The Opposite of a Nightmare Can Also Be a Bad Dream

Posted by figleaf | Tags:

Sat, 2010-03-27 12:03

You know how when you have a nightmare you wake up and in a wash of emotion you go “thank goodness it was only a dream?”

Ever had one of those dreams where you wake up and in a wash of emotion go “oh no it was only a dream?”

I hate it when that happens (the latter, not the former.) How about you?

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I had one of these last

Submitted by Laura Fox (not verified) on Sat, 2010-03-27 13:47.

I had one of these last night. It involved being able to walk down the street and visit a friend from college whom I haven’t seen in about nine years. We weren’t even that close at the time but there was some kind of wonderful feeling of connectedness that it was disappointing to find was just a dream… (Or partly just the idea of being able to walk to anything good for someone stuck in rural isolation…)

I’m also a fan of a wonderful lesbian romance webcomic that hinges on this very thing: http://rosalarian.com/yume/

No. Never. My dreams are all

Submitted by Nightfall (not verified) on Sat, 2010-03-27 14:43.

No. Never. My dreams are all about conflict, unfulfilled longings (which are still unfulfilled in the dream, or in rare occasions, fulfilled only at a terrible price), loneliness, loss, and searching for something vague but never finding it. Mazes feature often. These are not nightmares (or at least, do not provoke the kind of emotional reaction that a nightmare does, except on the extremely rare occasions that they suddenly turn into incoherent hellscapes for no apparent reason) but just my mind’s way of dealing with difficult issues.

Mmmph. Asking about dreams is

Submitted by Sungold (not verified) on Sat, 2010-03-27 20:33.

Mmmph. Asking about dreams is always dicey. Because you might just elicit a dream that ought better not see the light of day … or the light of the Internet, anyway. I’ve had a whole passel of lovely dreams in the past few years, but I’ll be discreet – not least, because it’s hard to articulate why it’s so hard to leave them in dreamland. You’ve been privy to a few of these dreams, figleaf, though I scarcely expect you’d remember any of them. They’ve thinned out in recent months. That’s both a burning loss and a blessing.

As for the first sort – where you wake with relief? That’s happened with my daydreams much more than my sleeping dreams. Or at least, daydreams are typical for me when it comes to past or potential sexual partners, and it’s sometimes a relief to just let go. But even there, relief is at best a long-term consolation. It’s still a shock when I realize I was a damn fool to think the man in question perceived me as a fellow human being. The aftershocks and insecurity can last months to years. And if the man’s a progressive, ostensibly pro-feminist sort of dude? The shock and hurt are exponentially worse.

Now I’ve just got to get a grip on the “teaching calculus with no prerparation” dream, where I invariably turn up naked, sooner or later. This dream might be fun for you, in the observer position. For me, it’s the invalidation of all I do well when I’m awake. I think every teacher has dreams in this genre, sooner or later.

Oh how true! And how many

Submitted by cheri (not verified) on Sun, 2010-03-28 21:25.

Oh how true! And how many times of you quickly tried to go back to sleep just to get back into the dream….only to find it is gone forever. Those “oh no it was a just a dream” are the dreams I love the best. A great way to start my day!!

Totally, except that when you

Submitted by Schnee (not verified) on Sun, 2010-03-28 21:26.

Totally, except that when you have the good kind of dreams that you wish you were still in, at least you wake up with a good aura, the day starts with a sort of pleasant background feeling, an ambience that can last quite a long while into the day.

I have a habit of loosing

Submitted by Geekgirl (not verified) on Sun, 2010-03-28 21:46.

I have a habit of loosing things. Important things like my keys or my cellphone or my wallet. And then I tend to dream that I found the missing item. These are always oddly vivid dreams, and have a realism that my normal dreams are not. The normal dreams are mashed up bits of things: my childhood best friend in my grandma’s house with my research adviser and suddenly I open a door in Grandma’s house and I’m in church. But the finding dreams are always low-key and simple: I walk out to my car and find the wallet or phone under the seat.

And then I wake up and it takes a second or two to realize that it was a dream and I did not in fact find the missing phone or keys yesterday and it is still missing and I am still stressing over that. I hate those dreams!