Sandler? Why?!

My dream had no resolution.
I don’t think I saved us.

But I woke up anyway. And I wondered, am I still the protector, but the landscape just changed? Or, is my niece a symbol of my inner-child? And maybe this pattern is back because lucidity was never about control… it’s just witnessing.

The Adam Sandler bit I can’t really explain.

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