If there are a lot of me, then I'm a lucky one

Last year I returned to a medicated state and started taking anti-depressants to combat increased levels of anxiety. As has happened when I was previously on a-ds, the thing I noticed is that going on the drugs and trying to wean off them are both accompanied by bizarre night-time brain activity.

To say, at my age, that I have bad dreams seems a bit childish. But the transition from a very real-feeling unreality to a thankfully mundane reality can be difficult some mornings. Like this morning I dreamt that a comet or meteor had collided with Earth and that I was one of the people who had survived. Remnants of the comet were still raining down, so if you went outside you had to hold your hands above your head to protect yourself - it would work for the smaller rocks. If a big one hit you, that was it.

I had to travel from ruined house to ruined house checking on people, and inbetween each one shielding my head from falling comet debris. When I woke up I felt stressed, harassed, and kind of numb as if I'd just been pulled out of a dangerous situation and was now back home and at a loss of what to do. A Hurt Locker moment.

Although they are weird scenarios, dreams like this often have their own internal logic and very specific details, which makes them feel more real than the dreams I have without the pharmacueticals in my system.

I'm interested in the idea of a multiverse. It's intriguing to think there may be other versions of myself out there, living in all kinds of alternative scenarios. I wonder sometimes, if we are all connected. Do I dream their lives? Do they dream mine? Is there a psychic scream that crosses those universe boundaries at times of great stress - is that why I dream do much of being in danger, feelign afraid, facing death?

If my dreams are insights into other realities, then I'm glad I wake up in this one.

Disconcerting texts

Got this text from a friend yesterday:

"We've received a notice in work from the [workplace name] christian fellowship offering dream interpretation to quote 'please send it (dream) with as much description as possible. Email it & I will ask God for the interpretation'. That's a little odd, surely!"

To which a sensible person's answer would be. "Yes. Yes, that is a little odd."

(My answer was "Awesome! Make something up and send it to them!")

I had a dream that I relished the fray and the screaming filled my head all day

I don’t often blog about my dreams but here was a strange one that may tell you more about me than you already knew. Or not.

Anyway... I dreamt that a friend of mine from Uni days called John was coming to visit Cathy and me. I was quite excited because I hadn’t seen him for about 10 years and since I had saw him last he had gotten married, and this would be the first time I’d met his wife. (Up to this point the details in the dream are true – I haven’t seeing John for about that length of time and he has got married and I have yet to meet his wife.)

Our house in the dream looked strangely like my parent’s house, particularly my childhood bedroom and the stairs into the lounge. (It’s weird how in dreams you can be in a place which you know is a, but looks like b.)

One thing I really wanted to show John was the new Millennium Falcon I had for Christmas a couple of years ago, with the working ramp and headlights and whatnot. (It’s a FAB toy!) I knew that John, fellow Star Wars geek and all, would want to see it.

I had to manoeuvre it carefully through the door of the upstairs bedroom to bring it downstairs. (Also true, as it’s so big you have to turn it on its side to get it in and out of rooms.)

What I hadn’t accounted for in my dream is that John and his wife had had three children since getting married, and they brought the kids with them – as you would. The oldest was about six and very hyperactive.

For some reason that freaked me out. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to hide the Millennium Falcon so that the kids didn’t play with it and break it. But I couldn’t think of a way to move it without the kids noticing it.

Fortunately I didn’t have to find a solution because at that point my alarm woke me.

I am not sure what that dream says about me apart from I don’t want to share my toys. Randomly I remember John telling me once that when he was a kid he had an original Kenner Millennium Falcon but insisted on taking it back to the shop because the cockpit hatch wouldn’t close securely and that meant Han Solo and Chewbacca would die when they were in space. But I’m not sure that had anything to do with the dream.

The title of this blog post is the opening couplet from a Tragically Hip song called Nautical Disaster about troubling dreams.

These things only happen in soap operas don't they? Er, no,...

On Tuesday a work colleague discovered that, due to a mistake in the paperwork, her marriage wasn't technically valid. I thought that only happened in badly-written movies and soaps.

Yesterday another friend told me that she was repeatedly having dreams about me, and in the latest instalment in the saga we were the new presenters of the One Show. (Which is doubly weird considering current presenters Adrian Chiles and female colleague have allegedly shacked up together)

Life is getting weird.