A Dream Within a Dream

Edgar Allan Poe wasn't kidding.. "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream"

                A few nights ago I had a dream; actually, I don’t know which part was a dream and which part was real. It was somewhat disturbing to me and it has been playing over and over in my head. I did some research and what I came across was eerily accurate-I came to the conclusion that I was fighting to get both in and out of my own body that night.

                The dream itself was not so unordinary, my weekly nightmares are usually much more terrifying, it was rather the subject matter of the dream and it’s relation to my experiences that has me dumbfounded. In my dream I am in my bedroom with my older sister, she is on her bed and I am on mine. Today my sister, Laura, is 25 years-old and I am 23; we haven’t shared this room-which is now solely mine-since we were about 14 and 16 years-old (at which point my father built her a bedroom in the basement where she could talk to high school boys on the phone late at night without the prying ears of her annoying little sister). Nonetheless, in my dream, we’re back together in my room.

                She tells me that while we in Etobicoke (the city that I only know of because it hosts the hospital my sister, brother, and I were born at) she had set up a camera in our room to record what happened while we were gone. She tells me that the video captured paranormal activity in the room, she also says she does not want to show me because it is going to scare me. I ask to see it right away but she says no we must go back to Etobicoke now, she’ll show it to me later.

                Firstly, I found this subject matter odd because of the connections it has with my sister and I. You see, when we shared a room together as little girls we quite often witnessed some strange activity in our room. To this day I do not have closet doors, just an indent in the wall where my closet should be, an open space with all my clothes hanging in plain view. Today, I question whether we actually experienced something other-worldly or if they are just made-up memories of two sisters who thrived off scaring each other when the whole house was asleep. Some memories I have willfully attributed to this hypothesis because I want to convince myself they were not real. When Laura moved out of my room nothing strange happened anymore; when Laura moved into her new room, the strange moved in with her. Even now, at 25 years-old, no longer a little girl with a big imagination, she still has encounters with other dimensions of reality. So, you can see how odd the dream seemed at first glance. Back to the dream…

                After she tells me we must go back to Etobicoke and that she will show me the video after, I awaken in my room, as it is today. I think to myself, that was an odd dream. Suddenly, I hear my clock radio turn on; it switches channels spontaneously, taking a sentence from each station before going on to the next. The sentences combined--rapidly in succession--sounds like my clock radio has just said “Uh-oh, I think we woke her up she’s going to be mad"but we must! There is only 4 weeks left!” I jump up out of my bed and run over to my calendar on the wall, I count 4 weeks from the day and land on August and September 3^rd, 2011. I say to myself, that’s impossible, its July 21^st today. Then I realize, I’m still dreaming.

                I lie back down on my bed and close my eyes hoping to actually wake up. I lie down, open my eyes and say to myself “Okay, now I’m awake.” I get up and go downstairs to get a glass of water, I look at the clock on my wall, it says 8am; “8am!? That’s it!? I only fell asleep 3 hours ago, I don’t feel that tired--it can’t be 8am” I think to myself. I look at the time on my cell-phone in my hand, it says 9:30am; “Hmm, the batteries in the clock must have died, the times are different”. I look back up at the clock, which now reads 10:50am. S**T. I’m either going crazy or I’m still asleep and this is yet another dream. I start to panic a bit and for a split second I have a vision of endless dreams within dreams within dreams and wonder if it’s possible that I will never wake up. I wonder if that is what life and death are like.

                I run back up to my room and jump into my bed; I lie down and begin thrashing my head side to side, over and over and over again. I hope this movement will invade my mind enough that it will signal my body to actually thrash my head, thus waking me up. It works--to an extent. I see a slit of light at the bottom of both my eyes, I know I’m on the brink of consciousness; I can feel my head moving side to side but rather than thrashing it is a slow, lethargic lolling from left to right. My eyes, on the other hand, are moving from side to side with rapid speed underneath my eyelids--much quicker than humanly possible when awake.

