One of my many superpowers is my ability to fall asleep within 2 minutes of my head hitting the pillow. Whether it’s an otherworldly gift or overwhelming sleep debt, I don’t struggle with wide-eyed, dark ceiling stares or thoughts keeping me up at night.

It wasn’t always like this. As a kid, I had a real fear of falling asleep. Nightmares were a common occurrence, and night-lights were the last bastion of hope in the dark. It was almost every night that I’d be transported to some other worldly state and subsequently chased by evil doers. I remember running scared from the pursuers, ranging from creatures to obscure shapes. There was never an attempt to fight back, not until I was older. I’d wake up in a panic, detest the thought of going back, and knock on my parents door, hoping to sleep where it was safe.

Dreams are weird. From my limited understanding, they have something to do with:

1. Flushing the unconscious or conscious happenings of the prior day from your brain
2. Subliminal processing of emotions
3. Connection of neural pathways

Try telling that to the kid afraid to fall asleep. At that point, the utility doesn’t matter. The interactive movie playing in their head runs on a nightly basis, and seems to only serve up the fear they hope to avoid during the day.

Putting my expert psychoanalysis hat on, there were a few recurring themes that can be linked to broader developmental ideas. For one, control. In a dream world where I was constantly running from evil, I didn’t suppose I had any agency to change my situation. Naturally, you don’t have a lot of agency as a child, hence the dreams.

Over time, the pursuers became a tad more abstract. I distinctly remember multiple times where rapturing “end-of-the-world" moments would be played out. It always started normally, in a plain domestic setting getting lunch or playing a game in the living room. Then, some larger than life event would occur: the sky would open up and start violently pulling people towards it, or the horizon would tilt 90 degrees and we all knew this was the end. Oddly enough, it wouldn’t always end there. There would be a period of darkness, a presence still aware of the “end”, then some other setting would take its place, like I’d been teleported to another world. Here, it’s easy for me to connect the dots to waking moments of the time, wherein I was fairly concerned with mortality given the state of affairs with my family.

Later on, I’d tried lucid dreaming. That ended up being too much control! It was exhausting writing the movie every night; it was more interesting to go to the theater and be surprised to see what’s showing.

Eventually, as I grew up, I’d continue to be chased in dreams, but then I’d start fighting back. And this time, punches started to land. It started to get uncomfortable. I remember a particular dream where Gollum, the Lord of the Rings character who dominated my psyche and fears as a kid, was up to his old tricks of being generally creepy. In defense of my younger self and all the sleepless nights of my youth, I walked up to him and beat the shit out of him. It didn’t feel great. After a while, I’d seen what I was doing, and felt more pity than I did justice. Of course in the books, Gollum is sort of a pitiful character, but one overcome by obsession and grief. Despite the years of terror, the beating stopped and I moved on. At the risk of assigning meaning where there is none, it could be surmised that this is some sort of acceptance of childhood vulnerability.

It’s commonplace in an American culture to say dreams are boring and no one wants to hear about yours. In some ways, I agree. If dreams are truly just a random byproduct of our biology, spending a lot of time extrapolating out meaning is a futile exercise. It is what it is. Wake up. Maybe the cultural criticism is more about an overall lack of self-awareness in social settings, where if all you can talk about is this random thought you had while sleeping last night, maybe you’d better serve the conversation as a mute. Maybe it’s the general Nihilism in the country, where nothing matters, much less a dream you had, and if you’re looking for meaning, you’d be better served elsewhere (maybe nowhere). Again, not entirely invalid, as life itself has a wealth of places to look for substance, and deriving bits of self-reflection isn’t necessarily limited to mediums we can’t necessarily control. Maybe the criticism is more of a commentary on agency and utility; themes which I’d identify with quite a bit.

On the other hand, aren’t dreams just kind of neat? There’s narrative, production, blends of structure and no structure, and often times, it’s deeply personal. That won’t make them interesting to anybody else, but they don’t need to be. Sure it’s trite, but I don’t claim to be an authority on the subject, or much of anything really………

What I find more interesting is the strong avoidance I feel in writing anything about this topic. The subject matter does feel a bit silly and sort of futile, so I sprinkle in some disclaimers to cover my bases, always playing devil’s advocate. After all, if there’s no real definition, there’s less to attack. In reality, a part of me just wants to feel safe in my shell and shore up my defenses, longing for an immunity to any semblance of criticism.

How much of my conscious or unconscious effort revolves around avoiding pain? Who am I even defending myself from: others or myself?

These posts are a good exercise in vulnerability and confidence. Practice, practice, practice!