 Now, what usually happens to me at this point in the game is that I become conscious enough to move but still in such a deep dream state that I begin to sleep walk. Mostly I just jump about and run around my room thinking I’m blind, feeling around using my hands as my eyes until I reach my wall, i'll run my hands up and down it until one of my hands eventually hits the light switch and it wakes me up, ending with a sigh of “it was just a dream” relief. Other times I have been caught by my parents standing on my bed banging on my bedroom ceiling for someone to “Let me out! I’m trapped in here!” But this time is different, this time I feel awake in my consciousness but not in my body, rather than vice-versa.

I can see the slit of light from my cracked open eyes, I can see my room whizzing by me like a blur of colors from my eyes moving so quickly from left to right, I know I’m almost awake but my body feels as if I have been drugged. My eyes are heavy, as if I am fighting an anesthesia; my limbs are immobile and I try lifting my arms that feel as if they weigh 100 pounds. They lift a few inches off my bed and fall right back down like dead weight. I’m panicking again. In my mind I picture someone pouring water over my face--I feel like I’m drowning.

After doing some research, I believe this is what is called “sleep paralysis”. Citing Wikipedia here: “the paralysis that occurs as a natural part of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Sleep paralysis occurs either when falling asleep, or when awakening. When it occurs upon awakening, the person becomes aware before the REM cycle is complete, and it is called hypnopompic or postdormital. The paralysis can last from several seconds to several minutes -by which the individual may experience panic symptoms”. As the correlation with REM sleep suggests, the paralysis is not entirely complete; use of EOG traces shows that eye movement is still possible during such episodes.

So this would explain my “rapid eye movements” REM; where I am coming to a state of awakening while I exit REM sleep, thus my eyes are still moving belligerently below my eyelids. What I found odd was that in old Folklore, this phenomenon was considered to be the act of demons, or supernatural beings, which are believed to sit or press on the chest of a sleeping person causing them to experience sleep paralysis. (I don’t believe this myself) but I find it odd because the content of my dream relates back to paranormal activity and my sister sharing my bedroom with me again.

So here I am trying to return myself to my body, to gain control over it and to unite both mind and body as one--which makes what happened next so eerie. I left off trying to awaken myself, feeling paralyzed and feeling as if someone was pouring water on my face and drowning me. I worked so hard trying to be attentive to both my corporeal self and my mind-self that I think I accomplished something extraordinary.

I finally gained control, I don’t know how long I was like that for, but I was able to pull my arms up to my chin and roll over on my side into a fetal position. I felt my body do this. My eyes remained shut. When I felt my mind return to me securely enough to open my eyes I did; staring out into my room towards my closet I finally felt awake--I finally felt real. I then rolled over onto my other side and when I turned in my bed I was shocked to find myself staring at myself in my bed. I was staring at me, laying there in the same fetal position I was in just half a second earlier before I turned onto my other side, it was a split second--but it was me! I have never seen myself 3-dimensional, it was such an odd experience. I got frightened right away and whipped myself back around to face my closet again and as soon as I did I woke up, propping myself up from my starting fetal position, gasping for air and absolutely petrified.

 As I sat there for a moment I felt something different about my room, kind of like the feeling I use to get when Laura was around. I heard a sound; it wasn’t quite a sound though, not like a buzzing but more of an internal vibration that resonated throughout my body up to my ears. When I told my sister this she said that is the noise she often hears but has never been able to describe because the sense of sound did the description no justice. I may not be religious in the organizational sense, but I am most definitely spiritual and I don’t think I could explain this in any other way. Throughout this whole time-warping, dream weaving, consciousness cramping experience--the only part that did not feel like a dream was the paralysis, waking up at the end, and the 3 seconds that preceded my awakening where I had turned around to find myself face-to-face with myself…

This one is definitely going down in my extreme dream log"and it’s getting bumped to top three!

Reviews

[Robin]

I love this stuff !

[Ed Hart]

women stand (and sleep) closer to the center of things than men; they're plugged into this whole process at a more fundamental level...there is a strong sense of not being in the 'driver's seat' much of the time, a powerlessness...what do you think that could be a metaphor for...

[Ed Hart]

i know a bit about dreams...you are definitely a cosmic class dreamer...i wouldn't begin to try to peel this one back